Music

Tin Pan Alley was still cranking them out, but the movies were playing a big part in the music America and the world were listening to in 1933.

Top recordings included:

• “Did You Ever See A Dream Walking?” by Eddy Duchin
• “Lazy Bones” by the Ted Lewis Band
• “Night and Day” by Eddy Duchin
• “Stormy Weather” by Ethel Waters
• “Let’s All Sing Like the Birdies Sing” by Ben Bernie
• “You’re Getting to be a Habit With Me” by Bing Crosby and Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians

This was the year that Perry Como started singing with the Freddie Carlone orchestra and Billie Holiday began her musical career.

Two plays that would become Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movies opened.. The Gay Divorce in London (music and lyrics by Cole Porter), and Roberta on Broadway (music by Jerome Kern, Lyrics by Otto Harbach).

Born in 1933:

• Charles Osgood
• Ray Dolby (Inventor of the Dolby Sound System)
• Chita Rivera
• Kim Novak
• Yoko Ono
• Nina Simone
• Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber
• Quincy Jones
• Michael Caine
• Roy Clark
• Elizabeth Montgomery
• Jayne Mansfield
• Carol Burnett
• Rod McKuen
• Willie Nelson
• James Brown
• Joan Collins
• Joan Rivers
• Jerry Herman
• Nick Reynolds Of The Kingston Trio
• Bobby Helms
• Regis Philbin
• Conway Twitty
• Dorothy Loudon
• Jimmie Rodgers
• Robert Goulet

Broadcasting:

The long running series, “The Lone Ranger” made it’s debut on radio in 1933.

TV was very much in it’s experimental phase. W9XAL, Kansas City began broadcasting. W9XAT, Minneapolis, sent out it’s first transmission in 1933.

Sports

• Baseball: The New York Giants beat the Washington Senators, 4 games to 1, to win the 1933 World Series.
• Football: The Chicago Bears were crowned National Football League Champions, beating the Giants in the first NFL Championship game. The score was 23-21 and the game was played in Wrigley Field.

The Movies:

Hollywood pumped out dozens of films this year.. many of which are still classics including:

• Queen Christina starring Greta Garbo
• Baby Face with Barbara Stanwyck
• Bombshell starring Jean Harlow
• Dancing Lady starring Clark Gable and Joan Crawford. (Fred Astaire played himself in his first movie role.)
• King Kong starring Fay Wray and a mechanical ape
• Dinner at Eight with an all star cast
• Duck Soup starring the Marx Brothers
• Secrets with Mary Pickford in her last screen role

Top grossing films included I’m No Angel, 42nd Street, Peg O’ My Heart.

Later this year, Fred Astaire was paired with Ginger Rogers in supporting roles in Flying Down to Rio. The stars of the film were Gene Raymond and Delores Del Rio. The film also featured singer Etta Moten. In January of 1933, she became the first Black singer to perform at The White House.

The Academy Awards

Cavalcade with it’s all-star cast won the award for Best Picture.

Charles Laughton won Best Actor for The Private Life of Henry VIII, the first British film to win an Academy Award.

Katherine Hepburn picked up her first Best Actress trophy for Morning Glory, a film about an eager young actress with more beauty and drive than talent.

(The statuettes were not yet called “Oscar”, officially. Rumor has it that the Academy’s Librarian and later executive director, commented that the statues looked like her Uncle Oscar and the name stuck. Columnist Sydney Skolsky would use the name in writing about Hepburn’s win in 1933. The Academy would not start using the name, officially, until 1939. )

Quirky Facts

Frances Perkins was named U.S. Secretary of Labor in 1933, becoming the first woman member of the U.S. Cabinet.

(And for fans of the movie Dirty Dancing, this is what Jennifer Gray’s character was telling Patrick Swayze’s Johnny. Baby’s real name was Frances, “after the first woman in the Cabinet”. Was the reference lost on you, too?)

Wiley Post became the first person to fly around the world, twice! He set the record in 1931 and then beat it in 1933 by 21 hours. He and Will Rogers would die two years later, taking off from a lagoon near Point Barrow, Alaska.

1933 was the year the chocolate chip cookie was “invented”. The happy accident took place at the Toll House Inn near Whitman, Massachusetts. Ruth Wakefield was making chocolate cookies and ran out of chocolate. She tossed in some pieces of semi-sweet chocolate, figuring they would melt into the batter in the oven. They didn’t and the “Toll House” cookie was born. Or maybe it was 1934. Or 1932. At any rate, it was the early 1930’s when this cookie debuted and it’s still among the most popular cookie in America!