With Ben Oakland and Milton Drake, Berle wrote the title song for the RKO Radio Pictures release Li ' l Abner ( 1940 ), an adaptation of Al Capp's comic strip, featuring Buster Keaton as Lonesome Polecat.

The blue screen and traveling matte method were developed in the 1930s at RKO Radio Pictures and other studios, and were used to create special effects for The Thief of Bagdad ( 1940 film ).

Hitchcock's contract with Selznick began in March 1939, but only resulted in three films-Rebecca ( 1940 ) and The Paradine Case ( 1947 ) being the other two ( Notorious was sold to RKO in mid-production ).

After winning the contest in 1940, Storm made several films for the studio, RKO Radio Pictures.

The first Li ' l Abner movie was made at RKO in 1940, starring Jeff York ( credited as Granville Owen ), Martha O ' Driscoll, Mona Ray and Johnnie Morris.

* Li ' l Abner ( 1940 ) RKO

This led Miller to be given a contract with RKO in 1936 at the age of 13 ( she had also told them she was 18 ) and she remained there until 1940.

: For the 1940 film produced by RKO, see Swiss Family Robinson ( 1940 film )

Stranger on the Third Floor ( 1940 ) is a film noir thriller, featuring Peter Lorre, co-written by Nathaniel West, and released by RKO Radio Pictures.

Dave Kehr, writing for the Chicago Reader, calls the film " An RKO B-film from 1940, done up in high Hollywood expressionism.

For RKO distribution, he performed in Swiss Family Robinson and Tom Brown's School Days in 1940.

In 1940, she moved to the United States, where she was signed to a contract by RKO Studios, who promoted her as " the next Garbo ".

Fred Astaire had just left RKO, and Broadway Melody of 1940 was his first film for MGM since his small part in 1933's Dancing Lady.

Upon the invasion of France in 1940 by the Germans, Morgan left for the United States and Hollywood where she was contracted to RKO Pictures.

Gale Storm began her career at RKO Radio Pictures in 1940 but found a home at Monogram.

: Along with Gregg Toland's work on Citizen Kane ( 1941 ), Musuraca's cinematography for Stranger on the Third Floor ( 1940 ) defined the visual conventions for the film noir and codified the RKO look for the 1940s.

In 1940, Orson Welles ( Schreiber ), RKO studio head George Schaefer ( Scheider ), and screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz ( Malkovich ) struggle in making what will be considered as the greatest American film of all time, Citizen Kane.

In the movie " The Great Dictator " ( 1940 ), Charlie Chaplin satirized not only Adolf Hitler but the institution of dictatorship itself.

* to Athole Shearer ( 1928 – 1940 ), sister of movie actress Norma Shearer, mother of his daughter Barbara Hawks and son David Hawks ;

Bogart disliked the roles chosen for him, but he worked steadily: between 1936 and 1940, Bogart averaged a movie every two months, sometimes even working on two simultaneously, as movies were not generally shot sequentially.

From 1933-1947 Hollywood produced three talking films: Fighting with Kit Carson, a serial ( 1933 ), revised as a single movie: The Return of Kit Carson ( 1947 ); Overland with Kit Carson ( 1939 ); and Kit Carson ( 1940 ), starring Jon Hall in the title role.

Later, other movie technologies were adapted for use in animation, such as multiplane cameras with The Old Mill ( 1937 ), stereophonic sound in Fantasia ( 1940 ), widescreen processes with Lady and the Tramp ( 1955 ), and even 3D.

Mary Martin reprised her famous fur coat striptease of " My Heart Belongs to Daddy " in the 1940 movie Love Thy Neighbor and the 1946 Cole Porter biopic Night and Day.

There is also a booklet featuring an essay by film critic Michael Wood, Chaplin ’ s 1940 New York Times defense of his movie, a reprint from critic Jean Narboni on the film ’ s final speech, and Al Hirschfeld ’ s original press book illustrations.

In 1940, Lorre co-starred with fellow horror actors Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff in the Kay Kyser movie You'll Find Out.

It is considered a classic of children's literature and has spawned many derivative works of art, such as Disney's 1940 animated movie of the same name, and commonplace ideas such as a liar's long nose.

The author also alludes to the deaths of Bruce Wayne's parents as being on the night of a movie theater showing of Tyrone Power in The Mark of Zorro, a movie with a release date of November 8th, 1940, a time when Bruce was a youth.

The December 2, 1940 issue of Life magazine included a photo essay by Bernard Hoffman entitled, " A Small Town's Saturday Night ," depicting farmer Glen Dunn and family on a typical Saturday night in Franklin: Dad getting a hair cut, and the kids seeing a movie at the Artcraft, people at the drugstore, as well as photos of other social spots, such as Nick's Candy Kitchen and the town's " lovers ' lane.

One surprisingly risqué joke, especially for 1940, appears in the W. C. Fields movie, The Bank Dick.

A 15-chapter movie serial produced by Columbia Pictures and starring Victor Jory premiered in theaters in 1940.

* The Front Page ( 1928 ), with Ben Hecht, made into the 1931, 1945, and 1974 motion pictures of the same name, the 1940 film His Girl Friday, and the 1988 movie Switching Channels

The JEM Theatre, a recently renovated movie theater originally built in 1940, is the only one operating in Fillmore County.

In 1940, producers made a movie based on the book.

