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The History of American Cinema: 1931 |
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10/7 - |
Ernst Lubitsch’s The Smiling Lieutenant, starring Maurice Chevalier, premieres in New York. [ADD] | |||
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1/8 - |
F. W. Murnau and Robert Flaherty’s Tabu: A Story of the South Seas is released. The film was left silent following the untimely death of Murnau, and was subsequently post-synchronised with a score by Dr. Hugo Riesenfeld. [ADD] | |||
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1/8 - |
Amadee J. Van Beuren’s Tom and Jerry make their debut in the short cartoon Wot a Night, nearly a decade before MGM’s more famous cartoon duo. [ADD] | |||
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5/8 - |
Josef von Sternberg’s An American Tragedy, starring Sylvia Sidney and Phillips Holmes, premieres in New York. The director disowned the picture after being forced to restore a number of scenes following legal action brought by Theodore Dreiser, the author of the novel on which the film is based. [ADD] | |||
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15/8 - |
Pardon Us, Laurel and Hardy’s first feature-length film, is released. It is directed by James Parrott. [ADD] | |||
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19/9 - |
The Marx Brothers’ Monkey Business, directed by Norman Z. McLeod, is released. [ADD] | |||
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20/9 - |
Walt Disney ceases pre-production of an animated feature of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland when Bud Pollard’s live-action version is released for Unique-Cosmos Pictures. [ADD] | |||
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20/9 - |
Cinema managers complain about the high salaries paid to movie stars, claiming they are to blame for the high cost of film hire. They also claim that audiences are irritated by the recent wave of gangster movies. [ADD] | |||
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Sep - |
Warner Bros’ first Merrie Melodies cartoon, Lady Play Your Mandolin featuring a character named Foxy, is released. [ADD] | |||
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8/10 - |
The wife of director Josef von Sternberg brings legal proceedings against actress Marlene Dietrich, who is married to Rudolph Sieber, for the “alienation of her husband’s affection.” [ADD] | |||
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18/10 - |
Inventor and cinema pioneer Thomas Edison dies at the age of 84. [ADD] | |||
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31/10 - |
The release of Frank Capra’s Platinum Blonde, starring Jean Harlow, Robert Williams and Loretta Young, earns Harlow a nickname that will stay with her until her untimely death. [ADD] | |||
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10/11 - |
Around the World in Eighty Minutes with Douglas Fairbanks, a documentary made by the actor on a recent voyage, is released. [ADD] | |||
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21/11 - |
James Whales’ Frankenstein, starring Colin Clive as the doctor and Boris Karloff as his monstrous creation, is released. The film is adapted from a play by Peggy Webling, which itself was based on the novel by Mary Shelley. [ADD] | |||
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18/12 - |
D. W. Griffith’s The Struggle is released. It is such a critical disaster that it is never given a general release, and proves to be Griffith’s last picture. [ADD] | |||
| – RKO Pictures and Pathe Pictures merge their distribution businesses. [ADD] | ||||
| – The Fox Film Corporation makes a loss of $4.2m, in contrast to a $10m profit in 1930. [ADD] | ||||
| – The Roxy Theater Corporation loses over $160,000 in 1931. [ADD] | ||||
| – RCA market their ‘ribbon’ microphone, which eliminates extraneous sounds such as noises made from cameras and lights. [ADD] | ||||
| – Lee Strasberg becomes a co-founder of the Group Theatre in New York. [ADD] | ||||
| – Webb Smith develops the use of the storyboard at Disney. [ADD] | ||||
| – Walt Disney starts a studio school of animation under the direction of Don Graham. [ADD] | ||||
| – A group of radical filmmakers, including Lewis Jacobs, Jay Leyda, Ralph Steiner and Irving Lerner form the National Film and Photo League. [ADD] | ||||
Other Key American Films of 1931 |
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| Arrowsmith (John Ford) [ADD] | ||||
| Cimarron (Wesley Ruggles) [ADD] | ||||
| City Streets (Rouben Mamoulian) [ADD] | ||||
| Dishonored (Josef von Sternberg) [ADD] | ||||
| Five Star Final (Mervyn LeRoy) [ADD] | ||||
| A Free Soul (Clarence Brown) [ADD] | ||||
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| The Front Page (Lewis Milestone) [ADD] | ||||
| Huckleberry Finn (Norman Taurog) [ADD] | ||||
| Land of the Maharajahs (James A. Fitzpatrick) [ADD] | ||||
| The Last Flight (William Dieterle) [ADD] | ||||
| Night Nurse (William Wellman) [ADD] | ||||
| Quick Millions (Roland Brown) [ADD] | ||||
| Street Scene (King Vidor) [ADD] | ||||
| Susan Lenox (Her Rise and Fall) (Robert Z. Leonard) [ADD] | ||||
| Working Girls (Dorothy Arzner) [ADD] | ||||
| The History of Cinema: 1931 | ||||
| Argentina - Italy | ||||
| France | ||||
| Gt Britain | ||||
| Japan - Yugoslavia | ||||
| USA January - June | ||||
