1936
1931 1932
Britain's George V dies at Sandringham January 20 at age 70 after a reign of nearly 26 years and is succeeded by his 41-year-old son David, who assumes the throne as Edward VIII. The new king has given up his longtime affair with Freda Dudley Ward and wants to marry the Baltimore-born socialite Bessie Warfield Simpson (née Wallis), 39, who has just divorced her second husband. Having created a constitutional crisis, Edward abdicates December 10 (the BBC broadcasts his speech) so that he may marry "the woman I love"; his diffident younger brother Albert succeeds to the throne at age 41 and will reign until 1952 as George VI.
Admiral David Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty, Royal Navy (ret.), of 1916 Battle of Jutland fame dies at London March 11 at age 65.
France's short-lived Laval government falls January 22 amidst suspicions that it supported reactionaries (see 1935). A stopgap cabinet headed by Albert Sarraut takes over, the May 3 parliamentary elections give the Popular Front a majority, and the first Popular Front ministry takes office June 5 with Socialist Party leader Léon Blum, now 64, as the nation's first socialist (and first Jewish) premier. Blum was badly beaten in mid-February by right-wing thugs who recognized him while he was riding with friends in a car on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, his injuries were severe enough to require hospitalization, and the outrage attracted many voters to his side. He promptly ends the strikes that have crippled the nation.
Adolf Hitler takes advantage of the Ethiopian crisis to denounce the 1925 Locarno Pacts and reoccupy the Rhineland March 7. He is prepared to withdraw in the event of opposition from Britain or France, but nothing is done to stop him and the inertia on the part of London and Paris encourages him to escalate his demands. German authorities transfer pacifist Carl von Ossietzky to a prison hospital at Berlin in May after 3 years of incarceration and torture (see
Former Greek premier Eleuthérios Venizélos dies at Paris March 18 at age 71, having helped double the size and population of his country. Greece's George II appoints Ithaca-born ultraroyalist Gen. Ioannis Metaxas premier April 13 and gives him dictatorial powers August 4. Now 65, Metaxas has warned that communists were about to take over the country, and the king allows him to begin a Fourth of August regime that will stifle political dissent, suspend constitutional rights, and even censor the funeral oration delivered (according to Thucydides) by Pericles to the Athenians. Metaxas will remain in power until his death early in 1941.
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Kazakhstan become Soviet Socialist republics (see Georgia,
The Great Purge trials that began in the Soviet Union 2 years ago continue under the direction of Andrei Vishinsky, who last year was promoted to chief prosecutor. Bolshevik Lev B. Kamenev is convicted of conspiracy in a show trial and executed by a firing squad at his native Moscow August 24 at age 53 (his wife, Tatyana, will be shot next year); Grigori E. Zinoviev is executed August 25 at age 52. The Yezhovschina will take an estimated 8 to 10 million lives in the next 2 years as Josef Stalin liquidates his political enemies (see 1937).
Hungary's pro-fascist premier Gyula Gömbös dies at Munich October 6 at age 49. Britain's Edward VIII sends an elaborate bouquet, as does Spanish general Francisco Franco. Finance minister Béla Imrédy, 44, resigns and becomes president of the National Bank of Hungary. Gömbös is succeeded by his minister of agriculture Kálmán Darányi, 50, who will hold office until he resigns in May 1938, continuing the Gömbös foreign policy as he aligns Hungary with German and Italian interests, extends the powers of the central government internally, curbs the press, and adopts the nation's first anti-Semitic measures.
Spanish voters elect a new Popular Front government in February and former prime minister Manuel Azaña y Díaz heads a new ministry. President Alcalá Zamora has failed in his efforts to curb left-wing extremists, and the Cortes (parliament) removes him from office (the vote on a technicality to unseat him is 238 to 5), Azaña is elected in May to succeed him, and he goes into exile in France (he will later move to Argentina).
Anarchist Alexander Berkman puts a rifle bullet through his chest and dies at Nice June 28 at age 65, having had two unsuccessful operations for prostate cancer, suffered constant pain, and been dependent on financial aid from friends. News of his death devastates his friend Emma Goldman, who went to Russia early in 1920, soon found herself at odds with the policies of the Lenin government, left late in 1921 with Berkman, and explained why in her 1923 book My Disillusionment in Russia. Now 67, she has been living at St. Tropez in a house purchased for her by copper heiress Peggy Guggenheim.
A Spanish civil war begins July 18 as army chiefs at Mililla in Spanish Morocco start a revolt against the weak government at Madrid; most of the army and air force supports insurgent generals Francisco Franco, 44, and Emilio Mola, 49, and the revolt spreads rapidly to the Spanish garrison towns of Cádiz, Seville, Saragossa, and Burgos. Commanding large Moorish contingents, Franco and Mola form a junta of National Defense July 30 at Burgos. German and Italian "volunteers" organized by German admiral and military intelligence (Abwehr) head Wilhelm (Franz) Canaris, 49, soon join them, and while Moscow supplies the government loyalists with advisers, military commanders, and equipment, the nonintervention policies of Britain, France, and the United States serve the interests of Franco and Mola. A Rome-Berlin Axis is formed October 25. Equipped with arms from Germany and Italy, the insurgents lay siege to Madrid November 6, and the republican government immediately begins executing rightist political prisoners and military officers lest they be freed by the fascists. The Soviet secret service (NKVD) goes after anarchists and Trotskyites who are fighting alongside the loyalists.
"The fifth column" will take Madrid, says Gen. Mola when asked which of his four columns will capture the city. He refers to sympathizers within Madrid, but resistance stiffens when communist orator (Isadora) Dolores Ibárruri (Gómez), 40 ("The Passsionflower" ["La Pasionaria"]), exhorts housewives to take lunch to their husbands in the trenches and pour boiling oil on any fascists who enter the city. "They shall not pass" ("No pasaran"), she has said July 18, and she rallies support with the cry, "It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees," but while the communists favor the Popular Front it is rejected by anarchists and the revolutionary party POUM (see Ibárruri, 1977).
Spanish Republican authorities give fascist leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera, marqués de Estella, a summary trial and execute him at Alicante November 20 at age 33 (see
An International Brigade of anti-fascists rallies to the Spanish Loyalist cause. The Soviet Comintern established in 1919 forms seven brigades late in the year, each composed of three or more battalions; 82 Americans embark for France as "tourists" on the S.S. Normandie Christmas Day to join the fight. By February of next year several thousand Americans will be in the Lincoln Brigade and a second force called the George Washington Brigade. Casualties will be so heavy that the two will be merged by mid-1937. Other nationalities will join the Lincoln Brigade, and by the time all the brigades are disbanded in late 1938 Spaniards will outnumber Americans three to one; by April 1939 some 3,100 Americans (2,800 by some accounts) will have fought and about 900 (1,500 by some accounts) will have been killed in action.
International arms dealer Sir Basil Zaharoff dies at Monte Carlo November 27 at age 87, having been described as a "merchant of death" and made himself one of the richest men in Europe.
Egypt's Ahmed Fuad dies April 28 at age 68 after a reign of more than 18 years, first as sultan, then as king; his dissolute 16-year-old son Farouk will reign until 1952. Former British field marshal Edmund H. H. Allenby dies of a heart attack at his London home in Kensington May 14 at age 75. Viscount Allenby served as high commissioner in Egypt from 1919 to 1925 and granted independence to Ethiopia in 1922. Britain agrees August 27 to withdraw from all of Egypt except for the Suez Canal zone.
The Arab world has its first successful coup d'état in modern times October 29 as Iraqi general Bakr Sidqi overthrows the government (see
Italian forces under the command of Gen. Rodolfo Graziani take Addis Ababa May 5, and Rome proclaims the annexation of Ethiopia May 9 (see 1935). President Roosevelt has issued a proclamation April 10 enumerating implements of war that may not be exported to the belligerents (see Neutrality Acts, 1935; 1937). Italian bombs and mustard gas have killed barefoot Ethiopian warriors by the hundreds of thousands while Benito Mussolini's son-in-law Conte Galeazzo Ciano expressed rapture at the beauty of bombs "opening like red blossoms" on Ethiopia's highlands. Mussolini joins the African nation with Eritrea and Italian Somaliland to create Italian East Africa with Gen. Graziani as viceroy, and Graziani will be ruthless in his administration (see 1941).
