1937 in the United States

1937 in the United States
Years 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939
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48 stars (1912–59)
Timeline of United States history
History of the United States (1918–45)

President Roosevelt at the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington, 1937

Events from the year 1937 in the United States.

Incumbents

Federal Government

• President: Franklin D. Roosevelt (D-New York)
• Vice President: John Nance Garner (D-Texas)
• Chief Justice: Charles Evans Hughes (New York)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: William B. Bankhead (D-Alabama)
• Senate Majority Leader: Joseph Taylor Robinson (D-Arkansas) (until July 14), Alben W. Barkley (D-Kentucky) (starting July 22)
• Congress: 74th (until January 3), 75th (starting January 3)

Events

January–March

• January 11 – The first issue of Look magazine goes on sale.
• January 12 – Adventurer and filmmaker Martin Johnson, of Martin and Osa Johnson fame, is killed along with four others in the crash of Western Air Express Flight 7 in mountainous terrain near Saugus, California.
• January 19 – Howard Hughes sets a new record by flying from Los Angeles to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds.
• January 20 – Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes swears in Franklin D. Roosevelt for a second term. This is the first time Inauguration Day in the United States occurs on this date, in response to the ratification in 1933 of the 20th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Inauguration has occurred on January 20 ever since.
• January 26 – Michigan celebrates its Centennial Anniversary of statehood.
• January 31 – The Ohio River floods.
• February 5 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposes a plan to enlarge the Supreme Court of the United States.
• February 11 – A sit-down strike ends when General Motors recognizes the United Automobile Workers Union.
• March 2 – The Steel Workers Organizing Committee, precursor to United Steelworkers, signs a collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Steel.
• March 26 – William Henry Hastie becomes the first African-American appointed to a federal judgeship.
• March – The first issue of the comic book Detective Comics is published in the United States. Twenty-seven issues later, Detective Comics introduces Batman. The comic goes on to become the longest continually published comic magazine in American history; it is still published as of 2011.
• March 17 – The Atherton Report (private investigator Edwin Atherton's report detailing vice and police corruption in San Francisco) is released.
• March 18
  • In the worst school disaster in American history in terms of lives lost, the New London School in New London, Texas suffers a catastrophic natural gas explosion, killing in excess of 295 students and teachers.
  • Mother Frances Hospital opens in Tyler, Texas in response to the New London School explosion.
• March 26 – In Crystal City, Texas, spinach growers erect a statue of the cartoon character Popeye.

April–June

May 6: Hindenburg disaster

May 27: The Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic

• April 12 – NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel: The Supreme Court of the United States rules that the National Labor Relations Act is constitutional.
• April 17 – The animated short Porky's Duck Hunt, directed by Tex Avery for the Looney Tunes series, featuring the debut of Daffy Duck, is released.
• May – 7 million unemployed in the USA.
• May 6 – Hindenburg disaster: The German airship Hindenburg bursts into flame when morning to a mast in Lakehurst, New Jersey.
• May 7 – An enquiry begins into the Hindenburg disaster.
• May 27 – In California, the Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic, creating a vital link between San Francisco and Marin County. The next day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushes a button in Washington, D.C., signaling the start of vehicle traffic over the Golden Gate Bridge.
• May 30 – Labor strike at US Steel in Chicago; crackdown.^[1]
• June 14 – Pennsylvania becomes the first (and only) of the United States to celebrate Flag Day officially as a state holiday.

July–September

September 20: The Federal Art Project opened a Watercolors and Drawings show at the new Federal Art Gallery, NYC

• July 2
  • Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappear after taking off from New Guinea during Earhart's attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world.
  • A guard first stands post at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Washington, D.C.; continuous guard has been maintained there ever since.
• July 4 – The Lost Colony historical drama is first performed in an outdoor theater in the location where it is set, Roanoke Island, North Carolina.
• July 5 – The canned precooked meat product Spam is introduced by the Hormel company.
• July 22 – New Deal: The United States Senate votes down President Franklin D. Roosevelt's proposal to add more justices to the Supreme Court of the United States.
• July 24 – Alabama drops rape charges against the so-called Scottsboro Boys.
• September 7 – CBS broadcasts a two-and-a-half hour memorial concert nationwide on radio in memory of George Gershwin, live from the Hollywood Bowl. Many celebrities appear, including Oscar Levant, Fred Astaire, Otto Klemperer, Lily Pons, and members of the original cast of Porgy and Bess. The concert is recorded and released complete years later in what is excellent sound for its time, on CD. The Los Angeles Philharmonic is the featured orchestra.
• September 18 – African American writer Zora Neale Hurston publishes her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.
• September 26 – Street & Smith launches a half-hour radio program, The Shadow, with Orson Welles in the title role.

October–December

• October 1
  • The Marijuana Tax Act becomes law in the United States.
  • U.S. Supreme Court associate justice Hugo Black, in a nationwide radio broadcast, refutes allegations of past involvement in the Ku Klux Klan.
• October 5 – Roosevelt gives his famous Quarantine Speech in Chicago.
• October 15 – Ernest Hemingway's novel To Have and Have Not is first published.
• December 12
  • Panay incident: Japanese bombers sink the American gunboat USS Panay.
  • Mae West makes a risque guest appearance on the NBC Chase and Sanborn Hour that eventually results in her being banned from radio.
• December 21 – Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first feature-length animated cartoon with sound, opens and becomes a smash hit.
• December 22 – The Lincoln Tunnel, connecting New York City to Weehawken, New Jersey, under the Hudson River opens to road traffic.
• December 25 – At the age of 70, legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini conducts the NBC Symphony Orchestra on radio for the first time, beginning his successful 17-year tenure with that orchestra. This first concert consists of music by Vivaldi (at a time when he was still seldom played), Mozart, and Brahms. Millions tune in to listen, including U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Advertisement for 1937 Graham Custom Series 120 Supercharger Four-door Sedan

Undated

• John Steinbeck's novella of the Great Depression Of Mice and Men is published.
• Napoleon Hill's self-help book Think and Grow Rich is published.

