Timeline of Influential Milestones and Turning Points in Film History

Timeline of Influential Milestones and Important Turning Points in Film History

1940s

Herein is a detailed timeline of the key film milestones, important turning points, and significant historical dates or events (organized by decade) that have had a significant influence on the world body of cinema and shaped its development. For more detailed accounts of many items, also see this site's extensive narratives on Film History by Decade, Film Milestones in Visual and Special Effects, and a comprehensive History of the Academy Awards.

Index to Timeline of Greatest Film Milestones and Turning Points

(by decade)

Pre-1900s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s
1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s

1940s - Part 2

Year	Event and Significance
1944	The first Golden Globe awards ceremony took place at 20th Century Fox Studios, at first marked by the awarding of scrolls (not statuettes) to honorees (not nominees) who were announced earlier.
1944	The US government eased restraints on the depiction of brutality by the Japanese.
1944	A Los Angeles court ruled, in the so-called "Havilland decision" - that Warner Bros. had to release actress Olivia de Havilland after her seven-year contract expired, ruling that the studio could not add time to her contract to make up for the periods when she was on suspension. This ruling undercut studios' ability to lock actors into long-term contracts.
1944	The federal government reopened its anti-trust cases against the studios, and called for the divestiture of the studios' theaters.
1944	Billy Wilder's cynically-dark masterpiece, Double Indemnity, a hard-boiled tale adapted from another James M. Cain novel (with Raymond Chandler as the co-scenarist), represented the peak of 'film noir'. Both lead actors, Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray (both playing against type) gave the performances of their careers, with MacMurray providing an effective first-person narration. Although the film had a steamy crime plot (an adulterous evil woman plots the murder of her husband through her association with an insurance investigator), it was able to follow the prescriptions of the Hays Code while still infusing the story with controversial sex and murder scenes.
1944	Producer/director Otto Preminger's mystery drama Laura, was one of the most stylish, elegant, moody, and witty classic film noirs ever made, featuring an ensemble cast of characters. Trailers for the compelling film promised: "Never has a woman been so beautiful, so exotic, so dangerous to know!"
1944	The first TV ad for a film was broadcast by Paramount, in the second TV station (KTLA) that the studio had launched/established in Los Angeles in 1943.
1944	The first film advertised on TV in a 30-minute promotion in 1944 was the classic Preston Sturges comedy The Miracle of Morgan's Creek.
1945	At the conclusion of the war, the federal government ended restrictions on the allocation of raw film stock, midnight curfews, and bans on outdoor lighting displays as well as censorship of the export and import of films.
1945	Roberto Rossellini's influential landmark film Open City formally introduced Italian Neo-Realism, marked by a gritty, authentic and realistic post-war film style. Characteristics included the use of on-location cinematography, grainy low-grade black-and-white film stock and untrained actors in improvised scenes. The socially-aware, documentary-style film captured the despair and confusion of post-World War II Europe. [Another film that provided a seminal example of this post-war style was Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief (1948).] Italian Neo-Realism, portrayed by film-makers Rossellini, Luchino Visconti and Vittorio De Sica, lasted until 1952. It would have a tremendous influence on the development of future 'avant-garde' films with intense character studies (i.e., surrealistic cinema from Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni, cinema verite, the French New Wave and the maverick films from the New Hollywood).
1945	The Screen Extras Guild (SEG), a union representing the interests of persons regularly cast as extras, was organized.
1945	The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), an organization created in 1938 with the goal of domestically stopping subversive activities, un-Americanism and communism, was made into a permanent standing committee under Congressman John Rankin (of Mississippi). By 1947, the Hollywood motion picture industry became one of its main targets when the committee initiated an investigation of Communist influence there.
1945	Marcel Carné's three-hours in length French resistance romantic classic The Children of Paradise (aka Les Enfants du Paradis, Fr.) was made during a time of Nazi occupation in France, and filmed in secret over a two-year period.
1945	The rarely-seen film Momotaro: The Holy Soldier of the Sea, financed by (and starring) the Japanese Imperial Navy and directed by Mitsuyo Seo, was the first feature-length anime film ever made. The unique art form of anime films from Japan, characterized by stylized colorful graphics depicting vibrant characters in fantastic or futuristic action-filled plots, would become increasingly popular in the 1980s.