"I am here today to claim the justice that is due to my people," says Haile Selassie June 30 in an address at Geneva to the League of Nations. "God and history will remember your judgment," the Ethiopian emperor says, and as he steps down he murmurs, "It is us today. It will be you tomorrow." Millions of gas masks will be distributed to British, Czech, and other European civilians in the next few years in anticipation that they may be needed in any new conflict on the Continent.
Former chairman of Britain's royal commission on agriculture in India Victor Alexander John Hope, 48, 2nd marquess of Linlithgow, is appointed viceroy of India, a post he will hold until he retires in 1943.
Young Japanese army officers mutiny at Tokyo February 26 and assassinate former premier Saito, Finance Minister Korekiyo Takahashi, and others in an abortive attempt to set up a military dictatorship. They fail in an attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Keisuke Okada, 68, who has tried to moderate extremist military influence in the government and resigns after less than 2 years in office, accepting responsibility for a number of incidents that have occurred during his administration. A military court hands down 17 death sentences July 7 (see Chinese invasion, 1937).
Japan organizes a biological-warfare unit outside Harbin, Manchuria (see Geneva Protocol, 1925). Called Unit 731 and disguised as a water-purification facility, it is headed by Shiro Ishii, 54, who will erect more than 150 buildings within an area of six square kilometers and conduct tests on human subjects as war continues with China (see 1937).
Former Chinese warlord Duan Qirui (Tuan Ch'i-jui) dies at Shanghai November 2 at age 71, having devoted his final 10 years to philanthropy and the study of Buddhism.
Japan signs an Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany November 25 (but see
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek visits his general Zhang Xue Liang (Chang Hsüeh-liang) at Sian in northwest China December 12 and is arrested by Zhang's Manchurian-born troops. Zhang has opposed Chiang's policy of fighting communists rather than directing the Nationalist Army's full power against Manchuria's Japanese invaders. Communist leader Zhou En-lai (Chou En-lai) joins the negotiations, and Chiang is not released until December 25, when he agrees to form a united front against the Japanese. He makes good on his word but arrests Zhang, who will remain imprisoned for the next decade.
Nicaragua has a coup d'état June 2 as the National Guard, led by Gen. Antonio Somoza, deposes President Juan Sacasa (see 1934). Somoza will make himself president next year, he will rule for 10 years, and his family will continue his dictatorship until July 1979, looting the country of its wealth.
U.S. soldier-aviator William "Billy" Mitchell dies at New York February 19 at age 56, having agitated for the establishment of a separate air force, an air-force equivalent of West Point, and increased air defenses in Hawaii; former U.S. attorney general A. Mitchell Palmer of 1919 "Red Scare" Palmer Raids notoriety at Washington, D.C., May 11 at age 64 (see Dies Committee, 1938); Admiral William S. Sims, U.S. Navy (ret.), dies at Boston September 28 at age 77.
"This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny," President Roosevelt says June 27 in a speech written for him by White House insider Thomas G. Corcoran. FDR denounces "economic royalists" indifferent to the needs of the people in a speech to the Democratic Party's national convention at Philadelphia, pointing to the economic progress made since 1933. The Republicans nominate Gov. Alfred M. Landon, 59, of Kansas, who denounces New Deal encroachments on American business and American institutions; former "Brain Trust" head Raymond Moley has broken with the Democrats, whose programs have in his opinion gone too far to the left. The Republicans spend nearly $9 million on Landon's campaign, the Democrats just over $5 million, but FDR wins reelection to a second term with 61 percent of the popular vote, which reaches an unprecedented 45 million. He receives 523 electoral votes, capturing every state but Maine and Vermont; Landon wins just 37 percent of the popular vote, eight electoral votes.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) files suit January 24 in the Boone County Circuit Court at Columbia, Mo., against the University of Missouri in behalf of Mississippi-born St. Louis student Lloyd L. Gaines, now 24, who applied last year for admission to the university's law school, possibly at the instigation of the NAACP (see 1935; Missouri law, 1889). When university officials learned that Gaines was black they let his application languish, NAACP counsel Charles Hamilton Houston took up his cause, the case goes to trial at St. Louis July 10, and university registrar Silas Woodson Canada testifies that the school has admitted Chinese, Japanese, and Hindu students, barring only students of African descent. Yet the judge dismisses Gaines's case 2 weeks later without giving any reason. Houston announces that he will appeal the decision, he argues the case December 12 before the Missouri Supreme Court, that court will uphold the lower court's decision early next year, and Houston will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court (see 1938).
Eleanor Roosevelt gives a garden party on the White House lawn in May for 60 girls from Washington's National Industrial School. All except eight are black, and the school's black superintendent, Carrie Weaver Smith, says, "Mrs. Roosevelt knows what the word 'lady' means," but the action outrages Southern sensibilities. One newspaper speaks of the president's wife having entertained a bunch of "nigger whores" at the White House.
Mary McLeod Bethune is appointed director of Negro Affairs in the National Youth Administration June 24 (see education, 1923). She is the first black woman to receive a major federal appointment.
Heinrich Himmler takes over Nazi Germany's Gestapo and combines it with the regular police force. Started by Hermann Goering in 1933, the secret police will compile dossiers on virtually every German to suppress political opposition.
A new family law adopted in the Soviet Union discourages divorce with fees and other restrictions, tightens requirements for alimony payments, and establishes an extensive system of maternity welfare, child care, and state financial support, especially for women in the workforce.
New Jersey mother Mabel Eaton loses custody of her children January 29 because of her affiliation with the Communist Party. Labor organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn joins the Party, convinced that "the full opportunity for women to become free and equal citizens with access to all spheres of human endeavor cannot come under capitalism, although many demands have been won by organized struggle."
Puerto Rican police open fire on a parade at Ponce March 21, killing 19 and wounding 100 in what will be remembered as the "Ponce Massacre." The government has revoked a permit to hold the Palm Sunday parade at the last moment, the Nationalist demonstrators have proceeded without a permit, and musicians are playing "La Bourinquena" as the firing begins.
Edsel Ford establishes the Ford Foundation for Human Advancement (see 1943).
The town of Baie-Comeau established on the north bank of the St. Lawrence River in east-central Quebec Province will become an industrial center with an aluminum plant and grain-exporting facilities. Chicago Tribune publisher Robert R. McCormick has urged creation of the deepwater port to provide a pulp and newsprint milling center.
Canadian gold mining pioneer Noah A. Timmins drops dead of a heart attack in Florida January 22 at age 69, having headed Hollinger Gold Mines Inc. since 1910.
United Rubber Workers of America employees receive pink layoff slips at 3 o'clock in the morning of February 14 and refuse to leave Goodyear Tire and Rubber Plant No. 2, pioneering the sit-down strike.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules 5 to 4 June 1 that a New York minimum wage law for women passed in 1933 is unconstitutional (Morehead v. New York ex. rel. Tipaldo). Justice Pierce Butler writes the majority opinion; Chief Justice Hughes dissents in an opinion joined by Justices Brandeis, Cardozo, and Stone (see Fair Labor Standards Act, 1938).
The Steel Workers' Organizing Committee holds its first meeting June 17 at Pittsburgh's Commonwealth Building and names United Mine Workers international vice-president Philip Murray of the CIO to chair an organizing campaign (see
The American Federation of Labor (AFL) suspends CIO unions (see 1935; 1955).
The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money by John Maynard Keynes advances the idea that laissez-faire capitalism does not always work, but massive economic depressions like the one now engulfing the world can be avoided by fairly simple governmental action such as investing in public works, encouraging capital goods production, and stimulating consumption by printing money to help restore the economic equilibrium (see British general strike, 1926). Once this is achieved, the capitalist system will resume its normal long-term growth rate, with the Gross National Product increasing by 2.5 percent each year to double national income every 30 years or so, a growth that is much faster than can be achieved under any other economic system. Depressions are unhealthy and unnecessary, says Keynes. "Unemployment develops . . . because people want the moon; men cannot be employed when the object of desire (i.e. money) is something which cannot be produced and the demand for which cannot readily be choked off. There is no remedy but to persuade the public that green cheese is practically the same thing and to have a green cheese factory (i.e. central bank) under public control" (see Hayek, 1944).