Ongoing

• Lochner era (c. 1897–c. 1937)
• New Deal (1933–1938)
• Recession of 1937–1938 (1937–1938)

Births

Senator Thad Cochran, born in 1937, photo circa 2007

• January 4 – Dyan Cannon, actress, director, screenwriter, editor and producer
• January 19 – Fred J. Lincoln, actor, director, producer and screenwriter (died 2013)
• March 16 – William L. Armstrong, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1979 to 1991
• April 5 – Colin Powell, 65th United States Secretary of State
• April 17 – Don Buchla, pioneer of sound synthesizers (died 2016)
• April 22 – Jack Nicholson, actor, film director, producer and writer
• May 8
  • Mike Cuellar, Cuban-American baseball player (died 2010)
  • Dennis DeConcini, U.S. Senator from Arizona from 1977 to 1995
• May 9 – Alison Jolly, primatologist (died 2014)
• May 10 – Jim Hickman, baseball outfielder
• May 15 – Joe Tait, sportscaster
• May 16 – Yvonne Craig, actress and ballet dancer
• April 20 – George Takei, actor, director, author, and activist
• June 1 – Morgan Freeman, actor
• June 3 – Solomon P. Ortiz, soldier and politician
• June 7 – Red Grooms, painter and illustrator
• June 11 – David Mumford, mathematician
• June 15 – Waylon Jennings, country singer
• June 18 – Jay Rockefeller, U.S. Senator from West Virginia from 1985 to 2015
• June 26 – Robert Coleman Richardson, experimental physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1996 (died 2013)
• July 16 – Richard Bryan, U.S. Senator from Nevada from 1989 to 2001
• July 19 – Bibb Latané, social psychologist
• August 1 – Al D'Amato, U.S. Senator from New York from 1981 to 1999
• August 3 – Roland Burris, U.S. Senator from Illinois from 2009 to 2010
• September 8 – Barbara Frum, radio and television journalist (died 1992)
• September 13 – Don Bluth, animator, film director, producer, writer, production designer, video game designer and animation instructor
• October 31 – Tom Paxton, folk singer-songwriter
• November 9 – Vernon Taylor, rockabilly musician
• November 12
  • Mills Lane, boxer, referee, lawyer, and judge
  • Richard H. Truly, admiral, pilot, and astronaut
• December 3 – John F. Seymour, U.S. Senator from California from 1991 to 1992
• December 7 – Thad Cochran, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1978
• December 21
  • Jane Fonda, actress and political activist
  • Donald F. Munson, politician

Deaths

Jean Harlow shortly before her death in 1937

• January 1 – John Gresham Machen, Presbyterian theologian (born 1881)
• January 2 – Ross Alexander, actor (born 1907)
• January 13 – Martin Johnson, adventurer and filmmaker (born 1884)
• February 7 – Elihu Root, statesman and diplomat, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912 (born 1845)
• February 11 – Walter Burley Griffin, architect and town planner (born 1876)
• March 15 – H. P. Lovecraft, horror fiction author (born 1890)
• March 29 – William Edward White, African American baseball player (born 1860)
• April 10 – Ralph Ince, film director (born 1887)
• April 14 – Ned Hanlon, baseball manager (born 1857)
• April 16 – Jay Johnson Morrow, military engineer and politician, 3rd Governor of the Panama Canal Zone (born 1870)
• May 14 – John Burke, 24th Treasurer of the United States (born 1859)
• May 23 – John D. Rockefeller, oil industry business magnate and philanthropist (born 1839)
• June 7 – Jean Harlow, actress and sex symbol (born 1911)
• July 2 – Amelia Earhart, aviator, missing on flight (born 1897)
• July 9 – Oliver Law, labor organizer and Army officer, killed in Spanish Civil War (born 1899)
• July 11 – George Gershwin, popular composer (born 1898)
• July 14 – Joseph Taylor Robinson, politician (born 1872)
• August 11 – Edith Wharton, novelist (born 1862)
• August 27 – Andrew W. Mellon, banker and Secretary of the Treasury (born 1855)
• September 8 – Anna Hempstead Branch, poet (born 1875)
• September 13 – Ellis Parker Butler, humorist (born 1869)
• September 21 – Osgood Perkins, actor (born 1892)
• September 22 – Ruth Roland, actress (born 1892)
• September 26 – Bessie Smith, African American blues singer (born 1894)
• September 29 – Ray Ewry, field athlete (born 1873)
• November 6 – Colin Campbell Cooper, painter (born 1856)
• November 25 – Raymond Stanton Patton, admiral (born 1882)
• December 6 – Florence Griswold, curator (born 1850)
• December 21
  • Ted Healy, vaudeville actor (born 1896)
  • Frank B. Kellogg, United States Secretary of State, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1929 (born 1856)
• December 25 – Newton D. Baker, United States Secretary of War (born 1871)
• December 29 – Don Marquis, poet (born 1878)

See also

• List of American films of 1937

References

External links

• Media related to 1937 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons