'Best' Hollywood Movies of the 1930's

The two best decades of Hollywood cinema were the 1930's and 1940's. But the 1930's was where it all started. Once talkies came into being it took a little while to free the camera up again and create the works of art that equaled that in the 1920's. The 1930's Hollywood Studio films set the standard, the formula, the paradigm, or whatever you want to call what became know as Hollywood cinema. [Okay, the 1920's films did too but really the silent film era stands alone - in my opinion. While the 1930's was the flowering of the talkie era, which we are basically still in.]

There are so many good films from the 1930's that there is no way to narrow it all down to ten or twenty films. And I won't even try to put them in any real order other than alphabetically. Therefore, this is not a definitive list* - but instead a list of films I really like and think you should see if you want to enjoy the best that Hollywood had to offer in the 1930's.

[This list is still being compiled and considered].

Headliners: [aka: Films everyone should see]

42nd Street [33] [Warner Bros.] Bacon / Berkeley
The Adventures of Robin Hood [38] [MGM] Curtiz/Keighley
Bride of Frankenstein [35] [Universal] Whale
Bringing up Baby [38] [RKO] Hawks
City Lights [31] [United Artists] Chaplin
Death Takes a Holiday [34] [Paramount] Liesen
Dodsworth [36] [Goldwyn] Wyler
Gone With The Wind [MGM**] Fleming
Grand Hotel [32] [MGM] Goulding
Gunga Din [39] [RKO] Stevens
History is Made at Night [37] [United Artists] Borzage
I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang [32] [Warner Bros.] LeRoy
It Happened One Night [34] [Columbia] Capra
King Kong [33] [RKO] Cooper / Schoedsack
Mutiny on The Bounty [35] [MGM] Lloyd
My Man Godfrey [36] [Universal] Le Cava
Ninotchka [39] [MGM] Lubitsch
Nothing Sacred [37] [United Artists**] Wellman
Only Angels Have Wings [39] [Columbia] Hawks
The Public Enemy [31] [Warner Bros.] Wellman
The Roaring Twenties [39] [Warner Bros.] Walsh
Ruggles of Red Gap [35] [Paramount] McCarey
The Scarlett Empress [34] [Paramount] von Sternberg
Stagecoach [39] [United Artists] Ford
The Thin Man [34] [MGM] Van Dyke
Trouble in Paradise [32] [Paramount] Lubitsch
The Wizard of Oz [39] [MGM] Fleming

Below the Fold [aka: Quality films that don't get the headlines]

Becky Sharp [35] [RKO] Mamoulian
Bullets or Ballots [36] [Warner Bros.] Keighley
Fog over Frisco [34] [Warner Bros.] Dieterle
Freaks [32] [MGM] Browning
The Invisible Man [33] [Universal] Whale
The Lost Squadron [32] [RKO] Archainbaud
Man's Castle [33] [Columbia] Borzage
Midnight [39] [Paramount] Leisen
Prisoner of Shark Island [36] [Fox] Ford
Queen Christina [33] [MGM] Mamoulian
Red Dust [32] [MGM] Fleming
Three Comrades [38] [MGM] Borzage
Three on a Match [32] [Warner Bros.] LeRoy
The Whole Town is Talking [38] [Columbia] Ford