The Bank of China is founded by financier T. V. Soong, now 42, who has westernized Chinese finances and standardized the currency.
French sit-down strikes involving 300,000 workers lead to social reforms: a 40-hour week June 12, reorganization of the Banque de France June 30, nationalization of the munitions industry July 17, compulsory arbitration of labor disputes, paid vacations, etc. But prices skyrocket as labor reforms increase production costs and international tensions drive the government to increase spending on rearmament.
The United States agrees September 25 to fix exchange rates between the dollar, pound, and franc. France, Switzerland, and the Netherlands abandon the gold standard September 27. The French franc is devalued October 2, the Italian lira October 4.
Germany embarks on a Four-Year Plan October 19. Hermann Goering will succeed financier Hjalmar Schacht as economic minister beginning next year.
Sit-down strikers occupy the General Motors Chevrolet body plant at Flint, Mich., with CIO backing December 31 after five members of the 1-year-old United Automobile Workers Union have been laid off at GM's Fisher Body plant in Atlanta for wearing union buttons (see 1937). Former Baptist minister Homer Martin, 35, heads the union.
Thirty-eight percent of U.S. families (11.7 million families) have incomes of less than $1,000 per year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics places the "poverty line" at $1,330.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 31 at 179.90, up from 144.13 at the end of 1935.
The 266-year-old Hudson's Bay Company acquires the 213-year-old Revillon Frères and begins shutting down Revillon trading posts in Canada as demand for furs collapses in the ongoing economic recession.
The Robinson-Patman Act passed by Congress June 20 to supplement the Clayton Anti-Trust Act of 1914 forbids manufacturers to practice price discrimination, including use of advertising allowances to favored customers such as chain stores. It requires retailers to sell at prices fixed by manufacturers, making it illegal for them to sell at discount.
Boulder Dam's 17 giant hydroelectric turbines begin operation early in the year, generating 2 billion watts of cheap power for southern California, Arizona, and Nevada (nearly all of it goes to Los Angeles at a cost less than half that of energy generated by oil-powered plants) (see 1935; Bonneville, 1937).
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the TVA's right to dispose of surplus hydroelectric power February 17 in the case of Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority (see
Wheeler Dam is completed on the Tennessee River October 3 after nearly 3 years' work by the Army Corps of Engineers for the 3-year-old Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Built about 15 miles west of the 9-year-old Wilson Dam and named for the Confederate general Joseph Wheeler, it has cost $89 million, rises 72 feet, stretches 6,342 feet across, and generates 384,300 kilowatts of cheap electricity.
Hunt Oil Co. is founded by H. L. Hunt and will soon be the largest independent U.S. producer of oil and natural gas (see Joiner,
A California discovery well brought in at 8,000 feet by Shell Oil drillers using new seismograph techniques will lead to major oil production on land owned by Kern County Land Co. (see 1890). Seventy-five percent of the company's revenues will soon be coming from oil well royalties, but it will continue to be a major producer of cattle, potatoes, and other farm products.
Sun Oil and Socony-Vacuum introduce the Houdry process for "cracking" oil to produce gasoline. They are joint owners of the catalytic process invented by French-born U.S. engineer Eugene F. Houdry, 44 (the fils [son] in the French steelmaking firm Houdry & Fils), who has used bauxite as a catalyst to produce upwards of 80 percent gasoline from the lowest grade crude oil and refinery residuum without producing a gallon of fuel oil, on which profit is nil or minimal. Thermal cracking of crude oil by the Palmer method of 1900 or the Bosch method of 1924 has required pressures of up to 3,000 pounds per square inch and temperatures of up to 1,200° F.; the Houdry process requires pressures of only 20 to 40 psi and temperatures of only 900° F. (see fluid catalytic cracking,
The U.S. Supreme Court rules 6 to 3 May 18 that last year's Bituminous Coal Conservation Act (Guffey Act) is unconstitutional (Carter v. Carter Coal Co. et al). Designed to supplant the NRA code in the bituminous coal industry, the act violated the commerce clause in the Constitution by regulating wages and hours in coal mines, says the majority opinion; Justices Brandeis, Cardozo, and Stone dissent.
Coal operator Edward J. Berwind of Berwind-White Coal Co. dies at his 2 East 64th Street New York town house August 18 at age 88, having been the largest individual owner of coal properties in the United States.
The Super Chief leaves Chicago's Dearborn Station May 12 with nine Pullman cars pulled by diesel locomotives. The new weekly luxury train put into service by the Santa Fe reduces traveling time between Chicago and Los Angeles to just over 39 hours, much faster than the Chief that has been in service since 1926. Santa Fe officials contract to buy nine new stainless steel air-conditioned cars, each accommodating 104 passengers and a crew of 12.
The new Norris Dam on Tennessee's Clinch River improves navigation on the 652-mile (1,049-kilometer) Tennessee River, which 3 years ago carried only 33 million ton-miles of freight. One 188-mile stretch of the river is less than two feet deep on average and may be only inches deep during the dry season; TVA engineers will maintain a channel depth of at least 11 feet (3.4 meters), and the number of ton-miles on the river will grow to more than 5 billion (7.3 billion metric ton-kilometers) per year in the next 45 years as the once unmanageable river becomes a major thoroughfare for barges carrying coal, coke, grain, forest products, chemicals, petroleum products, pig iron, steel, and other commodities. The Wheeler Dam makes Muscle Shoals navigable, creating 75 miles of new waterway (see Pickwick Landing Dam, 1938).
The Cunard-White Star liner S.S. Queen Mary arrives at New York June 1, docking at a special Hudson River pier that has been built to accommodate her (a line of taxicabs six blocks long awaits her passengers). The 80,774-ton liner has four screws, measures 1,019.5 feet overall, and was built at Clydebank by John Brown & Co., Ltd. whose yards built the Lusitania, Aquitania, Empress of Britain, and H.M.S. Hood. Delayed by fog, she has set no speed record, but more than 10,000 visitors tour her facilities while she is in port, and when she departs on her return voyage June 5 it is announced that devices will be installed in her funnels to keep them from spewing soot onto her decks (see
The Merchant Marine Act passed by Congress June 29 provides for federal subsidies to U.S. ship owners to make up the difference between what foreign shipping lines pay to man and maintain their ships and the higher operating costs that U.S. shipping lines must pay (see Jones-White Act, 1928).
London-Paris night ferry service begins in October to provide the cheapest luxury route between the two capitals. Passengers leave Victoria Station at 9 o'clock in the evening (10 o'clock in summer), have their sleeping cars loaded aboard Channel steamers at Dover and offloaded at Dunkirk, arriving in the morning at the Gare du Nord in Paris.
Some 39,000 U.S. maritime workers tie up all West Coast ports beginning October 30 in a strike that spreads to eastern and Gulf Coast ports. New York piers are idled beginning October 31 as the International Seamen's Union tries to shut down East and West Coast shipping. Shipping companies hire seamen off the docks or from crimp joints—cheap hotels known to shipping masters who get kickbacks or otherwise exploit seafaring men. The strike will go on for nearly 3 months before seamen vote to accept tentative agreements.
The German airship LZ-129 launched at Friedrichshaven March 26 is the largest dirigible yet constructed (see 1928). Built by Hugo Eckener to withstand the weather over the North Atlantic in winter, she is 804 feet in length, 135 feet in diameter, weighs 130 tons (although her girders are of aluminum alloy), can carry 7 million cubic feet of fuel to power her four Daimler-Benz diesel engines (located more than 90 feet behind the passenger quarters to make their ride noiseless), has a two-deck enclosed gondola with 25 two-berth cabins, picture windows, a dining room that seats 50, an all-electric kitchen to prepare food for the 150 people aboard, a salon with an aluminum piano, and a smoking room with a single lighter (no matches are permitted on board and the room's environment is controlled by compressed air as a safety precaution). The Hitler government has financed the huge craft's construction, she is renamed the Hindenburg, and although Eckener despises the Nazis he is obliged to send her along with the Graf Zeppelin on a tour across Germany in which leaflets are dropped containing Nazi propaganda. She flies over New York City May 8 after a record 61½-hour flight from southern Germany—less than half the time required for a sometimes very rough sea passage—with passengers who have paid one-way fares of $400 each, and in August she flies over the Olympic stadium at Berlin (see 1937).
Continental Airlines adopts that name as entrepreneur Robert Forman Six, 26, takes over the 2-year-old Southwest division of Varney Air Transport. Six will head the organization for 46 years.
Aer Lingus is founded in April and begins operations May 27 with a de Havilland Dragon, which takes off from Dublin with a full load of five passengers, landing at Bristol. An Anglicized version of the Irish term Aer Loingeas, meaning air fleet, Aer Lingus will grow by the end of the century to carry more than 15,000 passengers per day on 180 flights to and from 30 destinations, including New York.
Gen. Frank Maxwell Andrews and Major John Whitely, U.S. Army Air Force, set a new international distance record June 29, flying a Douglas YOA-5 amphibian 1,430 miles from San Juan, P.R., to Langley Field, Va.
Aviation pioneer Louis Blériot dies at Paris August 2 at age 64.
English aviatrix Beryl Markham (née Clutterbuck), 33, leaves Abingdon, England, September 4 and crash lands safely the next afternoon in a swamp on Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island. She has been forced by bad weather to fly blind, relying on instruments, and is nearly out of fuel when she comes down. Her 23-hour, 45-minute flight makes her the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo and non-stop from east to west (two other women have died attempting the feat). Raised in East Africa, Markham has been flying since 1931, earning good money by carrying mail, supplies, and passengers.
The DC-3 introduced by Douglas Aircraft is a powerful twin-engined aircraft built at the urging of C. R. Smith of American Airlines, who has seen a need to replace his Curtis Condor with a plane that can carry enough passengers to free the company from its reliance on mail contracts (see
The American Airlines Mercury flight to Los Angeles leaves Newark Airport in late October carrying 12 passengers who occupy sleeper berths plus two motion picture celebrities who pay a premium over the standard $150 fare to occupy the private Sky Room compartment of the Douglas Sleeper Transport version of the new DC-3. The flight departs at 5:10 in the afternoon for Memphis, Dallas, Phoenix, and Glendale, Calif., where it lands at 9:10 the following morning, just 20 minutes after estimated time of arrival. By 1938 American will be flying 141 million passenger miles, up from 20 million in 1934, and by 1941 it will be the nation's leading domestic air carrier, transporting fully one-third of all passengers traveling on the industry's 20 certified airlines.
London's Gatwick Airport opens with direct rail connections to the city and with covered access to aircraft (see Heathrow, 1929).
The FW-61 helicopter designed by German aviation pioneer Heinrich Focke, 46, is the world's first free-flight rotary-wing aircraft (see Sikorsky, 1913;
Soviet test pilot Valery Pavlovitch Chkalov, 32, flies nonstop from Moscow to Nikolaevsk on the Amur River within a year of receiving the Order of Lenin for his exploits as a test pilot (see 1937).
New York's Triborough Bridge opens July 11 to link Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx. Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, 62, Mayor La Guardia, Robert Moses, and President Roosevelt all make speeches at the ribbon-cutting ceremony despite sweltering heat (the temperature July 10 hit 102.3° F. to set a new record), and pedestrians walk across the bridge with a pennant, singing, "Marching Along Together." Designed by Otto H. Ammann with architectural help from Aymar Embury II and built as a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project, the 1,380-foot suspension bridge spans the East River; passenger car toll will be 25¢ (see
New York City converts part of its electric streetcar system to GM buses. General Motors has obtained control of the city's surface transit lines through stock purchases (see 1932; 1949; Pacific Coast Lines, 1938).
New York's Fifth Avenue Coach Co. replaces its open-air, double-decker omnibuses with closed double-deckers; called "Queen Marys," they will remain in service until 1953 (some open-air double-deckers will continue operating until late in 1948). The fare on Fifth Avenue is 10¢; subways and other bus lines continue to charge 5¢ (see 1907; higher fares,
The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opens November 12, having been completed 6 months ahead of schedule and millions of dollars under budget but at the cost of 29 lives, most of them from falls. Engineered by Ralph Modjeski, now 75, and built in 4 years by Bechtel Corp. with a planned capacity of 135,000 vehicles per day moving at a rate of 50 miles per hour on six lanes in each of its two levels, the monumental 8.5-mile structure includes a double-span, 2,310-foot suspension bridge between San Francisco and Yerba Buena Island plus a cantilever bridge between the island and Oakland. The 51 concrete piers of its suspension bridge go down 150 feet to bedrock beneath the bay and rise as high as 35-story buildings above the water. Motorists pay a 65¢ tolls, and ferry traffic across the bay declines sharply.
New York's Henry Hudson Bridge opens December 12 to link Manhattan's West Side and Henry Hudson highways north of 72nd Street with the Riverdale section of the Bronx and the Westchester parkways beyond. The 800-foot steel arch bridge across the Harlem River and Ship Canal has a 10¢ toll. The Board of Aldermen votes in December to approve a new traffic code that forbids right-hand turns on red lights, but Mayor La Guardia refuses to sign the bill until a provision is deleted that would authorize the police to arrest jaywalkers.
New York's Independent subway line opens December 31 along Queens Boulevard to Union Turnpike, making communities such as Rego Park, Forest Hills, and Kew Gardens just a nickel-ride away from Manhattan (see
The Fiat 500 introduced by the Italian automaker is a popular-priced "people's car" with a 570 cubic-centimeter engine mounted over its front axle, synchromesh transmission on its third and top gears, and room for two people plus luggage; it quickly wins the soubriquet Topolino (Little Mouse) and will continue to roll off assembly lines until 1948. Fiat's CR-32 biplane is Francisco Franco's chief fighter plane in the Spanish civil war.
Mercedes-Benz introduces the world's first production passenger car to operate on diesel fuel (see 1926; Diesel, 1895). Peugeot produced the first diesel-engine car in 1922 but did not go into production with it.
The first Jaguar motorcar is introduced by the 4-year-old S. S. Cars Ltd. of Coventry, England (see 1922). Available with either a 2½- or 3½-liter engine (the latter develops 125 British horsepower), the Jaguar 100 is a two-seat sportscar (see
Willys-Overland is reorganized and renews production of low-priced cars (see
Former Packard Motor Car Co. president Henry Bourne Joy dies of a heart attack at his Grosse Point, Mich., home November 6 at age 71.
The Ford V-8 unveiled in November revives Ford Motor Company (see
The Huffman Dayton Streamliner bicycle introduced by Huffman Manufacturing Co. has balloon tires and a new look that helps it compete with Columbia, Ivor-Johnson, and other more popular U.S. makes (see 1925; Huffy, 1949).
The use of other plastics in automobile safety glass gives way to polyvinyl butyral (PVB), which proves far superior and will come into universal use (see 1926).
An E. I. du Pont chemical research team creates polyurethane, a versatile plastic that will be used in carpeting, furniture finishes, cushions, synthetic-leather upholstery, and a wide range of other products, including synthetic rubber for sneakers (see Neoprene, 1931; polyethylene, 1935). Staff chemist William E. Hanford, 28, will go on to garner more than 120 patents (see Bayer, 1937).
Inventor Hiram P. Maxim dies at La Junta, Colo., February 17 at age 66, having halted production of the gun "silencer" he invented (it could only be used on a sealed-breech rifle, but objections based on the mistaken idea that criminals could attach it to handguns caused it to be banned in many states and foreign countries). Maxim has applied its principle to automobile exhaust mufflers, air compressors, blowers, safety valves, and other devices; chemist and Roman Catholic priest Julius A. Nieuwland dies of a heart attack at Washington, D.C., June 11 at age 58, having pioneered synthetic rubber.
English mathematician Alan M. (Mathison) Turing, 24, proves that there cannot be any universal method of determination and that mathematics will therefore always contain undecidable (as opposed to unknown) propositions; his paper "On Compatible Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem [Decision Problem]" has been inspired by the 1931 incompleteness theorem of Kurt Gödel; taking issue with the view of David Hilbert and his school at Göttingen, Turing says there are classes of mathematical problems that cannot be solved by any fixed and definite process, he clarifies the notion of a "definite process," calling it "something that could be done by an automatic machine," and he illustrates his point by positing a device that would possess a finite program, a large data-storage capacity, and a step-by-step mathematical operation—the fundamental properties of what will become a modern computer (see Bush,
Physiologist J. S. Haldane dies at Oxford the night of March 15 at age 75, having invented (among other things) the hemoglobinometer for measuring gas in the blood; chemist Henry-Louis Le Chatelier dies at Miribel-les-Echelles September 17 at age 85.
Canadian physician (Henry) Norman Bethune, 46, offers his services to the Spanish Republican Army. Having opened a private practice at Detroit in 1924, he contracted tuberculosis, persuaded physicians at Saranac Lake, N.Y., to operate, survived, joined the search for a TB cure, developed daring surgical techniques at McGill University, studied socialized medicine in the Soviet Union, and has recently joined the Communist Party. He tours the front in November and sets up the world's first mobile blood-transfusion service, rushing bottled blood in refrigerated trucks to save the lives of wounded men. Spanish authorities will ask him to leave next year (he refuses to accept military discipline), but his contributions to blood transfusion will prove lasting (see Vaughan,
Swiss-born Italian pharmacologist Daniele Bovet, 29, develops sulfanilamide from Prontosil (see 1935). English physician Leonard Colebrook and his colleagues produce convincing evidence that Prontosil and sulfanilamide are both quite effective in fighting streptococcal infections, and the sulfa drugs discovered in Nazi Germany come into use in the United States after further development by U.S. drug firms to make them safer and even more effective (see 1937).
Medical zoologist and public health expert Charles Wardell Stiles dies of myocarditis at Baltimore January 24 at age 73; Nobel physiologist Ivan P. Pavlov at Leningrad February 27 at age 86, having tried only in the past 5 years to apply his ideas of conditioned reflex to human psychoses; Nobel bacteriologist Charles-J.-H. Nicolle dies at Tunis, February 28 at age 69, having contributed to the knowledge of brucellosis, diphtheria, measles, rinderpest, and tuberculosis as well as typhus; Nobel otologist Robert Bárány dies at Uppsala April 8 at age 59.
South African-born physiologist Max Theiler, 37, and his colleagues at New York's Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research inject themselves with the yellow fever 17-D virus and show that it increases their immunity against the disease (see
Alabama-born chemist Percy L. (Lavon) Julian, 37, goes to work at the Glidden Co. in Chicago directing research into soybeans. After synthesizing the drug physostigmine to treat glaucoma he will synthesize cortisone, hormones (progesterone and testosterone), and other products from soybeans.
The thiobarbituric acid derivative Pentothal gives surgeons a new general anesthesia for use in minor procedures (or, administered before ether, more prolonged procedures). Looking for a substance that could be injected directly into the bloodstream to produce unconsciousness, Hamilton, Ohio-born Abbott Laboratories researcher Ernest H. Volwiler, 42, and his Bowling Green, Ohio-born colleague Donalee L. Tabern, 36, have screened more than 200 compounds in the last 3 years before coming up with a sulfur-bearing analog of Nembutal, which they developed 6 years ago.
Rates of maternal mortality in the United States will drop sharply in the next 20 years through routinization of better care in delivery, use of antibiotic drugs, and superior intervention procedures performed by better-qualified physicians. Women will be given analgesics to relieve pain in childbirth and scopolamine to erase memory of pain.
French right-wing deputy Xavier Vallat attacks Premier Léon Blum in the national assembly June 5, saying, "For the first time this old Gallic-Roman country will be governed by a Jew . . . I have a special duty here . . . of saying aloud what everyone is thinking to himself: that to govern this peasant nation of France it is better to have someone whose origins, no matter how modest, spring from our soil than to have a subtle Talmudist."
Detroit "radio priest" Charles E. "Father" Coughlin comes under attack September 3 in the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano for his right-wing anti-Semitic views.
Sir Oswald Mosley leads an anti-Jewish march down London's Mile End Road October 12 (see politics, 1932; 1940).
The Mexican government establishes the National Polytechnical Institute. The country's second national institution of higher learning, it will sprout branches to serve the needs of Mexico's various regions.
Atlanta University president John Hope dies at his native Atlanta February 20 at age 67, having advocated liberal-arts instruction for blacks in opposition to the views of the late Booker T. Washington, who believed blacks should be given only technical training.
Britain's Post Office Department installs new red telephone boxes (see
The British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) airs the world's first regular high-resolution television broadcasts November 2, using 405 lines per picture (see 1935;
Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC) is created by a new Broadcasting Act that takes effect November 2 after some years of debate over private versus public ownership. The Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (CRBC) created nearly 4½ years ago has been airing programs in two languages over 26 stations from Halifax to Vancouver, and the CBC takes over its 132-person staff, charging radio owners an annual $2 license fee as did its predecessor. By 1939 CBC will have transmitters that reach 90 percent of Canadians (see television, 1952).
The Globe and Mail begins publication at Toronto November 23 following a merger (see 1844; 1872).
The Philadelphia Inquirer is acquired for a reported $15 million, including $4 million in cash, by publisher Moses L. Annenberg, whose Daily Racing Form, Morning Telegraph, and racing-wire activities are netting him $1 million per year (see 1922;
The 1-year-old Gallup Poll gains prominence by forecasting accurately the outcome of the November presidential elections and discredits the Literary Digest, whose poll had predicted a victory for Gov. Landon on the basis of mailings to telephone company subscribers and automobile owners, most of whom are Republicans. The 46-year-old Digest will fold next year; Gallup Poll predictions and those of other polls will become a permanent part of U.S. political life.
Eleanor Roosevelt contracts with the United Features newspaper syndicate to write six columns a week under the title "My Day." It is the first time a sitting first lady has undertaken a moneymaking media career, and her decision creates some controversy, but by year's end 60 newspapers (up from an initial 20) carry the column, including some owned by publishers who oppose FDR. Mrs. Roosevelt urges women to put family life first, but concedes that they have a right to work for personal as well as for economic reasons. The diary recording her incessant travels and lecture tours will continue until shortly before her death in 1962.
LIFE magazine appears November 23, beginning weekly publication that will continue through 1972. The initial cover illustration is by photographer Margaret Bourke-White, 30, and the new picture magazine gains enormous success from the start for Time-Fortune publisher Henry Luce, who has acquired the name from the publishers of a now-defunct humor magazine begun in 1883, prices LIFE at 10¢ (when other weeklies fetch 5¢), and capitalizes on the low price of coated paper and the flexibility of the Leica 35 mm. camera to gain wide circulation (Leica inventor Oskar Barnack has died at Bad Nauheim January 16 at age 56).
Japanese novelist Chiyo Uno launches her country's first fashion magazine under the name Sutairu (Style).
Sacramento Bee publisher C. K. McClatchy dies at Sacramento April 27 at age 77, having favored public ownership of utilities, taken strong stands against the Southern Pacific Railroad, J. P. Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller, opposed Prohibition and the League of Nations, but supported the New Deal and labor's right to organize. He leaves an estate valued at $1.5 million and his daughter Eleanor succeeds him as publisher; Hearst newspaper editor Arthur Brisbane dies at New York December 25 at age 72.
The Enciclopedia Italiana appears in its first edition after a decade of work under the direction of Fascist philosopher Giovanni Gentile, now 61, who carried out wide reforms while serving as Italy's minister of education from October 1922 to July 1924.
Penguin Books, Ltd., begins a paperback revolution in British book publishing (see Tauchnitz,
Nonfiction: Language, Truth, and Logic by London-born Oxford philosopher A. J. (Alfred Jules) Ayer, 25, whose ideas of logical positivism produce widespread controversy; Guide to Philosophy by English rationalist C. E. M. (Cyril Edwin Mitchison) Joad, 45, who quit the civil service 6 years ago to head the University of London's Birbeck College philosophy department; Mathematics for the Millions by English zoology professor Lancelot Hogben, 40; The Nature of Physical Theory by Cambridge, Mass.-born Harvard physicist Percy W. (Williams) Bridgman, 54; The Higher Learning in America by Brooklyn, N.Y.-born educator Robert Maynard Hutchins, 37, who was elected president of the University of Chicago at age 30; England Have My Bones (autobiography) by Bombay-born English schoolteacher-author T. H. (Terence Hansbury) White, 30; The Flowering of New England by New Jersey-born scholar Van Wyck Brooks, 50, is a study of U.S. literary history; Forays and Rebuttals (essays) by Bernard De Voto, who last year took over the "Easy Chair" department of Harper's magazine; Inside Europe by Chicago-born Chicago Daily News correspondent John Gunther, 35; How to Win Friends and Influence People by Missouri-born New York public-speaking teacher Dale Carnegie (originally Carnagey), 48, who says, if you want somebody to be your friend "ask him to do you a favor."
