Cinema 1937: You Must Remember This…..Events, Trends, Movies, Stars
What You Need to Know about 1937 as a Movie Year
Top-grossing films:
Top Ten 1937 released films by box office gross
1 Saratoga, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer $2,432,000
2. Maytime, $2,183,000
3. The Good Earth, $2,002,000
4. Stella Dallas, United Artists/Samuel Goldwyn, $2,000,000
5. Broadway Melody of 1938 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer $1,889,000
6. A Star Is Born, United Artists/Selznick International, $1,800,000
7. Captains Courageous, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer $1,688,000
8. Lost Horizon, Columbia Pictures $1,683,000
9. A Day at the Races, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer $1,600,000
10. Thin Ice, 20th Century Fox $1,590,000
If you want to know more about the Oscars, please read my book:
Movie Events:
April 16:
Way Out West premieres in the US.
May 7:
Shall We Dance premieres in the US.
May 11:
Monogram Pictures, which merged with Republic Pictures in 1935, decide to separate and distribute their own films again.
June 7:
Jean Harlow, one of Hollywood’s top stars, dies, aged 26 in Los Angeles. The cause of death is listed as cerebral edema, a complication of kidney failure.
June 25:
Colin Clive, British actor, dies at 37 (best known for Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein).
July 9:
The silent film archives of Fox Films are destroyed by the 1937 Fox vault fire.
July 23:
Six weeks after Jean Harlow’s death, her final film, Saratoga, is released. It becomes the year’s highest-grossing picture, and most successful film of Harlow’s career.
December 21:
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premieres at the Carthay Circle Theatre in L.A. The film is released nationally in the US on February 4, 1938. A massive box-office success, it briefly holding the record as highest-grossing sound film of all time.
Garbo renders what is considered to be her most impressive acting, in George Cukor’s Camille.
AWARDS
Best Actress
Oscar: Luise Rainer (The Good Earth)
New York Film Critics Circle: Greta Garbo (Camille)
National Board of Review: Danielle Darieux (Mayerling)
Venice Film Festival: Bette Davis (Marked Woman)
Best Actor
Oscar: Spencer Tracy, Captains Courageous
N.Y. Film Critics Circle: Paul Muni, The Life of Emile Zola
Venice Film Fest: Emil Jannings, Der Herrscher
Most Popular Stars (rank-ordered)
Shirley Temple
Clark Gable
Robert Taylor
Bing Crosby
William Powell
Jane Withers
Fred Astaire–Ginger Rogers
Sonja Henie
Gary Cooper
Myrna Loy
Other Significant Films
Awful Truth, The
Camille
Grand Illusion
Make Way for Tomorrow
Midnight Song
Pepe Le Moko
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Stella Dallas
