Timeline of Influential Milestones and Turning Points in Film History

Timeline of Influential Milestones and Important Turning Points in Film History

1930s

Herein is a detailed timeline of the key film milestones, important turning points, and significant historical dates or events (organized by decade) that have had a significant influence on the world body of cinema and shaped its development. For more detailed accounts of many items, also see this site's extensive narratives on Film History by Decade, Film Milestones in Visual and Special Effects, and a comprehensive History of the Academy Awards.

Index to Timeline of Greatest Film Milestones and Turning Points

(by decade)

Pre-1900s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s
1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s

1930s - Part 2

Year	Event and Significance
1934	Frank Capra's It Happened One Night became the first film to sweep the Academy Awards, winning Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay. The same feat would be repeated with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
1934	Donald Duck debuted in The Wise Little Hen.
1934	An amendment to the Production Code established the Production Code Administration (PCA), which required all films to acquire a certificate of approval before release, or face a penalty of $25,000. The members of the MPPDA agreed not to release or distribute any film that didn't carry the seal. The MPPDA appointed Joseph Breen as the director of the PCA to enforce the Production Code. John Ford's The World Moves On was the first film to receive a production seal granted by the Hays Office under its new guidelines. The era of 'separate beds' was inaugurated.
1934	The Catholic Church formed the Legion of Decency to boycott any film that didn't use the Production Code as a guideline.
1934	Louis de Rochemont began the documentary newsreel film series, The March of Time.
1934	Warner Bros. became the first studio to shut down its German distribution office to protest the Nazi's anti-Semitic policies.
1934	The first use of 3-strip Technicolor in a live-action sequence (in the film's final scene), was in MGM's musical/romance operetta adaptation The Cat and the Fiddle, starring Jeanette MacDonald (in her MGM debut film) and Ramon Novarro.
1934	RKO's 2-reel short La Cucaracha was the first live-action film to use a three-strip Technicolor process.
1935	RKO's and Rouben Mamoulian's Becky Sharp was the first feature-length Technicolor film using an improved three-color (three-strip) Technicolor system - starring Miriam Hopkins in the title role. It was a dramatization of William Makepeace Thackeray's novel of Vanity Fair.
1935	The first Mickey Mouse film in color was released, Disney's 9-minute The Band Concert.
1935	British director Alfred Hitchcock became an internationally-famous figure for his thrillers including The 39 Steps and later The Lady Vanishes (1938).
1935	Century Pictures and Fox Film merged to form 20th Century-Fox.
1935	The U.S. Treasury Department upheld a Commissioner of Customs decision to prohibit the import of the notorious Czechoslovakian film Ecstasy (1933) (aka Extase) with Hedwig Kiesler (Hedy Lamarr), because it contained nudity and sexual situations (intercourse and simulated orgasm). This marked the first time customs laws were used to prevent a film from entering the US.
1935	The first trade paper Oscar advertisement appeared to promote MGM's coming-of-age comedy, Ah, Wilderness!
1935	John Ford's American film The Informer had an impressive, emotionally-moving, Academy Award-winning musical score (with an Irish flavor) written by famed composer Max Steiner, and encouraged the future development of musical soundtracks and accompaniments.
1935	In the Warner Bros.' film G-Men, James Cagney didn't play the typical "tough guy gangster" as usual but took the role of a federal lawman. The film industry's new censorship laws only allowed gangsters on the screen if they were being captured or killed by FBI men. This new heroic image signaled a shift in Hollywood's portrayal of the government agent, mostly due to the propagandastic intentions of FBI head J. Edgar Hoover (who ruled the agency from 1924 until his death in 1972).
1935	Pricewaterhouse (now PricewaterhouseCoopers) has managed the Academy Awards balloting process since 1935 - all but the first six years of the Oscars.
1935	Director Leni Riefenstahl's controversial, historically-important documentary film The Triumph of the Will (aka Triumph des Willens, Germ.) was an effective propagandistic effort documenting the 1934 Nazi Party Congress and rally in Nuremberg.
1936	Chaplin's Modern Times, mostly silent although with various sound effects, commented upon the effects of the Great Depression.
1936	The Negro Improvement League protested The Green Pastures, the first all-black film since King Vidor's Hallelujah! (1929). It was a reenactment of Bible stories set in the world of black American folklore and filled with cliches and racial stereotypes of the time. The organization criticized it as "insulting, degrading and malicious" and perpetuating unacceptable stereotypes.
1936	Composer and Warners' animation department musical director for over two decades, Carl W. Stalling chose "Merrily We Roll Along" (mostly used for Merrie Melodies) and "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" (mostly used for Looney Tunes) as the distinctive theme songs for Warners' cartoons.
1936	The romantic drama The Trail of the Lonesome Pine was the first three-strip Technicolor feature shot entirely on location (away from the studio). It was directed by outdoor action-adventure, western, drama, and war film director Henry Hathaway, and starred Henry Fonda, Fred MacMurray, and Sylvia Sidney.
1937	Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies short animated film, The Old Mill, was the first cartoon to be produced with the multi-plane camera, which gave an increased sense of movement and depth. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1938.
