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1930s Turning Points
(1930) The most popular film genres of the time were musicals, gangster films, newspaper movies, westerns, comedies, melodramas and horror movies.
(1932) Paramount Pictures, founded in 1912, began to curtail activities in its
East Coast studios in Astoria (Long Island, NY) and moved to Hollywood, once the conversion to "talkies" was complete.
(1932) The world's first major film festival was held in Venice, Italy.
(1933) Director Frank Capra's
Lady for a Day (1933) became the first film from Columbia Pictures to be nominated for Best Picture.
(Late 1930s) Color movies were first widely shown in the late thirties.
(1935) The first official Mickey Mouse film in color was released, Disney's
9-minute
The Band Concert
.
(1937) The first full-length animated feature, Disney's
Snow White and the
Seven Dwarfs (1937)
, was released.
(1939) This year has often been called the "greatest year in film history" by film buffs, movie historians, and critics, chiefly due to the inordinate number of classic films. Some of the greatest films ever made were released in 1939, including
Gone With the Wind
,
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
,
Mr.
Smith Goes to Washington
,
Ninotchka
,
Stagecoach
,
The Wizard of Oz and Wuthering Heights.

Screwball Comedy
● Screwball comedies started during the Great Depression in America. The purpose of this genre of comedy was to provide relief from the depression itself. The comedies consisted of fast-paced events, some on screen gags, sarcasm, screwy plot