Timelines for year 1929
William S. Hart
Was a friend of legendary wild west lawman Wyatt Earp, and along with fellow silent movie cowboy star Tom Mix, was a pallbearer at Earp's funeral in 1929.
Lina Basquette
Adolph Hitler's favorite actress. She also enjoyed a great deal of popularity in the Soviet Union, due in part to her film The Godless Girl (1929).
Mary Fabian
She did the singing voice for the role of Christine in the 1929 reissue of The Phantom of the Opera as well as her own singing voice in the role of Carlotta, who was originally protrayed by Virginia Pearson.
Dody Goodman
She was known for obfuscating her age. Some reference books listed her age as 1929, 15 years younger than she was.
Tony Goldwyn
His grandfathers, Samuel Goldwyn and Sidney Howard, were frequent collaborators for many years. They worked on a total of eight films together: Bulldog Drummond (1929), Raffles (1930), One Heavenly Night (1931), Arrowsmith (1931), The Greeks Had a Word for Them (1932), and Dodsworth (1936).
William Fox
In 1929, Loew's Inc. President Nicholas Schenck agreed to sell a controlling interest in the firm to Fox Film Corp. for $10 million that would have given Fox control of Loew's theater chain and its MGM studio subsidiary. Fox was interested in boxing in Adolph Zukor, owner of Paramount Pictures, who also was anxious to acquire Loew's. Fox claimed that the late Marcus Loew (who died unexpectedly in 1927) and Zukor, who had been partners in vaudeville, had a gentleman's agreement in which their theater chains would only show each other's films and keep out other studios' pictures. Acquiring Loew's would allow Fox to release his pictures in the Loew's theater chain and force out Paramount product, thus giving him a competitive edge over Zukor and Paramount. Fox made an agreement with Schenck by which the Loew's boss would assemble enough shares of stock, in secret, to give Fox control. The $10-million price included a $2.5-million premium for Schenck. Fox planned to merge MGM with his own studio, a merger that would require the approval of the Justice Department's Anti-Trust Divison, which Fox expected would approve the deal despite the huge concentration of production and power it would put in the hands of one man and one studio. Fox lobbied the government in order to try to get the deal pushed through. When MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer got wind of the deal, he used his connections with the administration of US President Herbert Hoover to nix the deal, in order to protect himself from being forced out from his own company (as had happened to other studio moguls in the past, most notably Samuel Goldwyn, who had been squeezed out of both Paramount Pictures and his own Goldwyn Studios [which later became Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer]). Fox had made a tactical error in trying to keep Mayer in the dark and forcing him out, and he tried to rectify that mistake by offering Mayer $2 million. Although Fox's political clout got him in to plead his case to President Hoover, Mayer's political connections proved to be the stronger. Fox's plan was done in when his creditors, to whom he owed more than $50 million due to expansion and the retrofitting of his studios and theaters for sound, began making financial demands. After at first seeming to go along with the acquisition, the Justice Department reversed course and filed an anti-trust suit against Fox, who had been hurt in a car crash in the summer and had had to convalesce for weeks. The stock market crash in October drove the final nails into the deal's coffin. By 1930 Fox was forced to sell the film company that bore his name, and several years later he went bankrupt. The financially troubled Fox Film Corp. was absorbed by Darryl F. Zanuck's much smaller 20th Century Pictures, creating 20th Century-Fox in 1935, with Joseph M. Schenck as president. Joe Schenck's brother, Loew's President Nick Schenck, partially financed the deal. Mayer, on his part, would replace Zukor as the most powerful movie magnate in Hollywood in the 1930s and would become the highest paid corporate employee in America.
Forced to sell the studio to bankers for $18 million in 1929 after losing his fortune in the stock market crash. He faced a federal antitrust investigation.
Bebe Daniels
Her second cousin, Dr. Lee De Forest, "the father of sound", frequented the set of Rio Rita (1929) while she rehearsed. He was instrumental in improving the sound quality of the early talkies and significantly helped her career through his technical expertise.
Charles Arnt
In 1929, as a student at Princeton University, he founded the University Players along with fellow students Henry Fonda, Joshua Logan and James Stewart.
Regis Toomey
He had starring roles in the classic pre code films, Alibi (1929) and Other Men's Women (1931).
Eddie Cantor
Following his financial loss in the stock market crash of 1929, Eddie Cantor wrote a short humorous book entitled, "Caught Short."