1945	One of the earliest (if not the first) Hollywood film to feature the use of judo (martial arts) in fight sequences was in Blood on the Sun, starring James Cagney as an American newspaper editor who exposed militaristic plans for Japanese expansion.
1945	The first "musical biography" based on the life of a composer/songwriter was Warners' Night and Day, with Cary Grant as Cole Porter.
1946	The Cannes Film Festival debuted in France on the French Riviera. Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend (1945) was the first Best Picture Oscar-winning film to also win Cannes' top prize (known now as the Golden Palm or Palme d'Or).
1946	Universal Pictures merged with the independent production company International Pictures to become Universal International.
1946	Disney's first live-action feature film The Song of the South was released, with three major segments of animation; it was based upon Joel Chandler Harris' Uncle Remus folk tales regarding Br'er Rabbit; due to extensive protests (mostly by the NAACP) over the stereotypical representations of blacks in the film and the film's romanticizing of slavery, the controversial film was never released on home video for US audiences; the film's hit song "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" won the Academy Awards Oscar for Best Song.
1946	Bobby Driscoll, the child star of Song of the South and Treasure Island (1950), was the first actor to sign a long-term contract with Disney Productions.
1946	David O. Selznick announced that he would release his films by himself rather than through United Artists.
1946	Director William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives debuted, and won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor in 1947. It was a classic post-war film that accurately and poignantly portrayed the readjustment of veterans and their families after their return home. Double amputee and amateur actor Harold Russell (as Homer Parrish) became the only actor to win two Oscars for playing the same role. He was awarded a special Academy Award for "bringing aid and comfort to disabled veterans," and then also won the year's Oscar as Best Supporting Actor.
1946	The impressionistic, fantasy-romance film Beauty and the Beast (aka La Belle et La Bête, Fr.), directed by Jean Cocteau, was released in post WW II France. It was an adaptation of Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's 1756 fairy-tale. It inspired the Disney animated classic Beauty and the Beast (1991), the first and only full-length feature animated film to be nominated for Best Picture by AMPAS.
1946	The Motion Picture Association of America (MPPA) withdrew its seal of approval for obsessed producer/director Howard Hughes' controversial 'sexy' western epic about Billy the Kid titled The Outlaw (1943), featuring busty starlet Jane Russell in a low-cut peasant blouse. (The film was released for a 10-week run in 1943, then withdrawn, and re-released three years later.) Hughes refused to submit film ads in his ad campaign (such as "What are the two reasons for Jane Russell's rise to stardom?") to the MPAA for seal approval, and sued the organization, but eventually backed down. The release of the mediocre, fictional film ended up as an example of triumphant ballyhooing and film marketing.
1946	The Motion Pictures Code allowed films to show drug trafficking so long as the scenes did not "stimulate curiosity."
1946	The first ever "original soundtrack album" was MGM's release of the soundtrack for its film musical Till the Clouds Roll By -- it was first soundtrack album ever made from a live-action film musical; its first release was on a 78 RPM album, then later on 33 RPM LP and on compact disc. The Jerome Kern soundtrack was MGM Records' first soundtrack album. [Note: Disney's movie soundtrack of a few of the songs from its animated musical film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) were available on a limited RCA two-record set - the only other previous soundtrack released.]
1947	The Supreme Court ruled that the practice of block booking violated federal anti-trust laws. When the court failed to order the studios to divest themselves of their theaters, government prosecutors appealed.
1947	The Actors Studio, a rehearsal group for professional actors, was established in New York City by Elia Kazan, Robert Lewis, and Cheryl Crawford. It soon became the epi-center for advancing "the Method" - a technique of acting that was inspired by Konstantin Stanislavski's teachings. It later gained fame through the leadership of Lee Strasberg in the 1950s, whose clients included Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, and James Dean.
1947	In Washington, D.C., the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) subpoened 41 witnesses, its first wave of witnesses in an investigation of alleged communist influence in the Hollywood movie industry. Witnesses included the 'unfriendly' "Hollywood 19" (13 of 19 were writers). In 1948, the "Hollywood 10" (Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner, Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo) were charged with contempt of Congress and jailed for refusing to cooperate with its inquiries and answer the question, "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" 84 of 204 supporters of the Hollywood 19 or 10 who signed an amici curiae Supreme Court brief were blacklisted. Many promising and established careers were destroyed by anti-Communist blacklisting - reflected in the growth of sci-films showing paranoia of aliens and anything foreign in the 50s decade.