When the Chickamauga Dam was completed on the Tennessee River by the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1940, much of the city was flooded, as portrayed in the 1960 movie Wild River.

He established Posa Films in 1939, producing short films that allowed him to develop the Cantinflas character, but it was in 1940 that he finally became a movie star, after shooting Ahí está el detalle (" There's the rub ", literally " There lies the detail "), with Sofía Álvarez, Joaquín Pardavé, Sara García, and Dolores Camarillo.

* Toscanini was invited in the year 1940 to visit a movie set at the Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios.

Some of the titles included Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ( 1937 ), Pinocchio ( 1940 ), and what was then a recent release, the movie version of 20, 000 Leagues Under the Sea that was presented in 1954.

Andrews signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn and nine years after arriving in Los Angeles was offered his first movie role in William Wyler's The Westerner ( 1940 ), starring Gary Cooper.

Roy Disney's pet project was the film Fantasia 2000, a sequel to the 1940 animated movie Fantasia produced by his uncle Walt Disney.

The Mortal Storm ( 1940 ) was the last movie Sullavan and Stewart ever did together.

Following the 1940 release of Republic Pictures ' serial adaptation of Drums of Fu Manchu, the U. S. State Department requested the studio make no further films with the character as China was an ally against Japan.

On 28 October 1940 Wells was interviewed by Orson Welles, who two years previously had performed an infamous radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds, on KTSA radio in San Antonio, Texas.

Orson Welles ' radio series Campbell Playhouse broadcast a one-hour adaptation on 7January 1940 featuring Helen Hayes and Agnes Moorehead.

He made his Hollywood debut in 1935, and his career gained momentum after his Academy Award-nominated performance as Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, a 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel about an Oklahoma family who moved west during the Dust Bowl.

* Our Town ( 1940 film ), adaptation starring Martha Scott as Emily and William Holden as George Gibbs, with a musical score by Aaron Copland.

His Girl Friday is a 1940 American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks, an adaptation by Charles Lederer, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur of the play The Front Page by Hecht and MacArthur.

Bracken performed in vaudeville at the age of nine and gained fame with the Broadway musical Too Many Girls in a role he reprised for the 1940 film adaptation.

She also completed a stage adaptation of We the Living that ran briefly in early 1940.

* In Dodie Smith's novel, I Capture the Castle ( 1940 ), the book's protagonist remarks that Debussy's Clair de Lune reminds her of " Dover Beach " ( in the film adaptation of the novel, the character quotes ( or, rather, misquotes ) a line from the poem ).

In 1940, critic Alfred Harbage argued that Sir Robert Howard's play The Great Favourite, or The Duke of Lerma is an adaptation of a lost play by Ford.

The story of Pinocchio and its Disney adaptation ( Pinocchio ), which was released in 1940, is a story about a marionette.

The well-known 1940 film The Sea Hawk was originally planned as an adaptation of Sabatini's novel, but an entirely different story was substituted under the same title.

* Strange Cargo ( 1940 ; adaptation ; uncredited )

Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, who appeared in an MGM adaptation of The New Moon in 1940, regularly recorded and performed his music.

Another radio adaptation starring Joan Bennett, Tyrone Power, and Bogart, aired on The Screen Guild Theater on January 7, 1940.

Her 1940 novel, Mr. Skeffington was made into an Academy Award-nominated feature film by Warner Bros. in 1944, starring Bette Davis and Claude Rains ; and a 60-minute " Lux Radio Theater " broadcast radio adaptation of the movie on 1 October 1945.

His other notable films include Pygmalion ( 1938 ), French Without Tears ( 1940 ), The Way to the Stars ( 1945 ), and a 1952 adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.

The design was taken from both the description in Du Maurier's book and the depiction from the film Rebecca, a 1940 adaptation of the novel by Alfred Hitchcock.

Some of his other movies include If I Had A Million ( 1932 ; an episodic ensemble film in which he plays a forger hiding from police, suddenly given a million dollars with no place to cash the check ), Bolero ( 1934 ; in a rare role as a dancer rather than a gangster ), Limehouse Blues ( 1934 ; with Anna May Wong ), a brutal and fast-paced adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's The Glass Key ( 1935 ; remade in 1942 with Alan Ladd in Raft's role as a result of the success of the remake of Hammett's The Maltese Falcon ), Souls at Sea ( 1937 ; with Gary Cooper ), Spawn of the North ( 1938 ; with Raft garnering top billing over Henry Fonda and John Barrymore ), two with Humphrey Bogart: Invisible Stripes ( 1939 ) and They Drive by Night ( 1940 ), with Bogart in supporting roles, Each Dawn I Die ( 1939 ; with James Cagney and Raft as convicts in prison ), and Manpower ( 1941 ; with Edward G. Robinson and Marlene Dietrich ).

A film adaptation was released in 1940.

Some of Levine's early successes were the Italian-made Hercules films with Steve Reeves and the 1961 adaptation of The Thief of Bagdad ( which had virtually nothing to do with the 1940 version ).

He is best known for his 1940 play My Sister Eileen, its 1942 screen adaptation, and the musical Wonderful Town, which was based on his play.

The musical is the fifth adaptation of the play Parfumerie by Hungarian playwright Miklos Laszlo, following the 1940 James Stewart-Margaret Sullavan film The Shop around the Corner and the 1949 Judy Garland-Van Johnson musical version In the Good Old Summertime.