February 7 – Walt Disney's second animated feature film Pinocchio premieres at the Center Theatre in New York City. Although not a box office success upon its initial release, the film receives critical acclaim and wins two Academy Awards, including one for Best Original Song for "When You Wish Upon a Star". Over the years, Pinocchio has gained a cult following and is now considered one of the greatest films of all time.
October 15 – Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator, a satirical comedy starring him, premieres in New York City. It is a critical and commercial success and goes on to become Chaplin's most financially successful film.
November 13 – World premiere of Walt Disney's animated film Fantasia at the Broadway Theatre in New York City, the first film to be released in a multi-channel sound format (see Fantasound). The film also marks the first use of the click track while recording the soundtrack, overdubbing of orchestral parts, simultaneous multitrack recording and is cited as a key chapter in the conception and development of the multi-channel surround system. Like Pinocchio, the film is a box office failure for Disney, though it recoups its cost years later and becomes one of the most highly regarded of Disney's films.
Fantasia, directed by Samuel Armstrong, James Algar, Bill Roberts, Paul Satterfield, Ben Sharpsteen, David D. Hand, Hamilton Luske, Jim Handley, Ford Beebe, T. Hee, Norman Ferguson and Wilfred Jackson
^Chapman, James (2018). Hitchcock and the Spy Film. ISBN978-1-78076-844-1. Although his most successful films of the war years were Selznick pictures – Rebecca (with a domestic box office gross of $3 million) and Spellbound ($4.9 million), with Rebecca also winning the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1940 – Hitchcock seems on the whole to have preferred his other assignments where he evidently enjoyed greater creative freedom.
^ abWarner Bros financial information in The William Shaefer Ledger. See Appendix 1, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, (1995) 15:sup1, 1-31 p 20 DOI: 10.1080/01439689508604551
^ abJewell, Richard B. (1994). "RKO Film Grosses, 1929-1951: the C.J. Tevlin ledger". Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. 14 (1): 37–49. doi:10.1080/01439689400260031.
^ abJewell, Richard B. (1994). "Appendix 1". Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. 14 (S1): 1–11. doi:10.1080/01439689408604545.
