This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1939.
John Richard Moore Jr. was an American actor known professionally as Dickie Moore, he was one of the last surviving actors to have appeared in silent film. A busy and popular actor during his childhood and youth, he appeared in over 100 films until the early 1950s. Among his most notable appearances were the Our Gang series and films such as Oliver Twist, Blonde Venus, Sergeant York, Out of the Past, and Eight Iron Men.
The Our Gang personnel page is a listing of the significant cast and crew from the Our Gang short subjects film series, originally created and produced by Hal Roach which ran in movie theaters from 1922 to 1944.
Producers Releasing Corporation was one of the smallest and least prestigious Hollywood film studios of the 1940s. It was considered a prime example of what was called "Poverty Row": a low-rent stretch of Gower Street in Hollywood where shoestring film producers based their operations. However, PRC was more substantial than the usual independent companies that made only a few low-budget movies and then disappeared. PRC was an actual Hollywood studio – albeit the smallest – with its own production facilities and distribution network, and it even accepted imports from the UK. PRC lasted from 1939 to 1947, churning out low-budget B movies for the lower half of a double bill or the upper half of a neighborhood theater showing second-run films. The studio was originally located at 1440 N. Gower St. from 1936 to 1943. PRC then occupied the former Grand National Pictures physical plant at 7324 Santa Monica Blvd., from 1943 to 1946. This address is now an apartment complex.
Edgar Georg Ulmer was a Jewish-Moravian, Austrian-American film director who mainly worked on Hollywood B movies and other low-budget productions, eventually earning the epithet 'The King of PRC', due to his extremely prolific output for the Poverty Row studios. His stylish and eccentric works came to be appreciated by auteur theory-espousing film critics in the years following his retirement. Ulmer's most famous productions include the horror film The Black Cat (1934) and the film noir Detour (1945).
Jack Stanley Watling was an English actor.
Bert Sommer was an American folk singer and songwriter. He appeared in the musical Hair and at the Woodstock Festival, and released several albums as a singer-songwriter.
Caprice Alexandra Crane is an American novelist, screenwriter and television writer/producer.
Richard Ollie Crane was a character actor whose career spanned three decades in films and television. His early career included many uncredited performances in feature films made in the 1940s.
Wounded Bird Records is an American compact disc only re-issue record label that was founded in 1998 in Guilderland, New York.
Miss Annie Rooney is a 1942 American drama film directed by Edwin L. Marin. The screenplay by George Bruce has some similarities to the silent film, Little Annie Rooney starring Mary Pickford, but otherwise, the films are unrelated. Miss Annie Rooney is about a teenager from a humble background who falls in love with a rich high school boy. She is snubbed by his social set, but, when her father invents a better rubber synthetic substitute, her prestige rises. Notable as the film in which Shirley Temple received her first on-screen kiss, and Moore said it was his first kiss ever. The film was panned.
Mister Big is a 1943 musical directed by Charles Lamont, starring Donald O'Connor, Gloria Jean and Peggy Ryan. The film features the song "Rude, Crude, and Unattractive".
Minstrel Man is a 1944 American musical drama film directed by Joseph H. Lewis and produced by Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC). It was a vehicle for Broadway and vaudeville headliner Benny Fields.
Sweet and Low-Down is a 1944 film directed by Archie Mayo and starring Benny Goodman and Linda Darnell. The film was a fictionalized version of life with Goodman, his band, and their manager while entertaining at military camps. The song "I'm Making Believe" was nominated for an Academy Award.
Isle of Forgotten Sins is an American South Seas adventure film released on August 15, 1943 by PRC, with Leon Fromkess in charge of production, directed by Edgar G. Ulmer and featuring top-billed John Carradine and Gale Sondergaard, whose performance in one of 1936's Academy Award for Best Picture nominees, Anthony Adverse, earned her the first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Carnegie Hall is a 1947 American musical drama film directed by Edgar G. Ulmer and starring Marsha Hunt and William Prince. The film was produced by Federal Films and released by United Artists.
Leo Erdody was an American film composer of Hungarian descent. He studied music in Germany, and later went to Hollywood, scoring his first film in 1921. He later joined Producers Releasing Corporation and scored several films for them. For his work on Minstrel Man, he was a nominee for an Academy Award for Best Original Score.
Jan Wiley was an American film actress.
