1940 Overview | Party Ideas | 1940 Movies | 1940 Film Stars | 1940 Pop Stars

1940's Overview:

1940
Battle of Britain
Leon Trotsky Assassinated
Nylons on the Market
Stone Age Cave Paintings Found in France

1941
Japanese Attack Pearl Harbor
Jeep Invented
Manhattan Project Begins
Mount Rushmore Completed
Nazi Rudolf Hess Flies to Britain on a Peace Mission
Siege of Leningrad

1942
Battle of Midway
Battle of Stalingrad
Japanese-Americans Held in Camps
Nazis Raze Town in Retaliation for Reinhard Heydrich's Death
T-shirt Introduced

1943
French Resistance Leader Jean Moulin Killed
Grave of Katyn Forest Massacre Found
Italy Joins the Allies
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

1944
Ballpoint Pens Go On Sale
D-Day
First German V1 and V2 Rockets Fired
Hitler Escapes Assassination Attempt

1945
FDR Dies
First Computer Built
Germans Surrender
Hitler Commits Suicide
Microwave Oven Invented
United Nations Founded
U.S. Drops Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

1946
Bikinis Introduced
Dr. Spock Publishes The Common Book of Baby and Child Care
Juan Perón Becomes President of Argentina
Nuremberg Trials
Winston Churchill Gives His "Iron Curtain" Speech

1947
Chuck Yeager Breaks the Sound Barrier
Dead Sea Scrolls Discovered
Jewish Refugees Aboard the Exodus Turned Back by British
Marshall Plan
Polaroid Cameras Invented

1948
Berlin Airlift
"Big Bang" Theory Formulated
"Dewey Defeats Truman" in the Paper
Gandhi Assassinated
Policy of Apartheid Begun
State of Israel Founded

1949
China Becomes Communist
First Non-Stop Flight Around The World
George Orwell Publishes Nineteen Eight-Four
NATO Established
Soviet Union Has Atomic Bomb

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Party Ideas:

Invitations:
One of the most important things about organizing a party is the invitation. It’s the window to your party and sets the whole mood. It needs to be novel, eye catching and full of content relevant to your party.

Search the internet for images from the 40's and use these to make your invitation or you can use our "Ration Book Invite" by clicking the link below.

Download here:

Ration Book Invite 1 x JPG Image
Ration Book Invite 1 to a page PDF format

It was a pretty dramatic decade what with World War II and the popularity of the Big Bands. Try sending out invitations attached to World War II mementos; there are loads of interesting things in army surplus stores suitable for this sort of thing.

Atmosphere:
Get down to the army surplus store and pick up bits and pieces for table decorations and dressing the room. Webbing, netting and old parachutes are really quite cheap.

Try a few sandbags by the entrance with a sentry handing out the first drink or just welcoming guests.

Post images on the walls of scenes from the 40’s

Research 40's drinks on the Internet, cocktails were very popular in the 40’s.

We carry sound effect CD’s with air raid sirens, bombers, anti aircraft guns not to mention a great selection of war time classic tunes.

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1940’s Movies:

• Adam's Rib (1949)
• The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
• The Bicycle Thief (1948)
• Brief Encounter (1945)
• Casablanca (1942)
• Citizen Kane (1941)
• Double Indemnity (1944)
• Hail the Conquering Hero (1944)
• His Girl Friday (1940)
• It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
• Laura (1944)
• The Maltese Falcon (1941)
• A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
• Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
• My Darling Clementine (1946)
• Notorious (1946)
• The Palm Beach Story (1942)
• The Red Shoes (1948)
• The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
• The Third Man (1949)

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1940’s Film Stars:

• Humphrey Bogart
• Ingrid Bergman
• The Marx Brothers
• Laurel And Hardy
• Charlton Heston
• James Stewart
• Donna Reed
• Mary Astor
• Henry Fonda
• Myrna Loy
• Fred MacMurray
• Barbara Stanwyck
• Edward G Robinson
• Orson Welles
• Joseph Cotton
• Everett Sloane
• Katharine Hepburn
• Cary Grant
• James Cagney
• Jane Darwell

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1940’s Pop Stars:

• Al Jolson
• Andrews Sisters
• Benny Goodman
• Bing Crosby
• Charlie Spivak
• Count Basie
• Dinah Shore
• Doris Day
• Eddy Howard
• Ella Fitzgerald
• Frank Sinatra
• Frankie Carle
• Frankie Laine
• Freddy Martin
• Gordon Jenkins
• Gracie Fields