Humorist Finley Peter Dunne ("Mr. Dooley") dies at New York April 24 at age 68; philosopher Oswald Spengler at Munich May 8 at age 55; author-playright Maksim Gorky dies while receiving medical treatment in Russia June 14 at age 68 (possibly the victim of a liquidation order); journalist Lincoln Steffens dies at Carmel, Calif., August 9 at age 70; philosopher-novelist-poet Miguel de Unamuno of a heart attack at Salamanca December 31 at age 72 (he denounced Gen. Franco's Falangists in October and has been under house arrest ever since).
Fiction: U.S.A. by John Dos Passos, whose novel The Forty-Second Parallel completes a trilogy about postwar America that began with The Big Money in 1930 and 1919 in 1932; Absalom! Absalom! by William Faulkner; In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck; Nightwood by New York novelist Djuna Barnes, 44; Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley, who calls chastity "the most unnatural of the sexual perversions" (XXVII); Black Spring by Henry Miller; Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell; Check to Your King and Passport to Hell by New Zealand novelist-poet Robin Hyde (Iris Wilkinson), 30; Death on the Installment Plan (Mort à credit) by L.-F. Celine; Mr. Visser's Descent into Hell (Meer Visser's hellevaarb) by Dutch novelist Simon Vestdijk, 37; The Gift by Vladimir Nabokov; The Brothers Ashkenazi (Di brider Ashkenazi) by Polish novelist Israel Joshua Singer, 43; Gone with the Wind by Atlanta novelist Margaret Mitchell, 36. Macmillan editor Harold Latham, 49, has changed the title from Tomorrow Is Another Day, the heroine's name from Pansy to Scarlett O'Hara; Drums Along the Mohawk by Boonville, N.Y.-born novelist Walter D. (Dumaux) Edmonds, 33; The Shadow Over Innswood by H. P. Lovecraft; Novel on Yellow Paper by English poet Stevie (née Florence Margaret) Smith, 34; The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann (sequel to her 1932 novel); Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier; Jungfrau by Australian novelist (Ellen) Dymphna Cusack, 34; The Village Curate (Le Curé de Village) by Robert Guy Choquette; None Turned Back by Storm Jameson completes the trilogy begun with Company Parade in 1934; The White Horses of Vienna and Other Stories by Kay Boyle, now 34, whose novel Death of a Man is also published; Turn, Magic Wheel by Dawn Powell; The Twilight Years (Bannen) (stories) by Japanese novelist Osamu Dazai (Shuji Tsushima), 27; The Trouble I've Seen (four novellas) by St. Louis-born journalist Martha Gellhorn, 27, who has worked as an investigator for the Federal Relief Agency; Of Lena Geyer by New York-born novelist Marcia Davenport, 33, daughter of opera singer Alma Gluck; Honor Bright by Charlottesville, Va.-born novelist Frances Parkinson Keyes (née Wheeler), 51; The Rolling Year by Pennsylvania-born novelist Agnes Sligh Turnbull, 47; Double Indemnity by James M. Cain.
Historical novelist Mary Johnston dies of cancer near Warm Springs, Va., May 9 at age 65; novelist-poet-essayist G. K. Chesterton dies at Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, June 14 at age 62; Nobel novelist Grazia Deledda at Rome August 15 at age 60.
Poetry: Look, Stranger! by English poet W. H. (Wystan Hugh) Auden, 29; Twenty-Five Poems by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, 22; Work Is Tiring (Lavorare Stanca) by Italian poet-novelist Cesare Pavese, 27, who has served 10 months in prison for publishing anti-Fascist articles in La cultura, the review he edits; Reality and Desire (La realidad y el deseo) by Luis Cernuda; "The People, Yes" by Carl Sandburg; Time in the Rock by Conrad Aiken.
Nobel poet-novelist Rudyard Kipling dies of an intestinal hemorrage related to a painful ulcer condition at London January 18 at age 70; A. E. Housman dies at Cambridge, England, April 30 at age 77; Falangists seize poet-playwright Federico García Lorca August 19 and kill him at age 37 as the civil war devastates Spain. The full details of his arrest and execution will be suppressed until 1975.
Juvenile: A Little History of the World (Weltgeschicte fuer Kinder) by Vienna-born London research assistant E. H. (Ernst Hans) Josef Gombrich, 27, who has fled his country to escape religious persecution; Anne of Windy Poplars by L. M. Montgomery, whose heroine becomes a mother; Pigeon Post by Arthur Ransome; Elizabeth, the Cow Ghost by Nutley, N.J.-born writer-lllustrator William (Sherman) Pène du Bois, 19, whose older brother Raoul is a Broadway scenic designer. His book enjoys such success that he quickly follows it with Giant Otto and Otto at Sea; The Story of Ferdinand by Maryland-born New York writer (Wilbur) Munro Leaf, 31, with illustrations by Robert Lawson, 43, is the story of a Spanish bull who rejects the macho tradition and refuses to fight in the ring. Published in December, it will go through eight editions within 13 months, go into 50 foreign editions in 16 languages, and have U.S. sales of 2½ million copies in the next 40 years.
Painting: The Old King by Georges Rouault; The Black Flag by René Magritte; Composition in Red and Blue and Composition in Yellow and Black by Piet Mondrian; La Ville Entière by Max Ernst; André Derain by Balthus; George C. Tilyou's Steeplechase Park, Twenty Cent Movie, and End of the 14th Street Crosstown Line by Reginald Marsh; Mujer tehuana and El vendeder de coles by Diego Rivera.
Art and Industry and Art and Society by English poet-art critic Herbert Read, now 43, will be influential in the new movement of industrial design. Read's Design Research Unit is the first British design consultancy.
Sculpture: Fur-lined Teacup (Lunchin fur) by Swiss sculptor Meret Oppenheim, 23; Red Panel (mobile) by Alexander Calder; Lobster Telephone by Salvador Dali; Two Forms (stone) by Henry Moore; a 65-foot-long colored cement relief sculpture at Mexico City by Los Angeles-born sculptor Isamu Noguchi, 40.
Eastman Kodak introduces Kodachrome in 35-millimeter cartridges and a paper-backed rollfilm (see 1935). The 18-exposure 35-millimeter cartridge goes on sale in August for $3.50, processing included, and makes color photography as easy for an amateur as black-and-white (see Kodacolor, 1944).
The Minox minicamera has its beginnings in a prototype created at Riga, Latvia, by local inventor Walter Zapp, 31, who at age 17 went to work as an apprentice art photographer at Tallinn, Estonia, but found professional wooden cameras too heavy to lug around. His minicamera can be hidden in a closed hand, espionage agents will put it to good use, Zapp will flee to Germany in 1941, and after 1945 he will start a company at Wetzlar with help from a friend. The optics company Leitz will acquire Minox in 1989 and hire the octagenarian Zapp as a development engineer.
Asahi Optical Co. is founded by Japanese entrepreneur Saburo Matsumoto, whose late uncle started a company in 1919 to make eyeglass lenses. Matsumoto pursues his uncle's dream of marketing an entirely Japanese-made camera but will soon be making optical equipment and binoculars for the military (see 1952).
Photographs: You Have Seen Their Faces by Margaret Bourke-White (text by Erskine Caldwell) contains 70 photos of poverty-stricken Americans in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee; Nude by Edward Weston.
