1939 History, Facts, and Trivia

In 1939, the world got The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Batman, and the opening act of the deadliest war in human history. Hollywood delivered its most celebrated single year on record. Europe descended into a conflict that would kill somewhere between 70 and 85 million people. Franklin Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving to help department stores, and a Harvard freshman swallowed a goldfish for ten dollars. It was that kind of year.

Quick Facts from 1939

World-Changing Events: Batman made his first appearance in Detective Comics #27, cover-dated May 1939; General Motors introduced the Hydra-Matic, the first mass-produced fully automatic transmission, as a 1940 model year option on Oldsmobile automobiles
Influential Songs: Over the Rainbow by Judy Garland and God Bless America by Kate Smith
Must-See Movies: The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Destry Rides Again, Gunga Din, and Son of Frankenstein
Most Famous Person in America: Lou Gehrig, whose farewell speech on July 4, 1939 remains one of the most celebrated moments in American sports history
Notable Books: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Minimum Wage: 30 cents per hour
US Life Expectancy: Males: 62.1 years / Females: 65.4 years
Miss America: Patricia Donnelly, Detroit, Michigan
Time Man of the Year: Joseph Stalin
Broadway: Life With Father opened November 8, 1939, and ran until July 12, 1947
The Quote: “Television will allow Americans to attain the highest general cultural level of any people in the history of the world.” — David Sarnoff, president of RCA. The New York Times disagreed, predicting that television would fail the same year because the average American family would not have time to sit around watching it. One of them was more right than the other.
The Conversation: Have you seen Gone with the Wind yet? And what do you think about this war in Europe?

Top Ten Baby Names of 1939

Girls: Mary, Barbara, Patricia, Betty, Shirley
Boys: Robert, James, John, William, Richard

The top ten held almost perfectly steady from 1938, reflecting how slowly naming conventions shifted in this era. Patricia was climbing and would eventually displace Betty and Shirley from the upper ranks by the mid-1940s.

The Stars of 1939

Ingrid Bergman, Claudette Colbert, Olivia de Havilland, Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, Katharine Hepburn, Hedy Lamarr, Vivien Leigh, Myrna Loy, Brenda Marshall, Ginger Rogers, Barbara Stanwyck, Lana Turner

Vivien Leigh arrived in American consciousness almost entirely through Gone with the Wind, having been a relatively unknown British stage actress beforehand. The role of Scarlett O’Hara had been the subject of a two-year public search that generated enormous press coverage before Leigh was cast. Katharine Hepburn, who had been labeled “box office poison” by theater owners just two years earlier, reversed her fortunes entirely in 1939 with The Philadelphia Story on Broadway.

What Happened in 1939?

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. World War II had begun.

The speed of the German advance shocked military observers worldwide. Poland fell within weeks. The Soviet Union, operating under the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact signed in August, invaded Poland from the east on September 17. By the end of September, Poland had been divided between the two powers. The period that followed, with little active fighting on the Western Front, became known as the Phony War.

In the United States, the prevailing sentiment was to stay out of it. Roosevelt declared American neutrality but made no secret of his sympathies. The Neutrality Acts limited what the US could legally do to assist the Allies, and public opinion was deeply divided between interventionists and isolationists. That argument would continue for another two years.

On the domestic front, the Depression was still grinding along. The minimum wage stood at 30 cents an hour following the previous year’s Fair Labor Standards Act. Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving from the last Thursday of November to the fourth Thursday, at the request of retailers who wanted a longer Christmas shopping season between the holiday and December 25. The move was widely mocked. Several states refused to recognize the change. The date was formally standardized by Congress in 1941.

The 1939 New York World’s Fair opened on April 30, with the theme “The World of Tomorrow.” It was the most-attended World’s Fair in American history to that point, drawing over 44 million visitors across two seasons. The Westinghouse pavilion sealed a time capsule 50 feet underground in Flushing Meadows, containing items meant to represent American life in 1939, to be opened in the year 6939. A second capsule was buried at the same site during the 1964 World’s Fair, ten feet to the north of the first. Both are scheduled to open simultaneously, 5,000 years after the first was sealed.

Amelia Earhart, who disappeared over the Pacific on July 2, 1937, during her attempted around-the-world flight, was officially declared dead in 1939. No confirmed wreckage of her aircraft had been found, and debate about the circumstances of her disappearance has continued ever since.

What Were the Biggest Movies of 1939?

