1930-1940 Muggle Pop Culture
Music
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- "Swing" music becomes popular from 1935 onward. It gradually replaces the sweet form of Jazz that had been popular for the first part of the decade.
- Popular songs of the time period include: "Over the Rainbow" by Judy Garland (1939), "Pennies from Heaven" by Bing Crosby (1936), "Moonlight Serenade" by Glenn Miller (1939), "Cheek to Cheek" (1935) and "The Way You Look Tonight" (1936) by Fred Astaire, "Begin the Beguine" by Artie Shaw (1938), "A-Tisket A-Tasket" by Ella Fitzgerald, "Sing, Sing, Sing" by Bennie Goodman (1937), and "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" by the Andrews Sisters (1938).
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Film
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- Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released in 1937.
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- The Little Princess and The Wizard of Oz were released in 1939.
- In the art of film making, the Golden Age of Hollywood entered a whole decade, after the advent of talking pictures ("talkies") in 1927 and full-color films in 1930: more than 50 classic films were made in the 1930s: most notable were Gone With The Wind and The Wizard of Oz.
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- Universal Pictures begins producing its distinctive series of horror films, which came to be known as the Universal Monsters, featuring what would become iconic representations of literary and mythological monsters, the horror films (or monster movies) included many cult classics, such as Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, Jekyll/Hyde, King Kong, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and other films about wax museums, vampires and zombies, leading to the 1941 film The Wolf Man These films led to the stardom of stars such as Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr, and Boris Karloff.
- Recurring series' and serials included: Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, Tarzan, Charlie Chan, Alfred Hitchcock films, Our Gang, and the filming of "superheroes" such as The Phantom.
Sports
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- 1930 FIFA World Cup was the first world cup to be held. It was won by hosts Uruguay.
- 1932 Summer Olympics was hosted by Los Angeles.
- 1934 FIFA World Cup was hosted and won by Italy.
- 1936 Summer Olympics was hosted by Berlin.
- 1938 FIFA World Cup was hosted by France and won by Italy.
Architecture
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- The world's tallest building (for the next 35 years) was constructed, opening as the Empire State Building on May 3, 1931 in New York City, USA.
- The Golden Gate Bridge was constructed, opening on May 27, 1937 in San Francisco, USA.
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Literature and Art
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- Height of the Art Deco movement in North America and Western Europe.
Notable poetry include W. H. Auden's Poems. - Notable literature includes F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night (1934), J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit (1937), Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath (1939) and Of Mice and Men (1937), Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not (1937), John Dos Passos's U.S.A trilogy, William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (1930) and Absalom, Absalom! (1936), John O'Hara's Appointment in Samarra (1934) and Butterfield 8 (1935).
- Notable "hardboiled" crime fiction includes Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934).
- Notable plays include Thorton Wilder's Our Town (1938).
- Near the end of the decade, two of the world's most iconic superheroes and recognizable fictional characters were introduced in comic books; Superman first appeared in 1938, and Batman in 1939.
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- The pulp fiction magazines began to feature distinctive, gritty adventure heroes that combined elements of hard boiled detective fiction and the fantastic adventures of the earlier pulp novels. Two particularly noteworthy characters introduced were Doc Savage and The Shadow, who would later influence the creation of characters such as Superman and Batman.
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Written by Juniper Kedding.