Theater: Sunrise by Wan Chia-pao at Beijing (Peking); The Astonished Heart and Red Peppers by Noël Coward 1/9 at London's Phoenix Theatre, with Coward, Gertrude Lawrence, Alan Webb, 68 perfs.; Russet Mantle by Lynn Riggs 1/16 at New York's Theater Masque, with Clare Woodbury, Evelyn Varden, Jay Fassett, John Beal, San Antonio-born ingénue Helen Craig, 23, 117 perfs.; Call It a Day by Dodie Smith 1/28 at New York's Morosco Theater, with Gladys Cooper, Philip Merivale, Glenn Anders, 194 perfs.; The Horns of Don Friolera (Las Cuernos de don Friolera) by Ramón del Valle-Inclán 2/14 at Madrid's Teatro de la Zarzuela; End of Summer by S. N. Behrman 2/17 at New York's Guild Theater, with Ina Claire, Osgood Perkins, Mildred Natwick, Oklahoma-born actor Van Heflin, 25, Shepperd Strudwick, Chicago-born actor Kendall Clark, 24, 153 perfs.; Triple-A Plowed Under by Jersey City, N.J.-born playwright Arthur Arent, 31, and 14 others (plus 70 news reporters) 3/14 at New York's Biltmore Theater in a Federal Theatre Project Living Newspaper production, 85 perfs. WPA director Harry L. Hopkins persuaded Congress to establish the project last year to provide jobs for out-of-work theater people, he or President Roosevelt chose South Dakota-born Vassar College Experimental Theater director Hallie Flanagan (née Ferguson), 45, to run it, promising that it would be free, adult, and uncensored, and Flanagan has offices in the McLean mansion at Washington, D.C., but the State Department has blocked presentation of its first Living Newspaper production Ethiopia, which had been scheduled to open 1/23 with newsreel clips of Benito Mussolini and Haile Selassie (Flanagan visited Europe a few years ago and was impressed by the quality of theater in Soviet Russia); Idiot's Delight by Robert Sherwood 3/29 at New York's Shubert Theater, with Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Winthrop, Mass.-born actor Richard Whorf, 29, in an antiwar drama, 300 perfs.; Macbeth 4/9 at New York's 24-year-old Lafayette Theater in Harlem with an all-black cast in a WPA Federal Theatre Project production directed by Kenosha, Wis.-born actor-radio announcer-March of Time film narrator (George) Orson Welles, 21, who has set the Shakespearean play in Haiti. Bucharest-born grain merchant-turned-producer John Houseman (originally Jacques Haussmann), 33, has helped Welles organize the Negro People's Theater as part of the Theatre Project, whose productions in the next 4 years will employ some 10,000 actors, composers, dancers, directors, electricians, musicians, scenic designers, and seamstresses, each of whom will earn $23.86 per week and support on average four dependents. The Project will sponsor 63,728 performances nationwide for a vast new audience of more than 30 million whose low-priced tickets will offset by only about $2 million the gross cost of $46 million borne by the WPA; Bury the Dead by Brooklyn, N.Y.-born playwright Irwin Shaw (originally Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff), 23, 4/18 at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater, with Philadelphia-born actor Joseph Kramm, 28, Jay Adler, Indiana-born actor Will Geer, 32, Rose Keane in a one-act anti-war drama, 65 perfs.; 1935 by Federal Theatre Project playwright Arthur Arent 5/12 at New York's Biltmore Theater, 34 perfs.; The Women by New York-born playwright Clare Boothe (Luce), 33, 7/9 at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater, with Ilka Chase, Jane Seymour, Margalo Gilmore, Enid Markey, Boston-born actress Arlene Francis (originally Arlene Kazanjian), 27, Chicago-born actress Audrey Christie, 29, Cincinnati-born ingénue Doris Day (originally Doris von Kappelhoff), 22, Fort Wayne, Ind.-born actress Marjorie Main, 46, 657 perfs. (the playwright divorced her alcoholic and abusive first husband in May 1929 and went to work for Condé Nast's Vanity Fair magazine, became managing editor in 1933, resigned in 1934, and married millionaire publisher Henry R. Luce in November of last year after critics panned her autobiographical first play); Injunction Granted by Arthur Arent 7/24 at New York's Biltmore Theater in another Federal Theater Project Living Newspaper production; Reflected Glory by George Kelly 9/21 at New York's Morosco Theater, with Tallulah Bankhead, 127 perfs.; Stage Door by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber 10/22 at New York's Music Box Theater, with Norfolk, Va.-born actress Margaret Sullavan (originally Margaret Brooke), 25, Kentucky-born actor Tom Ewell (originally Yewell Tompkins), 27, set design by Harrisburg, Pa.-born Harvard graduate Donald (Mitchell) Oenslager, 34, 169 perfs.; It Can't Happen Here by John C. Moffitt and Sinclair Lewis 10/26 at New York's Adelphi Theater (and simultaneously in 17 theaters at 20 other cities nationwide) in a Living Newspaper dramatization of the 1935 Lewis novel, 95 perfs.; French Without Tears by English playwright Terence Rattigan, 25, 11/6 at London's Criterion Theatre, with Trevor Howard, Guy Middleton, Rex Harrison, Constance Carpenter, Leueen MacGrath, Jessica Tandy, 1,039 perfs.; Johnny Johnson, The Biography of a Common Man by Paul Green 11/19 at the 44th Street Theater, with Morris Carnofsky, Lee J. Cobb, Elia Kazan, Jules Garfield, Luther Adler, Sanford Meisner, Roman Bohnen in an episodic anti-war drama directed by Lee Strasberg, incidental music by Kurt Weill, 68 perfs.; Tonight at 8:30 (Hands Across the Sea, The Astonished Heart, and Red Peppers) by Noël Coward 11/24 at the National Theater, with Coward, Gertrude Lawrence, Moya Nugent, Joyce Carey, Alan Webb, Anthony Pelissier, 118 perfs.; The Fate of Ossian Balvesen (Das Los des Ossian Balvesen) by Georg Kaiser 11/26 at Vienna's Burgtheater; You Can't Take It with You by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart 12/14 at New York's Booth Theater with Frank Wilcox, Newtonville, Mass.-born actress Josephine Hull (née Sherwood), 50, Ruth Attaway, George Tobias, 837 perfs.; Brother Rat by John Monks Jr., and Springfield, Mass.-born playwright Fred F. Finklehoffe, 26, (both are VMI graduates) 12/16 at New York's Biltmore Theater, with Rock Island, Ill.-born actor Eddie Albert (originally Edward Albert Heimberger), 28, Minnesota-born actor Frank Albertson, 27, New Bedford, Mass.-born actor Ezra Stone, 19, Puerto Rican-born actor José Ferrer, 24, 577 perfs.; The Wingless Victory by Maxwell Anderson 12/23 at New York's Empire Theater, with Katherine Cornell, Myron McCormick, Kent Smith, Walter Abel, 110 perfs.
The Complete Works of Shakespeare appears in an annotated edition edited by George Lyman Kittredge, now 76, who retires from Harvard after 48 years. Hundreds of thousands of copies of his edition of the bard's writings will be sold, and it will remain the definitive work on the subject for a generation.
Playwright Ramón del Valle-Inclán dies at Santiago de Compostela January 5 at age 69; magician Howard Thurston at Miami, Fla., April 13 at age 66; playwright-critic-journalist Karl Kraus at Vienna June 12 at age 62; playwright Luigi Pirandello at Rome December 10 at age 69.