Hollywood’s output in 1939 is widely considered the greatest single year in the history of American cinema. The argument is difficult to dispute. Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Destry Rides Again, Ninotchka, Dark Victory, Wuthering Heights, Of Mice and Men, and Gunga Din all came out within twelve months of each other. Any single one of them would have made a strong year.

Gone with the Wind premiered in Atlanta on December 15, 1939. The mayor of Atlanta declared a three-day festival culminating in a state holiday on the day of release. The film ran nearly four hours, won eight competitive Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and remained the highest-grossing film in history for decades, a distinction it still holds when adjusted for inflation. Vivien Leigh won Best Actress. Hattie McDaniel won Best Supporting Actress, becoming the first Black performer to win an Academy Award.

The Wizard of Oz premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on August 15, 1939. In L. Frank Baum’s original novel, Dorothy wore silver slippers. They were changed to ruby red for the film specifically to take advantage of the new Technicolor process. The gamble worked. The ruby slippers are among the most recognizable props in cinema history. A pair sold at auction in 2023 for 28 million dollars.

John Ford’s Stagecoach introduced John Wayne to mainstream audiences and essentially reinvented the Western as a serious genre. Wayne had been working in low-budget pictures for a decade. After Stagecoach, he never looked back.

The 1939 film The Women, directed by George Cukor, featured an entirely female cast. Not a single man, male animal, or male portrait appeared on screen throughout the entire film. The only visibly male figure was a drawing of a bull and a brief appearance in an advertisement. The film ran 133 minutes.

The Cowardly Lion costume worn by Bert Lahr in The Wizard of Oz was made from the skin and fur of a real lion. It weighed nearly 90 pounds and caused Lahr to overheat constantly during filming. The costume sold at auction in 2014 for $3.1 million.

What Were the Biggest Songs of 1939?

Over the Rainbow, written by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg for The Wizard of Oz, was nearly cut from the film before release. Studio executives at MGM felt it slowed the picture down. It survived, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, became Judy Garland’s signature, and was later voted the greatest song of the 20th century by the Recording Industry Association of America. The margin was not close.

God Bless America was written by Irving Berlin in 1918, but was set aside and largely forgotten. Kate Smith performed it on her radio show on November 11, 1938, and the response was immediate. By 1939, the song had become something close to a second national anthem, particularly as the situation in Europe darkened. Berlin donated all royalties from the song to the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America, a commitment that continued for the rest of his life.

Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood debuted on radio in 1939, with gossip columnist Hedda Hopper as host. It became one of the most-listened-to programs of its era and established the celebrity gossip format as a permanent feature of American media.

What Books Were People Reading in 1939?

John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath was published in April 1939 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the following year. The novel follows an Oklahoma family driven west by the Dust Bowl and the Depression, and its portrait of rural poverty and corporate indifference was immediately controversial. It was banned in several counties and burned in some communities. Steinbeck later cited it as a central work in his Nobel Prize award in 1962.

Agatha Christie published And Then There Were None, in which ten strangers are lured to an island and killed one by one. It has since sold over 100 million copies, making it the best-selling mystery novel in history and one of the best-selling books of all time.

T.S. Eliot published Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, a collection of whimsical poems about feline characters that he had originally written in letters to his godchildren. Andrew Lloyd Webber adapted it into the musical Cats in 1981, which ran on Broadway for 7,485 performances. Eliot did not live to see it.

Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun, an anti-war novel written from the perspective of a World War I soldier who has lost his arms, legs, and face, was published just as World War II was beginning. Trumbo later withdrew it from circulation, feeling it could be used as isolationist propaganda. Metallica adapted a portion of it for the 1989 music video for “One”.

Ernest Vincent Wright published Gadsby, a novel of over 50,000 words written entirely without the letter E. Wright reportedly tied down the E key on his typewriter to prevent accidental use. The book is less a great novel than an extraordinary demonstration of what a determined person can accomplish with sufficient stubbornness.

1939 Bestseller List: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, All This, and Heaven Too by Rachel Field, Disputed Passage by Lloyd C. Douglas, Escape by Ethel Vance, Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, Kitty Foyle by Christopher Morley, The Nazarene by Sholem Asch, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, The Tree of Liberty by Elizabeth Page, Wickford Point by John P. Marquand, The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

What Were the Oscar Winners for 1939?

