1939 in film

The 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum, is a classical movie that to many, never gets old. After a massive cyclone in Kansas, Dorothy and her dog (Toto) are swept up and placed in the magical Land of Oz. Wishing to go back home to Kansas, Dorothy journeys on towards Emerald City to meet the Wizard of Oz. The Wizard is said to be magical and will have the ability to send her and her dog back home. On this journey Dorothy meets a Scarecrow, Tin Man, and a Cowardly Lion who all wish to receive something from the Wizard. The Scarecrow needs a brain, the Tin Man is missing a heart, and the Cowardly Lion wants courage. Throughout their journey to Emerald City they are faced with different obstacles caused by the Wicked Witch of the West.…

Desert Biomes Denton4 Deserts are mostly found in the east but a few are also found in the western region of the Americas. They are very hot places with low moisture and barren waste lands. When you think desert what normally jumps into your head is sand cactus and clear skies with the sun beating down on you. The maximum temperature for a desert can climb up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperature in winter only drops a few degrees and it receives a small amount of humidity. The average…

Who was Judy Garland? A girl, a person, an actress, a wife, a mother, but who really was Judy Garland and where did she come from. She was born June 10, 1922 in Grand Rapids, MN. Her real name was Frances Gumm. Her family was rather odd. Her father was Francis Avent Gumm who was a Vaudeville performer, and a closeted homo. Which got them kicked out of several towns. Her mother was Ethel Marion Milne and she, too, was a Vaudeville performer, who forced her daughter into stardom. She had two…

Hollywood was at its peak in 1939 with over 300 films being released in that one year alone. However, “in December 1939, or in 1940, no one was saying Hollywood just had its greatest year ever” (Silet). At the time, people didn’t notice how many movies were being produced or all of the work that was being put into them. Leland Pague, professor of English at Iowa State University said, “we rarely take into account what was being done behind the scenes.” It wasn’t until years later people realized…

The movie “Gone with the Wind”, released in 1939, is considered one of the greatest love stories and even one of the best movies of all time. The story adapted from the novel written by Margaret Mitchell won ten academy awards, became the highest earning film and is still technically the greatest grossing film in the cinema history. Hattie McDaniel even became the first african american oscar winner thanks to this classic of the romantic genre. In a way, “Gone with the Wind” seems like one of…

the further development of film genres. It was the decade in which the silent period ended, with many silent film stars not making the transition to sound. By 1933, the economic effects of the Depression were being strongly felt, especially in decreased movie theatre attendance. Although the movie industry considered itself Depression-proof, the film industry was just as vulnerable to the Depression’s impact as any other industry. To finance the construction of movie theaters and the conversion…

had nothing else planned. It was during my sophomore year of high school, the time I was beginning to explore my love of cinema. Basing my selection on the vague knowledge I had acquired about Katharine Hepburn over the first sixteen years of my life, and with an inflated sense of hometown glory, I watched the film. I am now forever indebted to The Philadelphia Story. It is ultimately what inspired me to pursue a career in the film industry and continues to inspire my work today. But there is a…

World War II impacted the American film industry through the influences of the war effort. Films that were made during this time often worked in line with this effort by projecting messages of unity, where racial and class differences amongst Americans were put on the backburner in order to fight one common and external enemy. Scholar Anna Everett asserts that during the war the film industry temporarily suspended its usual racist and stereotypical depictions of Black Americans for the war…

He made his proposition a decade earlier in his Marxist essay titled ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch’ (1939) in which he argued that the economic profits of easily consumable Kitsch remained a temptation for serious artists and he claimed that ambitious artists and writers who came under the pressure of Kitsch modified their work and thus it became profusely entangled by the mid-1950s. There is a hidden warning that modernist artists should be wary of the contemporary pressures largely due to the…

book versus film adaptation, issues concerning the narrative due to the Hays Code, the addition of a romance to the plot, as well as the question of whether or not remaining faithful to the book is necessary, are all valued, and important points. The Big Sleep is a crime novel that was written in 1939 by Raymond Chandler. During the time of its publishing, the Motion Picture Production Code, also known more popularly as the Hays code, was implemented and continually working to virtually sensor…