Timeline of Influential Milestones and Turning Points in Film History

Timeline of Influential Milestones and Important Turning Points in Film History

1940s

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

1940s - Part 1

Year	Event and Significance
1940	Disney released its animated feature film masterpiece Pinocchio - one of the best examples of the studio's animation talent. This was Disney's second feature-length animated film, following after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).
1940	Disney's groundbreaking Fantasia introduced a "Fantasound" 'stereo-like', multi-channel soundtrack (an optical 'surround-sound' soundtrack printed on a separate 35mm reel from the actual video portion of the film). It cost about four times more than an average live-action picture.
1940	The first of the seven Bob Hope-Bing Crosby "Road" films (spanning 1940-1962) was released: Road to Singapore.
1940	The first agents began to assemble creative talent and stories in exchange for a percentage of the film's profits.
1940	Alfred Hitchcock's first American film, Rebecca, won Best Picture at the awards ceremony in 1941. It competed against another Hitchcock film - Foreign Correspondent.
1940	John Ford directed The Grapes of Wrath, his most famous black and white epic drama - the classic adaptation of John Steinbeck's 1940 Pulitzer Prize-winning, widely-read 1939 novel. This film was the most popular left-leaning, socialistic-themed film of pre-World War II Hollywood.
1940	Actor/director/producer/writer/composer Charlie Chaplin released his first 'talkie' feature film, The Great Dictator. Charlie Chaplin was the first to ever receive three simultaneous nominations, as producer, actor, and screenwriter for the film.
1940	Famed cartoon character Bugs Bunny first said his famous line ("Eh, what's up, Doc?" voiced by Mel Blanc) in his fourth, Oscar-nominated Tex Avery cartoon, A Wild Hare (1940) - the first true Bugs Bunny cartoon with Elmer Fudd as a rabbit hunter (and noted for Elmer's first use of his 'wabbit' voice). Bugs finally received his identifiable name by his fifth cartoon, Elmer's Pet Rabbit (1941).
1940	Tom & Jerry, created by Hanna & Barbera, were debuted by MGM in Puss Gets the Boot. (Tom was called Jasper and Jerry didn't have a name yet.)
1940	Many sources have claimed that director Boris Ingster's Stranger on the Third Floor was the first full-featured film noir. It starred Peter Lorre as the sinister 'stranger' (cast due to his creepy performance in M (1931)), in a story about the nightmarish after-effects of circumstantial testimony. See also 1941.
1940	Howard Hawks' speedy and hysterically funny, modern-style screwball comedy His Girl Friday, was one of the best examples of its kind in film history. Although it had a 92-minute running time, the breath-taking, fast-paced film had more than enough dialogue for a 3-hour movie. It was best remembered for its overlapping dialogue and simultaneous conversations - and it marked one of the earliest instances in which characters would deliberately (and realistically) talk over the lines of other characters.
1940	Director/scriptwriter Preston Sturges' political satire The Great McGinty was noted for its Oscar-winning Best Original Screenplay. Sturges was the first Hollywood scriptwriter to direct his own work - and he was also the first director to win the Academy Award for his own original screenplay. It was the first time a film in Hollywood opened with the credit: "Written and Directed By." He was able to retain greater control over and exercise greater protection of his own creations, signaling the days when a writer could also be the director and/or producer.
1941	Dave and Max Fleischer, in an agreement with Paramount and DC Comics, produced a series of seventeen Superman cartoons in the early 1940s. The first Superman short, Superman, introduced the terms "faster than a speeding bullet" and "Look, up in the sky!"
1941	24 year-old Orson Welles, called America's "boy wonder" or wunderkind, directed and acted in Citizen Kane, a movie about a powerful newspaper publisher named Charles Foster Kane (modeled after William Randolph Hearst). "Boy genius" Welles was the first to ever receive simultaneous nominations in four categories: as producer, actor, director, and writer. It has been the most highly-regarded film in cinematic history, with many ground-breaking film techniques. The controversial film, banned from advertising in all of Hearst's newspapers, was noted for its creative experiments with sound (i.e., overlapping dialogue and layered sound), for its numerous complex flashbacks (and non-linear storytelling), and for Gregg Toland's cinematography, including innovative camera angles (low-angle shots revealing ceilings), montage, mise-en-scene, deep-focus compositions, tracking shots, whip pans, lengthy takes, and dramatic or expressionistic low-key noirish lighting.
1941	Reclusive Swedish actress Greta Garbo retired early at age 36, after the release of the disastrous box-office flop Two-Faced Woman. She quit the film business, left Hollywood, and remained out of the spotlight until her death of natural causes in 1990.
1941	A Senate subcommittee launched an investigation of whether Hollywood was producing films to involve the United States in World War II. It was dissolved shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor in late 1941.
1941	Bette Davis became the first female president of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences.
1941	The first, generally-acknowledged film noir was released, John Huston's directorial debut film The Maltese Falcon. It was the first detective film to use the shadowy, nihilistic noir style in a definitive way. The mystery classic was the privotal work of novice director John Huston. The cycle of classic film noirs with a recognizable visual style, would last until 1958.
1941	The Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers was founded by Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney, Orson Welles, Samuel Goldwyn, David O. Selznick, Alexander Korda, and Walter Wanger. The Society aimed to preserve the rights of independent producers in an industry overwhelmingly controlled by studios. Citizen Kane (1941) and Fantasia (1940) were among the acclaimed films produced by Society members.
1941	The first Hollywood musical to acknowledge that World War II (1941-1945) was occurring was MGM's and Busby Berkeley's Babes on Broadway, a Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland teaming, in the film's special salute to Britain (then fighting valiantly against the Nazis) in the number Chin Up! Cherrio! Carry On!
