In The News Sixty Years Ago...

The papers were full of reports of union ferment. Everyone was organizing, striking, arguing-a direct result of the Wagner-Connery National Labor Act of 1935 which, designed to get the US out of the Depression, encouraged collective bargaining and overtime pay.

• A new 4-room bungalow two blocks from Paramount Studio rented for $45. Fibber McGee and Molly were popular on radio (no TV yet!)
  
  
• The Screen Actors Guild won a closed shop (every working actor had to be a member) and better pay and conditions.
  
  
• J. Edgar Hoover was staging raids against "white slave rings" in his "crusade against vice."
  
  
• The American Federation of Labor was in competition with the Congress of Industrial Organization (they're now married as the AFL-CIO).
  
  
• The new Society of Motion Picture Editors tried hard to stay independent, of the AFL, CIO and the IATSE.
  
  
• Meanwhile, in England George VI was crowned in Westminster Abbey and in Paris the former King Edward VIII married the divorcée Wallis Warfield.
  
  
• Mussolini was premier in Italy and civilians in Spain were being bombed in the Spanish civil war. Ernest Hemingway turned down a $50,000 script-writing deal so he could return to Spain.
  
  
• The Society of Motion Picture Art Directors was formed.
  
  
• The Federated Motion Picture Crafts went on strike for recognition.
  
  
• Roosevelt was president, the zeppelin Hindenburg crashed and burned, and Amelia Earhart set out on her round-the-world flight and disappeared over the Pacific.
  
  
• The Screen Writers Guild petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for exclusive bargaining rights.
  
  
• Gene Havlick and Gene Milford won the Oscar for best editing for 'Lost Horizon.'
  
  
• After Henry Merrill flew from New York to Paris in 21 hours in a race, the US Assistant Secretary of Commerce considered banning such "freak" flights.
  
  
• Paramount planned 22 million-dollar features for its '37-'38 season.
  
  
• Shirley Temple starred in 'Wee Willie Winkie' directed by John Ford, and 'Shall We Dance' with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers was the popular film in New York.
  
  
• The Screen Publicists Guild was begun. The "shirtless bathing suit" for men was still banned in Atlantic City.
  
  
• Telephone service between the US and China was inaugurated when Eleanor Roosevelt rang Mrs. Chiang Kai-Shek.
  
  
• The American Federation of Musicians planned to ban broadcast of phonograph records to increase musicians' employment.
  
  
• Ladies evening shoes cost $5.98 at Macy's and a man's evening jacket $23.50.
  
  
• Independent radio workers were organizing in the American Radio Telegraphists Association.
  
  
• Italy and Germany tried to draw Japan into a "united anti-communist front."
  
  
• In Poland a Jewish town was burned down.