Thornton Wilder's Our Town is staged in New York. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings writes The Yearling. Popular songs include Flat Foot Floogie With a Floy Floy, You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby, Jeepers Creepers and September Song. Hungarian Lajos Biro invents the ballpoint pen. The sports scene includes the Columbus Rainbows, a new roller-derby team.
Coal miners stage a nationwide strike.
The Depression eases as war production gears up. John Steinbeck publishes The Grapes of Wrath. Hollywood produces Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. Black performer Marian Anderson is denied the right to sing at Constitution Hall in Washington. Eleanor Roosevelt resigns from the Daughters of the American Revolution in protest.