1947	The Motion Pictures Code forbade derogatory references to a character's race.
1947	Britain imposed a 75 percent duty on Hollywood films and the American studios responded by boycotting the British market. The boycott ended in 1948.
1948	The Supreme Court's anti-trust Paramount Decree or Decision ruled that the major movie studios were guilty and had to end their monopolization of the industry. They were forced to divest themselves from owning theater chains, by selling them off. RKO announced that it would divest itself of its movie theaters. Block booking, the system by which an exhibitor was forced to buy a whole line of films (both popular films and B films) from a studio was also deemed illegal by a court decision that legislated the separation of the production and exhibition functions of the film industry. This marked the beginning of the end of the studio system.
1948	Warner Bros. was the first to show a color newsreel -- its subject was the Tournament of Roses Parade (Pasadena, CA) and the Rose Bowl.
1948	Hamlet was both the first British production and the first non-American or non-Hollywood (foreign-made) film to be presented with the industry's top honor - Best Picture. Its British director/actor/producer, Laurence Olivier, was the first actor to direct his own Oscar-winning performance (a Best Actor Academy Award). He was the first non-American director to win Best Picture.
1949	Vittorio De Sica's landmark, post-war The Bicycle Thief (1948), was another superb example of film-making from the Italian Neo-Realism movement. It was honored with a Special Academy Award in 1949 as the "most outstanding foreign film" many years before an official category was created. [The film served as the impetus for the creation of an official Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1956.] And it was the 1950 Golden Globe Award winner for Best Foreign Film. De Sica's film was also noted as the first film widely-distributed without the Hays Office seal of approval (for its refusal to cut two scenes involving urination and a bordello).
1949	Paramount signed a consent decree, agreeing to separate its production and distribution activities. Loew's (owner of MGM), 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros. were ordered to divest themselves of their theaters.
1949	Hollywood made one of its earliest attacks on racism with director Elia Kazan's melodrama Pinky, one of the many post-war 'problem pictures'. The film was noted for using a white actress (Jeanne Crain) to portray a light-skinned black woman who fell in love with a white man.
1949	Scandalizing herself, Ingrid Bergman and her lover and Italian film-maker Roberto Rossellini (both married at the time) started a family, eventually having three children together. She was pregnant at the time of her marriage, branded as "Hollywood's apostle of degradation," denounced by senators, religious leaders, and citizens' groups, and forced to move away from the US.
1949	Inspired by the work of Willis O'Brien in King Kong (1933), Ray Harryhausen animated the stop-motion gorilla in Mighty Joe Young, although the work was mostly credited to O'Brien. This was Harryhausen's first feature film for which he created stop-motion animation. His career in stop-motion animation would last until his final feature film, Clash of The Titans (1981).
1949	The first musical feature film to be partially shot on location (in New York City, including sites such as Coney Island, the Statue of Liberty, Rockefeller Plaza, and Central Park), was MGM's On the Town, although most of the film was shot in the studio.
1949	The first appearance of both the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote was in the Warner Bros' cartoon Fast and Furry-ous. Intended to be a one-time only appearance, their popularity called for another cartoon produced 3 years later, Beep, Beep (1952), and then a continuing series.
1949	Director Robert Rossen's Best Picture-winning All the King's Men was a fictionalized account (based upon the Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling 1946 novel by Robert Penn Warren) of the rise and fall of a backwoods rebel - a story inspired by the rule (and abuse of power) of Louisiana's colorful and dictatorial state governor (1928-32) and Democratic U.S. Senator (1932-35) - the notorious Huey Pierce Long - "The Kingfish."
Late 40s	Now that the big studios (such as Warners) were forced to divest themselves from owning lucrative theater chains, many Hollywood stars were making their last films (or were about to make their final film) under long-term contracts with the studio (i.e., Olivia de Havilland in 1946, Ida Lupino in 1947, Edward G. Robinson in 1948 (with Key Largo), Ann Sheridan and Bette Davis in 1949 (with Beyond the Forest), Humphrey Bogart in 1951 (with The Enforcer), and Errol Flynn in 1953).