1937 Hit Parade

Architectural Record concluded after a survey that the Colonial Style was still the most popular home in America, and that 85 percent of homes costed less than ten thousand dollars.

The Lincoln Tunnel opened.

German architect Walter Gropius was appointed head of the Harvard University School of Architecture.

The Golden Gate Bridge near San Francisco was completed.

Popular films included:
    The Awful Truth directed by Leo McCarey and starring Irene Dunne and Cary Grant
   
History Made at Night starring Charles Boyer and Jean Arthur
   
Lost Horizon directed by Frank Capra
   
Shall We Dance starring Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire with music by George and Ira Gershwin
   
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves by Walt Disney
   
A Star is Born starring Frederick March and Janet Gaynor.

Fiction included: James M. Cain’s Serenade, Daniel Fuchs’s Low Company, Ernest Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not, Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God, Meyer Levin’s The Old Bunch, John Phillips Marquand’s The Late George Apley, Wallace Stegner’s Remembering Laughter, and John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.

Popular songs included:  “Blue Hawaii” by Leo Rubin and Ralph Raigner, “The Dipsey Doodle” by Larry Clinton, “A Foggy Day” by George and Ira Gershwin, “Good Mornin’” by Sam Coslow, “Hell Hound on my Trail” by Robert Johnson, “I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm” by Irving Berlin, “In the Still of the Night” by Cole Porter, “I Can Dream, Can’t I?” by Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal, “Me and the Devil Blues” by Robert Johnson, “Nice Work if You Can Get It” by George and Ira Gershwin, “Rosalie” by Cole Porter, “That Old Feeling” by Sammy Fain and Lew Brown, and “Too Marvelous For Words” by Richard A. Whiting and Johnny Mercer.

The first Bugs Bunny Cartoon, Porky’s Hare Hunt, was released by Warner Brothers.

W.H. Carothers of Du Pont patented nylon.

The George A. Hormel Company introduced Spam.

Business Week announced that the luxury car was making a comeback in the forms of the Lincoln Zephyr, Cadillac LaSalle, and Chrysler Custom Imperial.

Packard announced that it would make and sell 130,000 cars in 1937.

Muriel King designed dresses for Katherine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers for Stage Door.

Among the Americans to join forces against Franco in Spain were John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell.

March 15:  The first state contraceptive clinic opened in Raleigh, North Carolina.

March 26:  William H. Hastie became the first African American federal judge.

July 2:  Amelia Earhart disappeared on a Pacific flight from New Guinea to Howland Island.

August 2:  President Roosevelt signed the Marijuana Traffic Act, outlawing the sale and possession of the drug.