The 11th Academy Awards were held on February 23, 1939, at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, honoring films from 1938. Frank Capra hosted. You Can’t Take It With You, directed by Capra himself, won Best Picture. Spencer Tracy won Best Actor for Boys Town, his second consecutive win, making him the first performer to win back-to-back in that category. Bette Davis won Best Actress for Jezebel.

This was the first ceremony at which the Best Picture field was limited to ten nominees, a rule that held until 1943.

Walt Disney received an Honorary Award for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, recognized as a significant screen innovation that pioneered a new form of entertainment. The award, presented by Shirley Temple, consisted of one full-sized Oscar and seven miniature ones.

The Los Angeles Times printed the winners’ names before the ceremony concluded, having received them in advance. The breach prompted the Academy to hand control of the results to the accounting firm Price Waterhouse, which had been tabulating the votes since 1935 but not previously responsible for keeping them secret until the moment of announcement.

Firsts, Inventions, and Wonders of 1939

Batman made his first appearance in Detective Comics #27, cover-dated May 1939, published by Detective Comics. The character was created by Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger, though Finger’s co-creator contribution went officially unacknowledged for decades. DC Comics formally recognized Finger’s credit in 2015, more than 40 years after his death.

General Motors introduced the Hydra-Matic drive as a 1940 model year option on Oldsmobile automobiles, announced in 1939. It was the first fully automatic transmission offered on a mass-produced American car, eliminating the clutch pedal entirely. Within a few years, automatic transmission had become one of the most sought-after features in the American automotive market.

The first Little League Baseball game was played on June 6, 1939, in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, organized by Carl Stotz, a lumber company clerk who had the idea while playing catch with his nephews in the backyard. The league had three teams in its first season. It now operates in over 80 countries.

The first Thin Mint cookies were baked by the Girl Scouts in 1939. They remain the best-selling Girl Scout cookie in the United States, accounting for approximately 25 percent of total annual sales.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum was officially dedicated in Cooperstown, New York on June 12, 1939, with an induction ceremony that included Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Walter Johnson, and Christy Mathewson among its first class. Lou Gehrig was also present, already ill with the disease that would soon bear his name.

NBC broadcast its first television images in 1939, though the audience was limited to approximately 1,000 homes in the New York area that had television sets. The broadcast included coverage of the World’s Fair opening. David Sarnoff, president of RCA, declared it the dawn of a new industry. The New York Times predicted in the same year that television would fail because Americans would not have enough time to sit and watch it.

The Westinghouse Time Capsule, sealed at the 1939 World’s Fair, was buried 50 feet below Flushing Meadows in Queens. It contains a newsreel, a copy of Life magazine, seeds of common crops, a woman’s hat, a dollar in change, and a Bible, among other items. A second capsule was buried ten feet to the north in 1964. Both are scheduled to be opened simultaneously in the year 6939.

Penicillin, discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928, was first tested in humans in 1939, proving effective against bacterial infections, including tuberculosis and gonorrhea. It was the first true antibiotic and would go on to save an estimated 200 million lives.

AT&T developed a working telephone answering machine in 1939 but suppressed it, on the theory that public fear of being recorded would cause people to abandon the telephone altogether. The answering machine did not reach the consumer market until the 1970s.

Winston Churchill, still a backbench MP and not yet Prime Minister, delivered his radio broadcast The Russian Enigma in October 1939, in which he described Soviet foreign policy as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” The phrase has been applied to Russia in one context or another ever since.

The First World Science Fiction Convention, known as Worldcon, was held at Caravan Hall in New York from July 2 to July 4, 1939. It attracted around 200 attendees. The convention has been held annually ever since, except in 1942 and 1943.

The American Humane Association became formally involved in film production oversight because of the 1939 film Jesse James, in which a blindfolded horse was forced to jump off a 70-foot cliff into a river below. The resulting “No Animals Were Harmed” certification process, now a standard part of film and television production, traces directly to that incident.

The playing card game Canasta was created by Segundo Santos and Alberto Serrato in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1939. It spread to the United States by the late 1940s and became a national craze in the early 1950s, briefly rivaling bridge in popularity.

Pop Culture Facts and History

The release of Gone with the Wind on December 15, 1939, prompted the mayor of Atlanta to declare a three-day municipal festival and a state holiday on the day of the premiere. The city had never seen anything like it. The film’s Atlanta premiere was attended by the cast, the mayor, and the Governor of Georgia. Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh were treated as visiting royalty.

