This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1939.
Dorothy Lamour was an American actress and singer. She is best remembered for having appeared in the Road to... movies, a series of successful comedies starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.
Allan Jones was an American actor and tenor.
George Raft was an American film actor and dancer identified with portrayals of gangsters in crime melodramas of the 1930s and 1940s. A stylish leading man in dozens of movies, Raft is remembered for his gangster roles in Quick Millions (1931) with Spencer Tracy, Scarface (1932) with Paul Muni, Each Dawn I Die (1939) with James Cagney, Invisible Stripes (1939) with Humphrey Bogart, Billy Wilder's comedy Some Like It Hot (1959) with Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon, and as a dancer in Bolero (1934) with Carole Lombard and a truck driver in They Drive by Night (1940) with Ann Sheridan, Ida Lupino and Bogart.
Charles James Shavers was an American jazz trumpeter who played with Dizzy Gillespie, Nat King Cole, Roy Eldridge, Johnny Dodds, Jimmie Noone, Sidney Bechet, Midge Williams, Tommy Dorsey, and Billie Holiday. He was also an arranger and composer, and one of his compositions, "Undecided", is a jazz standard.
The Hurricane is a 1937 film set in the South Seas, directed by John Ford and produced by Samuel Goldwyn Productions, about a Polynesian who is unjustly imprisoned. The climax features a special effects hurricane. It stars Dorothy Lamour and Jon Hall, with Mary Astor, C. Aubrey Smith, Thomas Mitchell, Raymond Massey, John Carradine, and Jerome Cowan. James Norman Hall, Jon Hall's uncle, co-wrote the novel of the same name on which The Hurricane is based.
The Big Broadcast of 1938 is a Paramount Pictures musical comedy film starring W. C. Fields and featuring Bob Hope. Directed by Mitchell Leisen, the film is the last in a series of Big Broadcast movies that were variety show anthologies. This film featured the debut of Hope's signature song, "Thanks for the Memory" by Ralph Rainger.
AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars is the American Film Institute's list ranking the top 25 male and 25 female greatest screen legends of American film history and is the second list of the AFI 100 Years... series.
Maxine Sullivan, born Marietta Williams in Homestead, Pennsylvania, United States, was an American jazz vocalist and performer.
Federico Arturo Guízar Tolentino, known professionally as Tito Guízar, was a Mexican singer and actor. Along with Dolores del Río, Ramón Novarro and Lupe Vélez, as well as José Mojica, Guízar was among the few Mexicans who made history in the early years of Hollywood.
Seymour Simons was an American pianist, composer, orchestra leader, and radio producer. Simons was originally trained in engineering and went to work as a research engineer at a Detroit motor plant, but the First World War intervened and he spent it in aeronautical research
The House Across the Bay is a 1940 film directed by Archie Mayo, starring George Raft and Joan Bennett, produced by Walter Wanger, written by Myles Connolly and Kathryn Scola, and released by United Artists. The supporting cast features Lloyd Nolan, Walter Pidgeon and Gladys George.
Kathleen Nolan is an American actress and former president of the Screen Actors Guild. From 1957 to 1962, she played Kate McCoy, a housewife, on the television series The Real McCoys.
Matthew Michael "Matty" Malneck was an American jazz violinist, songwriter, and arranger.
Brazil is a 1944 American musical comedy film directed by Joseph Santley and starring Tito Guízar, Virginia Bruce and Edward Everett Horton. It is set in Brazil, and involves a composer masquerading as twins, trying to win the hand of an anti-Latin novelist.
The Wizard of Oz is a 2011 musical based on the 1939 film of the same name in turn based on L Frank Baum’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, with a book adapted by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jeremy Sams. The musical uses the Harold Arlen and E. Y. Harburg songs from the film and includes some new songs and additional music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and additional lyrics by Tim Rice.
The Magnificent Fraud is a 1939 American crime film directed by Robert Florey and starring Akim Tamiroff, Lloyd Nolan, Mary Boland and Patricia Morison.
East Side of Heaven is a 1939 American musical film directed by David Butler and written by William M. Conselman and James V. Kern. The film stars Bing Crosby, Joan Blondell, Mischa Auer, Irene Hervey, C. Aubrey Smith, Robert Kent and Jerome Cowan. Filming took place in Hollywood from January 13 to March 7, 1939. The film was released on April 7, 1939, by Universal Pictures and had its New York premiere at Radio City Music Hall on May 4, 1939. This was another independent production in which Crosby had a financial interest.
Duffy's Tavern is a 1945 American comedy film directed by Hal Walker and written by Melvin Frank and Norman Panama. The film stars Ed Gardner, Bing Crosby, Betty Hutton, Paulette Goddard, Alan Ladd, Dorothy Lamour, Eddie Bracken and Brian Donlevy. The film was released on September 28, 1945, by Paramount Pictures.
She Married a Cop is a 1939 American comedy film directed by Sidney Salkow and written by Olive Cooper. The film stars Phil Regan, Jean Parker, Jerome Cowan, Dorothea Kent, Benny Baker and Barnett Parker. The film was released on July 12, 1939, by Republic Pictures.
