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USA

1930

The first Mickey Mouse Club meeting takes place at the Fox Dome theater in Ocean Park, California. [MORE] [ADD]

Maurice Chevalier’s second US film for Paramount, Ernst Lubitsch’s The Love Parade premieres in Los Angeles to general acclaim. [MORE] [ADD]

Leon Schlesinger begins production of Warner Brother’s Looney Tunes cartoons to plug songs to which they own publishing rights. [MORE] [ADD]

In a speech given at New York’s Trade Organisation banquet, Will H. Hays, President of the MPPDA declares that sound cinema has attracted an additional 10 million people to American cinemas than in 1929. [MORE] [ADD]

In a move to avoid federal film censorship, the major studios accept a new code of production proposed by Martin Quigley, editor of the Motion Picture Herald and Catholic priest Reverend Daniel A. Lord and backed by Will Hays, head of the MPPDA. [MORE] [ADD]

Anna Christie, Greta Garbo’s first sound picture is released following frenetic publicity – Garbo Talks! Scream the posters.   The actresses first lines are, “Gimme a visky with a ginger ale on the side -- and don't be stingy baby.” [MORE] [ADD]

Caviar, the first Terrytoons cartoon, is released by 20^th Century Fox. [MORE] [ADD]

Release of Kenneth Hawks’ Such Men are Dangerous, notable today chiefly for the fact that ten of the film’s crew were killed when two aircraft en-route to location shooting collided in mid-air. [MORE] [ADD]

Silent heartthrob John Gilbert’s career is in question following disastrous voice tests.  [MORE] [ADD] 

William Fox suffers the ignoble fate of being dismissed by the board of directors from his position of President of the company he founded in 1915 due to his costly but unsuccessful attempts to take control of MGM. [MORE] [ADD]

The first Looney Tunes cartoon, Hugh Harmon and Rudolf Ising’s Sinkin’ in the Bathtub, is released.   The star of the cartoon is a character called Bosko, a variation on Disney’s Mickey Mouse character. [MORE] [ADD]

Universal’s King of Jazz contains an animated four-minute Technicolor prologue created by Walter Lantz. [MORE] [ADD]

Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front, a searing and violent indictment of the futility of war, premieres in Los Angeles. [MORE] [ADD]

David O. Selznick marries Irene Mayer, the daughter of Louis B. Mayer. [MORE] [ADD]

RKO experiments with theater television at the Proctor Theater in Schenectady, NY. [MORE] [ADD]

The MPPDA adopts an advertising code. [MORE] [ADD]

The success of Victor Fleming’s The Virginian, which stars the laconic Gary Cooper, sparks a brief revival in the fortunes of the Western genre. [MORE] [ADD]

The Dawn Patrol, Howard Hawks’ first talking picture, is released.   It stars Richard Barthelmess and Douglas Fairbanks Jr, and features the debut of Frank McHugh. [MORE] [ADD]

Betty Boop, created by future Disney animator Grim Natwick, makes her first appearance in Max Fleischer’s Dizzy Dishes.   At this stage, Betty is part human, part canine. [MORE] [ADD]

Pluto makes his first appearance in Disney’s The Chain Gang. [MORE] [ADD]

Abraham Lincoln, D. W. Griffith’s first talking picture is released. [MORE] [ADD]

The Hollywood Reporter begins publication. [MORE] [ADD]

Samuel Goldwyn’s adaptation of Florenz Ziegfeld’s stage hit Whoopee! is released.   Ziegfeld closed the Broadway show early in order to sell the movie rights to raise money after being wiped out in the crash of 1929. [MORE] [ADD]

King Vidor’s Billy the Kid is released.   Starring Johnny Mack Brown as the Kid and Wallace Beery as Pat Garrett, the film is shot in 70mm Realife process, but fails to make an impression at the box office. [MORE] [ADD]

Raoul Walsh’s epic western The Big Trail is released.   The film is shot in a 70mm widescreen process, and features John Wayne in his first major role following four years as an extra and bit part player.   The film is only a moderate success. [MORE] [ADD]

Having just completed the silent City Lights, Charlie Chaplin gives an interview to Silver Screen magazine in which he states that "There is nothing that I could tell you about the talking pictures that would be more eloquent than my silence."   He then goes on to state (a little less eloquently), “The talkies! You can say that I detest them!" [MORE] [ADD]

Marlene Dietrich makes her Hollywood debut opposite Gary Cooper and Adolphe Menjou in Josef von Sternberg’s Morocco.   The film is a smash, and Paramount begins to build Dietrich up as a rival to MGM’s Greta Garbo. [MORE] [ADD]

Darryl F. Zanuck becomes head of production at Warner Brothers-First National. [MORE] [ADD]

The State Department refuse to prolong the visas of Soviet trio Sergei Eisenstein, Grigori Kozintsev and Edouard Tisse following Eisenstein’s failure to find suitable projects in Hollywood. [MORE] [ADD]

US Premiere of the English-language version of Der Blaue Engele (The Blue Angel).  Takings for the first week are a record $60,000. [MORE] [ADD]

By the end of the year, America has 21,700 cinemas, 13,500 of which are fitted for sound.   Gross revenue is $730 million, and Hollywood studios’ combined net profit is $52 million. [MORE] [ADD]

– Monogram Pictures is formed from two earlier companies: W. Ray Johnston’s Ray-Art Productions and Trem Carr’s SonoArt Pictures. [MORE] [ADD]

– A total of 16 films are made in two-strip Technicolor: seven by Warner Brothers, four by First National, two from Paramount and one each from MGM, United Artists and Universal.  [MORE] [ADD]

– New York projectionists accept a 25% pay cut over two years due to falling cinema attendances because of the depression.   Cinemas lower their prices, begin matinee and midnight screenings, offer prizes, and begin including a second ‘B’ feature in their programme.  [MORE] [ADD]

– The Mitchell camera becomes the sound camera of choice in the profession because it is much quieter than the previous favourite, the Bell and Howell camera.  [MORE] [ADD]

– Paramount stops showing its films in RKO cinemas.  [MORE] [ADD]

– Ub Iwerk’s Flip the Frog animated character makes his first screen appearance.  [MORE] [ADD]

– The Worker’s Film and Photo League is founded. [MORE] [ADD]

Other Films of Note

The Big House (George Hill) [MORE] [ADD]

City Girl (F. W. Murnau) [MORE] [ADD]

Liliom (Frank Borzage) [MORE] [ADD]

The Pagan (W. S. Van Dyke) [MORE] [ADD]