In 1939, 20,000 Americans attended a rally organized by the German American Bund at Madison Square Garden in New York City on February 20. Speakers stood beneath a 30-foot portrait of George Washington flanked by swastika banners. Outside, more than 100,000 protesters surrounded the building. The Bund’s leader, Fritz Kuhn, was arrested later that year on embezzlement charges and eventually deported.

Franklin Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving from the last Thursday of November to the fourth Thursday in November in 1939 to create a longer Christmas shopping season for retailers. The change, which he made without congressional authorization, was immediately controversial. Twenty-three states refused to recognize it. The resulting confusion, with some states observing one date and others another, lasted until Congress formally standardized the fourth Thursday in 1941.

Lina Medina of Peru gave birth to a son on May 14, 1939, at the age of five years, seven months, and 21 days, becoming the youngest confirmed mother in recorded medical history. The case was documented by physicians and verified through medical and forensic analysis. The identity of the father was never established.

Bob Feller pitched a complete game victory against the Chicago White Sox on Mother’s Day, 1939, with his family in the stands. One of his pitches was fouled into the seats and struck his mother above the right eye, requiring seven stitches. Feller won the game. His mother reportedly took it in stride.

On March 3, 1939, Harvard freshman Lothrop Withington Jr. swallowed a live goldfish on a bet, winning ten dollars. The stunt touched off a brief national craze. Within weeks, college students across the country were staging goldfish-swallowing competitions. The University of Chicago reportedly banned the practice. It faded as quickly as it had begun.

The Futurama exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair, designed by Norman Bel Geddes for General Motors, showed visitors what American life might look like in 1960. It featured a scale model of an automated highway system, drone aircraft, and a fully planned city. Visitors waited up to two hours for a six-minute ride through the exhibit. The name was later used for an animated television series.

The Magna Carta was on loan from Britain for display at the 1939 World’s Fair when World War II broke out. Rather than risk returning it across the Atlantic, the British government arranged for it to be transported to Fort Knox, where it remained in safekeeping for the duration of the war.

Politics in 1939

Joseph Stalin was named Time’s Man of the Year, having signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Hitler and invaded Poland from the east while Germany attacked from the west. Stalin would appear on Time’s cover again in 1942, as an ally.

Nobel Prize Winners in 1939

Physics was awarded to Ernest Lawrence of the University of California for his invention of the cyclotron and the results obtained with it. The cyclotron made possible the production of artificial radioactive elements and laid the groundwork for nuclear physics research that would accelerate dramatically through the following decade.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Adolf Friedrich Johann Butenandt for his work on sex hormones and to Leopold Ružicka for his research on polymethylenes and higher terpenes. Butenandt was ordered by the Nazi government to refuse the prize, though he accepted it formally after World War II ended.

Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Gerhard Domagk for his discovery of the antibacterial effect of prontosil, the first commercially available antibiotic drug. Like Butenandt, Domagk was compelled by the Nazi government to decline the prize initially.

Literature went to Frans Eemil Sillanpää of Finland, recognized for his portrayals of Finnish peasant life and nature. His novel Meek Heritage remains his most celebrated work outside Scandinavia.

Peace was not awarded. The Nobel Committee declined to name a laureate for 1939, a decision that required no explanation to anyone paying attention to world events that September.

Broadway in 1939

Life With Father, based on the autobiographical sketches of Clarence Day Jr. and adapted by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, opened at the Empire Theatre on November 8, 1939. It ran until July 12, 1947, a total of 3,224 performances. For eighteen years it held the record as the longest-running show in Broadway history. The play centers on a red-haired patriarch ruling his household with comic certainty while his wife quietly outmaneuvers him on every important matter. It remains one of the most commercially successful plays ever staged.

Popular and Best-Selling Books of 1939

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
All This, and Heaven Too by Rachel Field
Disputed Passage by Lloyd C. Douglas
Escape by Ethel Vance
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
Kitty Foyle by Christopher Morley
The Nazarene by Sholem Asch
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The Tree of Liberty by Elizabeth Page
Wickford Point by John P. Marquand
The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Sports Champions of 1939

World Series: The New York Yankees defeated the Cincinnati Reds four games to none, their fourth championship in four consecutive years. No team has matched that streak since.

NFL Champions: The Green Bay Packers defeated the New York Giants 27-0, a dominant performance that gave head coach Curly Lambeau his fourth NFL title.