Radio: The Green Hornet 1/31 on Detroit station WXYZ (and later on network stations) with actor Al Hodge as crime-fighting newspaper publisher Britt Reid (to 12/5/1952, with other actors succeeding Hodge after 1942; see television,
Former Hollywood actress Hedda Hopper (Elda Furry), 46, begins regular radio broadcasts dealing with the latest gossip of the film capital (see Louella Parsons, 1925; Sheila Graham,
Circus owner John Ringling dies at Sarasota, Fla., December 3 at age 70 (see 1926; art, 1931). He leaves his $1 million home, the lavishly decorated Venetian-Gothic Palace at Sarasota Bay, and his art museum with its vast collection to the state; his nephews John Ringling North, 33, and Henry Ringling North, 26, take over the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus, which they will operate until 1967, modernizing it with more sophisticated entertainment. The Norths will retain "Weary Willie" (see
Films: William Wyler's Dodsworth with Walter Huston, Paul Lukas, Russian-born actress Maria Ouspenskaya, 60; Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town with Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur; Charles Chaplin's Modern Times with Chaplin, whose story echoes the 1931 French film A Nous la Liberté about assembly-line factory work; William Wyler's These Three with Miriam Hopkins, Merle Oberon, Joel McCrea. Also: Mervyn LeRoy's Anthony Adverse with Fredric March, Olivia de Havilland; George Cukor's Camille with Greta Garbo, Nebraska-born actor Robert Taylor (originally Spangler Arlington Brugh), 25, Lionel Barrymore; Fritz Lang's Fury with Sylvia Sidney, Spencer Tracy; Robert Z. Leonard's The Great Ziegfeld with William Powell, Myrna Loy, Frank Morgan; Henry King's Lloyds of London with Cincinnati-born actor Tyrone (Edmund) Power, 22, Freddie Bartholomew, Madeleine Carroll; Lothar Mendes's The Man Who Could Work Miracles with Roland Young, Ralph Richardson; John Ford's Mary of Scotland with Washington, D.C.-born model-actress Anita Colby (originally Anita Katherine Counihan), 22; Anatole Litvak's Mayerling with Danielle Darrieux, 19, Charles Boyer; Gregory La Cava's My Man Godfrey with Carole Lombard, William Powell; Leni Riefenstahl's documentary Olympia; Archie Mayo's The Petrified Forest with Leslie Howard, Humphrey Bogart; Pare Lorentz's documentary The Plow that Broke the Plains (see agriculture, 1935); Irving Cummings's Poor Little Rich Girl with Shirley Temple, New York-born singer-actress Alice Faye (originally Alice Jeanne Leppert), 21, Jack Haley; John Ford's The Prisoner of Shark Island with Warner Baxter; Monte Banks's Queen of Hearts with Gracie Fields; George Cukor's Romeo and Juliet with Norma Shearer, Leslie Howard, John Barrymore; Richard Boleslawski's Theodora Goes Wild with Florence Eldridge, Frederic March, Anita Colby, Melvyn Douglas; Mark Sandrich's A Woman Rebels with Katharine Hepburn as a young English suffragist.
Actor Henry B. Walthall dies at Monrovia, Calif., June 17 at age 58; film pioneer Irving G. Thalberg of pneumonia at Santa Monica September 14 at age 37 after a brilliant career that began as secretary to Universal Pictures president Carl Laemmle, now 69, who has retired March 4 to his Hollywood estate (which looks like a movie set). Laemmle has sold Universal (including the 400-acre Universal City, complete with zoo, sound stages, and dressing rooms) for a reported $5.5 million in cash (his son Carl, Jr. has taken over); comedian Charles "Chic" Sale dies at Los Angeles November 7 at age 51.
Hollywood musicals: Mark Sandrich's Follow the Fleet with Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Randolph Scott, Harriet Hilliard, St. Louis-born actress-dancer Betty Grable, 20, songs by Irving Berlin that include "Let's Face the Music," "Let Yourself Go," "We Saw the Sea"; W. S. Van Dyke's San Francisco with Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald, Spencer Tracy, music by Bronislaw Kaper and Walter Jurmann, lyrics by Gus Kahn, songs that include the title song; George Stevens's Swing Time with Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, choreography by Hermes Pan, music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Dorothy Fields, songs that include "A Fine Romance" and "The Way You Look Tonight"; Henry Koster's Three Smart Girls with Winnipeg-born soprano Deanna (née Edna May) Durbin, 14, Ray Milland; Roy Del Ruth's Born to Dance with James Stewart, tap dancer Eleanor Powell, songs by Cole Porter that include "Easy to Love" and "I've Got You Under My Skin"; Roy Del Ruth's Broadway Melody of 1936 with Eleanor Powell, Jack Benny, Robert Taylor, songs by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed that include "I Gotta Feelin' You're Foolin'," "You Are My Lucky Star"; James Whale's Show Boat with Paul Robeson, Irene Dunne, Helen Morgan, choreography by St. Joseph, Mo.-born choreographer LeRoy Prinz, 41, songs by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II from the 1927 Broadway musical.
Stage musicals: The Ziegfeld Follies 1/30 at New York's Winter Garden Theater, with California-born comedienne Eve Arden (Eunice Quedens), 23, Josephine Baker, Judy Canova, Fanny Brice, Bob Hope, dancer George Church, music by Vernon Duke, George Gershwin and others, lyrics by David Freedman, Ira Gershwin, and others in a show produced by Billie Burke, songs that include "I Can't Get Started" by Vernon Duke, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, 227 perfs. (after an interruption due to Fanny Brice's illness); Spread It Abroad (revue) 4/1 at London's Saville Theatre, with Cyril Ritchard, Madge Evans, London-born comedienne Hermione (Ferdinanda) Gingold, 38, Ivy St. Helier, Michael Wilding, music and lyrics by William Walker, additional songs that include "These Foolish Things Remind Me of You" by Jack Strachey (originally Jack Strachey Parsons) and Harry Link, 39, lyrics by Holt Marvell (originally Eric Maschwitz), 209 perfs.; On Your Toes 4/11 at New York's Imperial Theater with Ray Bolger, Tamara Geva, and George Church dancing in the ballet Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, 315 perfs.; New Faces of 1936 5/19 at New York's Vanderbilt Theater, with Imogene Coca, Van Johnson, Ralph Blane, music by Alexander Fogarty, Irvin Graham, Joseph Meyer, 193 perfs.; Swing Along 9/2 at London's Gaiety Theatre, with book by Guy Bolton, music by Martin Browne, 311 perfs.; Careless Rapture 9/11 at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, with Zena Dare, Olive Gilbert, Dorothy Dickson, now 43, book by Christopher Hassall, music and lyrics by Ivor Novello, songs that include "Why Is There Ever Good-Bye?" and "Music in May," 295 perfs.; Over She Goes 9/23 at London's Saville Theatre, with music by Billy Mayerl, 248 perfs.; Red, Hot, and Blue 10/29 at New York's Alvin Theater with Bob Hope, Ethel Merman, Jimmy Durante, Grace and Paul Hartman, book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, music and lyrics by Cole Porter, songs that include "De-Lovely," "Down in the Depths on the 90th Floor," 183 perfs.; White Horse Inn 10/1 at New York's Center Theater, with New Orleans-born comedienne Kitty Carlisle (originally Catherine Conn), 26, William Gaxton, Robert Halliday, book by Hans Mueller, music by Ralph Benatsky, lyrics by Irving Caesar, 223 perfs.; Balalaika 12/22 at London's Adelphi Theatre, with music and lyrics by Posford, Grun, Maschwitz (to His Majesty's Theatre, 2/6/1937, to Adelphi 2/19/1938), 570 perfs.; The Show Is On 12/25 at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater with the same cast as The Women, songs that include "By Strauss" by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, "Little Old Lady" by Hoagy Carmichael, lyrics by Stanley Adams, 202 perfs.
Broadway lyricist Harry B. Smith dies at Atlantic City, N.J., January 2 at age 75; London musical librettist and lyricist Oscar Asche at his Buckinghamshire home March 23 at age 64, having become grossly fat and testy; Marilyn Miller dies of toxemia from an acute sinus infection at New York April 7 at age 37; onetime Broadway magnate Marc Klaw of Klaw and Erlanger at his home in England June 14 at age 78. He financed the late Florenz Ziegfeld and received half of Ziegfeld's profits, married a young English woman 11 years ago, and has lived in seclusion; lyricist Anne Caldwell dies at Beverly Hills, Calif., October 22 at age 69; composer Sir Edward German at London November 11 at age 74, having been knighted in 1928.
Ballet: L'Epreuve d'Amour (The Proof of Love) 4/4 at the Théâtre de Monte Carlo, with Vera Nemchinova as Chung-Yang, André Eglevsky as the lover, music by Mozart, choreography by Michel Fokine; Don Juan 6/25 at London's Alhambra Theatre, with Anatole Vilzak, André Eglevsky, music by Gluck, choreography by Michel Fokine.
Opera: The Poisoned Kiss, or The Empress and the Necromancer 5/12 at Cambridge (and later at the Sadler's Wells Theatre, London), with music by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
The 14-year-old Hollywood Bowl sets an all-time attendance record August 7 as 26,410 people buy tickets