The 1930s Arts and Entertainment: Chronology

1930:     January 14 Jazz greats Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Jimmy Dorsey, and Jack Teagarden play George and Ira Gershwin's songs, including "I've Got a Crush on You," in the musical Strike Up the Band at the Mansfield Theater in New York.

1930:     May 3 Ogden Nash, a poet who will become famous for his funny, light verse, publishes "Spring Comes to Murray Hill" in the New Yorker magazine and soon works at the magazine.

1930:     October 14 Girl Crazy, starring Ethel Merman, opens at New York's Guild Theater. The musical features songs by George Gershwin and Walter Donaldson and Ira Gershwin, including "I Got Rhythm" and "Embraceable You."

1931:     March 3 "The Star Spangled Banner" becomes the national anthem by Congressional vote.

1931:     June 3 Fred and Adele Astaire perform for the last time together on the first revolving stage.

1931:     July 27 Earl Carroll's Vanities, featuring naked chorus girls, opens at the 3,000-seat Earl Carroll Theater in New York.

1932:      Edwin Herbert Land, a Harvard College dropout, invents Polaroid film.

1932:      The Lone Ranger Western radio drama debuts.

1932:      The Jack Benny Show premiers on radio; it runs for twenty-three years and then another ten on television.

1932:     December 27 Radio City Music Hall opens at the Rockefeller Center in New York.

1933:      President Franklin D. Roosevelt presents the nation with his first radio address, known as a "fireside chat."

1933:     May 27 Fan dancer Sally Rand attracts thousands with her performance at the Chicago World's Fair that celebrated the Century of Progress.

1933:     September 30 Ah, Wilderness, acclaimed American playwright Eugene O'Neill's only comedy, opens at the Guild Theater in New York.

1934:      The first pipeless organ is patented by Laurens Hammond. The Hammond organ starts a trend toward more electrically amplified instruments.

1934:     July 1 The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) association creates the Hays Office to enforce codes that limit amount and types of sexuality and immoral behavior in films.

1935:     April Your Hit Parade is first heard on radio offering a selection of popular hit songs.

1935:     October 10 Porgy and Bess, known as the "most American opera of the decade," opens in New York at the Alvin Theater. The music George Gershwin wrote for the opera combines blues, jazz, and southern folk.

1936:      Popular public-speaking teacher Dale Carnegie publishes his book How to Win Friends and Influence People.

1936:      To increase feelings of nationalism, the Department of the Interior hires folksinger Woody Guthrie to travel throughout the country performing his patriotic songs such as "Roll On, Columbia" and "Those Oklahoma Hills."

1937:      Dr. Seuss becomes a popular children's book author with the publication of And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.

1937:      Porky's Hare Hunt, a short animated cartoon by Warner Bros. introduces audiences to the Bugs Bunny character and the talents of Mel Blanc (the voice of both Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig).

1937:      Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first feature-length animated film, is presented by Walt Disney.

1937:      The first soap opera, Guiding Light, is broadcast. It would continue as a radio program until 1956 and be seen on television from then into the early twenty-first century.

1938:      Orson Welles's radio broadcast of H.G. Wells's science fiction novel The War of the Worlds is believed to be a serious announcement of Martian invasion by listeners and panic spreads throughout the country.

1938:     January 17 The first jazz performance at Carnegie Hall in New York takes place featuring Benny Goodman and His Orchestra, with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and others.

1938:     November 11 Singer Kate Smith's performance of "God Bless America" is broadcast over the radio on Armistice Day.

1939:      Singer Frank Sinatra joins the Tommy Dorsey band, where he will soon find great success.

1939:      Gone with the Wind, the epic film about the Civil War, staring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, opens.

1939:      The Wizard of Oz whisks movie audiences into a fantasyland of magic and wonder. The film stars Judy Garland and includes such popular songs as "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," "Follow the Yellow Brick Road," and "We're Off to See the Wizard."