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The History of American Cinema: 1937

July - December

22/8 -

British director Alfred Hitchcock arrives in New York aboard the Queen Mary. [ADD]

2/9 -

Independent producer David O. Selznick’s second prestige production of the year, The Prisoner of Zenda, is released.   Directed by John Cromwell, the all-star cast features Ronald Colman, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Raymond Massey, Madeleine Carroll and Mary Astor. [ADD]

5/9 -

One Hundred Men and a Girl, starring Deanna Durbin is released.   It is the first film to use a multi-channel sound system. [ADD]

30/9 -

Having fled the Nazi threat (and her arms manufacturer husband Friedrich Mandl) in Austria, actress Hedy Kiesler adopts the screen name of Hedy Lamarr after the silent actress Barbara La Marr. [ADD]

Sep -

Oscar Micheaux’s Underworld is released. [ADD]

21/10 -

Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth is released for Columbia.  A comedy about a couple whose plans for divorce become increasingly complicated, the film stars Cary Grant and Irene Dunne.  [ADD]

5/11 -

Walt Disney uses the multiplane camera, which enables animators to  use the same background and foreground over a series of shots for items not in motion, in his animated short The Old Mill. [ADD]

11/11 -

Following a private screening at the White House of Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion, President Roosevelt declares that “every democratic person in the world should see this film.”  [ADD]

30/11 -

Censors refuse to allow Jacques Deval’s Club de femmes (Women’s Club) a US release without substantial cuts.   Sacha Guitry’s Faisons un reve, and Abel Gance’s Lucretia Borgia suffer a similar fate. [ADD]

21/12 -

Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premieres at the Cathay Circle Theater in Hollywood.  It is the first feature-length animated film in three-strip Technicolor, and took 300 animation staff four years to make at a cost of $1.5 million. [ADD]

24/12 -

David O. Selznick buys the US rights to Gustaf Molander’s Swedish drama Intermezzo, and signs its female lead, Ingrid Bergman, to star in the US remake. [ADD]

– Modern Talking Picture Service is incorporated. [ADD]

– There are virtually no US film exports to the USSR in this year. [ADD]

– Animators strike at the Fleischer studios in New York. [ADD]

– Collective Films is founded by Roman Rebush and Edgar G. Ulmer to produce and distribute Yiddish films. [ADD]

Top Ten US Box-office Stars

1.       Shirley Temple

2.       Clark Gable

3.       Robert Taylor

4.       Bing Crosby

5.       William Powell

6.       Jane Withers

7.       Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers

8.       Sonja Henie

9.       Gary Cooper

10.     Myrna Loy

 Source: Quigley Poll

Other Key American Films of 1937

Conquest (Clarence Brown) [ADD]

A Day at the Races (Sam Wood) [ADD]

Dead End (William Wyler) [ADD]

A Family Affair (George B. Seitz) [ADD]

The Good Earth (Sidney Franklin) [ADD]

High, Wide and Handsome (Rouben Mamoulian) [ADD]

The Hurricane (John Ford) [ADD]

In Old Chicago (Henry King) [ADD]

Lost Horizon (Frank Capra) [ADD]

Nothing Sacred (William Wellman) [ADD]

People of the Cumberland (Robert Stebbins, Eugene Hill) [ADD]

The Spanish Earth (Joris Ivens) [ADD]

Stage Door (Gregory La Cava) [ADD]

They Won’t Forget (Mervyn LeRoy) [ADD]

Topper (Norman Z. McLeod) [ADD]

Way Out West (James Horne) [ADD]

You Only Live Once (Fritz Lang) [ADD]

The History of Cinema: 1937