Stanley Cup: The Boston Bruins defeated the Toronto Maple Leafs four games to one. It was Boston’s second Stanley Cup, and the series was not as close as the game count suggests.

U.S. Open Golf: Byron Nelson won his first major championship, defeating Craig Wood and Denny Shute in a three-way playoff. Nelson was 27 years old and at the beginning of what would become one of the most celebrated careers in golf history.

U.S. Open Tennis: Bobby Riggs won the men’s title and Alice Marble won the women’s, giving the United States both singles titles. Riggs was 21 and already developing the personality that would eventually lead him to challenge Billie Jean King to the “Battle of the Sexes” match in 1973.

Wimbledon: Bobby Riggs won the men’s title and Alice Marble won the women’s, making it a clean sweep of both the Wimbledon and U.S. Open singles titles for each of them in the same year.

NCAA Football Champions: Texas A&M finished the season undefeated, led by John Kimbrough, who finished second in Heisman Trophy voting.

NCAA Basketball Champions: Oregon, nicknamed the Tall Firs, won the first-ever NCAA Tournament, defeating Ohio State 46-33 in the final in Evanston, Illinois. The tournament had eight teams. Oregon’s center, Urgel “Slim” Wintermute, stood 6 feet 8 inches, exceptionally tall for the era.

Kentucky Derby: Johnstown won by eight lengths, one of the most dominant Derby performances of the decade, trained by James Fitzsimmons, who trained two Triple Crown winners.

Boston Marathon: Ellison “Tarzan” Brown won in 2:28:51, his second Boston Marathon victory. Brown was a member of the Narragansett tribe of Rhode Island and one of the most talented distance runners of his era.

Frequently Asked Questions About 1939

Q: Why is 1939 considered Hollywood’s greatest year?
A: Within a single calendar year, studios released Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Destry Rides Again, Wuthering Heights, and Of Mice and Men, among others. The concentration of enduring classics in one year has never been equaled.

Q: When did Batman first appear?
A: Batman debuted in Detective Comics #27, cover-dated May 1939. The character was created by Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. Finger’s co-creator credit was not formally acknowledged by DC Comics until 2015, more than 40 years after his death in 1974.

Q: What was Over the Rainbow almost cut from?
A: Over the Rainbow was nearly removed from The Wizard of Oz before release. MGM executives felt it slowed the picture down. It survived, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, became Judy Garland’s signature number, and was voted the greatest song of the 20th century by the Recording Industry Association of America.

Q: Why did Roosevelt move Thanksgiving?
A: Franklin Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving from the last Thursday of November to the fourth Thursday in November 1939 at the request of retailers who wanted a longer Christmas shopping season. The change was made without congressional authorization and sparked immediate controversy, with 23 states refusing to recognize the new date. Congress formally standardized the fourth Thursday in 1941.

Q: Who won the first NCAA Basketball Tournament?
A: Oregon, known as the Tall Firs, won the first NCAA Tournament in 1939, defeating Ohio State 46-33 in the final. The tournament had eight teams. It was held in Evanston, Illinois.

Q: What happened at Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939?
A: The German American Bund held a rally attended by approximately 20,000 Americans, with speakers positioned beneath a 30-foot portrait of George Washington flanked by swastika banners. More than 100,000 protesters gathered outside. The Bund’s leader, Fritz Kuhn, was arrested later that year and eventually deported.

Q: What is the Westinghouse Time Capsule?
A: A capsule sealed 50 feet underground at the 1939 World’s Fair site in Flushing Meadows, Queens, containing items representing American life in 1939. A second capsule was buried ten feet away at the 1964 World’s Fair. Both are scheduled to be opened simultaneously in the year 6939, five thousand years after the first was sealed.

In a year that gave the world Batman, Gone with the Wind, and The Wizard of Oz, while simultaneously opening the deadliest conflict in human history, 1939 demonstrated that civilization is entirely capable of producing its finest work and its worst impulses at the same time. It has not been the last year to manage that particular combination.

More 1939 Facts & History Resources:

Most Popular Baby Names (BabyCenter.com)
Popular and Notable Books (popculture.us)
Broadway Shows that Opened in 1939
1939 Calendar, courtesy of Time and Date.com
Fact Monster
The Great Depression EconLib
1930s, Infoplease.com World History
1939 in Movies (according to IMDB)
Retrowaste Vintage Culture
1930s Slang
Wikipedia 1939
WW II Timeline (Historic UK)