1937	The first full-length animated feature, Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, was released - made for a budget of $1.5 million. It was the top moneymaker in 1938, when it made an astronomical $8 million.
1937	The first film pairing of young stars Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland was in Thoroughbreds Don't Cry.
1937	Luise Rainer won the second of her back-to-back Best Actress Oscars for her performance as the strong and silent O-Lan, a self-sacrificing Chinese peasant farm wife in The Good Earth. Her first win was for her performance in The Great Ziegfeld (1936). She became the first multiple Oscar winner, and was the first to win an award two years in a row.
1937	The musical comedy A Damsel in Distress (with music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin and based on a P.G. Wodehouse story) was best known as the first Fred Astaire/RKO film to not feature Ginger Rogers (non-dancer/singer Joan Fontaine was substituted), after they famously teamed up together in Flying Down to Rio (1933) through their last previous joint appearance in Shall We Dance (1937). It was also the first Astaire film to be a box-office flop. To make up for their miscalculation, RKO quickly recast the celebrated dance team of Astaire and Rogers in the next year's Carefree (1938).
1937	Blonde bombshell Jean Harlow was the first film actress to appear on the cover of the popular Life magazine, on May 3, 1937, only a month before her tragic death at age 26 due to uremic poisoning on June 7, 1937, before the completion of filming for Saratoga (1937) with Clark Gable.
1937	Louis B. Mayer (of MGM studios) had the highest salary in the US at $1.3 million.
1938	For the first time, a group of movie stars organized a committee, the Motion Picture Democratic Committee, to support a political party.
1938	African-American leaders publically called on the Hays Office to make roles other than doormen, maids, and porters available to blacks.
1938	The first appearance of an early prototype of Bugs Bunny, possibly the greatest cartoon character of all-time, as Porky Pig's antagonist in Warners' Porky's Hare Hunt. He would appear fully-developed and in his first starring role in Tex Avery's Oscar-nominated A Wild Hare (1940).
1938	The first and only on-screen kiss between the memorable dancing-singing partnership of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers was in their 8th RKO film, Carefree.
1938	Russian director Sergei Eisenstein directed the epic film Alexander Nevsky (aka Aleksandr Nevskiy, Russ.), a nationalistic film that presented the medieval story of the 13th century Russian prince Alexander Nevsky (Nikolai Cherkasov) -- enhanced with a score by Sergei Prokofiev. The film's most memorable battle scene was on the ice (that started to crack) at frozen Lake Peipus in 1242 between the invading barbaric Teutonic knights and the Russian army - both wielding spears and axes.
1938	The California Child Actor's Bill, better known as the Coogan Law (after 21 year old Jackie Coogan who sued his parents for mismanaging and exploiting his career and spending his acquired fortune as a young star) was enacted. To protect the earnings of child actors, it required that fifteen percent of a child's earnings be set aside in a trust that cannot be tapped without a court order until the child comes of age. Various child labor laws and other similar acts have since been established. Later, Coogan became known for playing Uncle Fester on The Addams Family television show.
1938-1939	Spencer Tracy won his second Best Actor Oscar in early 1939. He had won the 1937 Oscar for his role in Captains Courageous and then this 1938 award for Boys Town. This was the first time that an actor had won the Oscar in consecutive years.
1939	This year has often been called the "greatest year in film history" by film buffs, movie historians, and critics, chiefly due to the inordinate number of classic films. Some of the greatest films ever made were released in 1939, including Gone With the Wind, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz and Wuthering Heights. In France, both Marcel Carné's Daybreak (aka Le Jour Se Lève) and Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game (considered by some to be the greatest film of all-time, but banned during the German occupation) were released. Other major classic films in 1939 included Beau Geste, Dark Victory, Destry Rides Again, Love Affair (later remade as An Affair to Remember), Only Angels Have Wings, Gunga Din, Midnight, Of Mice and Men, The Women, Young Mr. Lincoln, and many more.
1939	Gone With the Wind, directed by Victor Fleming and starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, was premiered. This big-screen adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's best-selling novel was a 222-minute Civil War epic drama that went on to profitably gross $192 million. Its casting call for the lead female role of Scarlett O'Hara ended up being one of the biggest ever with multiple actresses being considered for the highly desired role. It was nominated for thirteen Oscars, and won eight statues (including Best Picture) - a record for its time, and two special awards in the awards ceremony in early 1940. It was the first color film to win Best Picture. Best Supporting Actress Hattie McDaniel became the first African-American performer to win an Oscar.
1939	John Ford's classic western Stagecoach was the first film that the director shot in Utah's Monument Valley -- the site would repeatedly be used as the locale for most of his other Westerns.
1939	With his supporting roles in Frank Capra's You Can't Take It With You (1938) as Donald and Gone With the Wind as Uncle Peter, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson became the first black performer to appear in more than one Oscar-winning Best Picture. This led to his top billing in the MGM musical Cabin in the Sky (1943).
1939	The future rival to film -- television -- was formally introduced at the New York World's Fair in Queens. The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) unveiled a display of its first TV sets for sale to the American public.