1941	The longest uninterrupted screen kiss, clocking in at 3 minutes and 5 seconds, was found in the film You're in the Army Now, between Jane Wyman and Regis Toomey - a recod that held until it was replicated or broken by Big Top Pee-Wee (1988). The world record for the longest on-screen kiss was then surpassed by the 6 minute kiss in the film Kids in America (2005).
1942	Best Picture-winning Casablanca, based on the play Everybody Comes to Rick’s and set in 1941 war-time Morocco, premiered in New York. Altogether, its director Michael Curtiz made over 40 films in the decade of the 30s, and over 150 films in his entire career, from the silent era to the early 1960s.
1942	Jacques Tourneur's moody and intelligent Cat People, producer Val Lewton's first film at RKO, influenced future film-makers by showing how subtle and suggestive horror could be effectively generated.
1942	During the war, Nazis in occupied France banned English-language films -- Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) was the last film shown.
1942	The first of numerous Hollywood films to take up the U.S. cause of World War II was Wake Island, followed by other morale-boosting feature films such as Flying Tigers.
1942	Black actor Paul Robeson, who had starred in Show Boat (1936), said he wouldn't make any more films until there were better roles for blacks. His last film was Tales of Manhattan (1942).
1942	Tweety Bird, originally pink-colored, debuted in Tale of Two Kitties, a spoof on the popular comedy team of Abbott and Costello. Tweety Bird's first cartoon appearance with lisping cat Sylvester was in Tweetie Pie (1947) -- it won an Oscar for animator Friz Freleng. This was the first Warner Brothers cartoon to win an Oscar!
1942	During a War Bond tour, popular star and actress Carole Lombard was killed in a plane crash.
1942-1943	The war years had a distinct influence on Hollywood. The Office of War Information (OWI) stated that film makers should consider seven questions before producing a movie, including this one: "Will this picture help to win the war?" The War Production Board imposed a $5,000 limit on set construction. Wartime cloth restrictions were imposed, prohibiting cuffed trousers and pleats. Klieg-lit Hollywood premieres were prohibited. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hollywood turned out numerous anti-Japanese films, some of them quite racist, such as Fox's Little Tokyo, U.S.A.,which dealt with the controversial subject of Japanese internment. The OWI then cracked down on the artistic license of Hollywood beginning in 1943. The Office of Censorship prohibited the export of films that showed racial discrimination, depicted Americans as single-handedly winning the war, or painted our allies as imperialists.
1942	Orson Welles directed his second motion picture, The Magnificent Ambersons, noted for dialogue that was realistically spoken.
1942	The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences commenced with an award category for Best Documentary - Short Subject, won for the first time (in the 1942 awards ceremony) by the Canadian production Churchill's Island (1941).
1942	Lena Horne was the first African-American woman to sign a long-term contract with a major studio (MGM) as a specialty performer, meaning that she was initially cast in parts and subplots (usually separate singing scenes) that could be edited out for showings in Southern theaters.
1942	Errol Flynn was charged with three counts of statutory rape of two teenagers: 15 year-old Peggy LaRue Satterlee and 17 year-old Betsy Hansen, although later acquitted during his Los Angeles trial in 1943 since the girls were portrayed as morally-lax groupies. His career and personal life suffered as a result. The risque expression "In Like Flynn" may have been derived from his alleged sexual indiscretions and womanizing.
1942	Warner Bros' nostalgic, shamelessly-patriotic, entertaining black and white Yankee Doodle Dandy was one of the first computer-colorized films released by entrepreneur Ted Turner in 1985 (on George M. Cohan's alleged birthday July 4th - naturally!). James Cagney was the first Best Actor Oscar winner to take home the Oscar for an appearance in a film musical.
1943	20th Century Fox began distributing pinups of leggy actress Betty Grable.
1943	Columbia Pictures released its first Technicolor film, a western called The Desperadoes with Glenn Ford and Randolph Scott.
1943	Director Vincente Minelli's Cabin in the Sky opened, starring Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, and Ethel Waters. Stormy Weather, starring Cab Calloway, Lena Horne, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and Fats Waller, was also released.
1943	The War Production Board ordered theaters to dim their marquee lights at 10 p.m.
1943	The UPA (United Productions of America) was formed by a group of animators who broke away from Disney, following a five months artists' strike in 1941. The intentions of the film production company were to promote freedom of expression in the field of animation.
1943	The precursor of Italian neo-realism was Luchino Visconti's Ossessione, the director's first film. Loosely adapted from James M. Cain's pulp novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, it enraged fascist censors and inspired the term neorealism. The movement would really take hold from the mid-40s to the mid-50s, with its main exponents being Visconti, Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica.
1943	Female director Dorothy Arzner directed the war melodrama First Comes Courage, her last feature film, starring Merle Oberon.
1943	Influential Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein published The Film Sense, a film theory book that took a critical look at film and its impact, using his experiences in creating Strike (1925), Battleship Potemkin (1925), October: Ten Days That Shook the World (1927), Old and New (1929), and Alexander Nevsky (1938), and including a defense of his use of "montage".
1943	The 18-minute silent, surrealistic feminist film Meshes of the Afternoon, co-directed by husband and wife Alexander Hammid and Maya Deren (who also starred as the film's two major characters, The Man and The Woman) and shot in 16mm, was influential in ushering in the post-WW II American avant-garde (experimental) film movement. It was called a "dream" or "trance" film, due to the fact that its day-dream plot (filled with poetic imagery of the subconscious) was filmed without a script.
1943	Superhero Batman was the first DC Comics character to have his own serial - Batman (1943), a fifteen-episode wartime serial with cliffhangers, starring Lewis Wilson as smug playboy Bruce Wayne and alias Batman - "America's No. 1 crime fighter."