In 1936, "Pennies from Heaven" topped the charts, Modern Times packed theaters, a stamp cost 3¢, the average home went for about $3,500.
🎵 Top songs of 1936
"Pennies from Heaven" — Bing Crosby
"The Way You Look Tonight" — Fred Astaire
"Goody Goody" — Benny Goodman & His Orchestra
🎬 In theaters
Modern Times
San Francisco
Swing Time
What things cost in 1936
$0.19
Gallon of gas
3¢
Postage stamp
$0.25
Movie ticket
$0.50
Gallon of milk
$3,500
Average home
$665
New car
$1,180
Household income
A $0.19 gallon of gas in 1936 equals roughly $4.60 in today's buying power, and the quarter movie ticket converts to about $6.00. Milk at 50 cents a gallon works out to around $12 today, which made the milkman's bill a real household line item.
The biggest moments of 1936
Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics, thrilling fans around the world.
Hoover Dam was completed, taming the Colorado River with the largest dam ever built.
Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone with the Wind was published, and Life magazine printed its first issue.
President Roosevelt won re-election in a historic landslide, carrying 46 of the 48 states.
The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened in November, beating its famous Golden Gate neighbor to completion by six months.
Su Lin, the first giant panda ever brought to America, arrived from China and instantly became the most adored animal in the country.
Toys, TV & trends of 1936
A knock-knock joke craze swept the nation, with everyone trading corny door-knocking gags.
The Green Hornet buzzed onto the radio for the first time.
Roller-skating rinks boomed, and Monopoly was still flying off store shelves after its debut.
The Phantom comic strip debuted in February, giving kids their first skintight-costumed masked hero, two years before Superman.
Gang Busters roared onto radio with sirens and screeching tires, its explosive openings giving the language the phrase 'coming on like gangbusters.'
Kids gulped their Ovaltine to join Radio Orphan Annie's Secret Society and earn the decoder badges that unlocked secret on-air messages.
The music scene
Swing went fully mainstream in 1936, and Benny Goodman made history offstage as well as on: his trio and new quartet with pianist Teddy Wilson and vibraphonist Lionel Hampton put Black and white musicians together before paying audiences, a quiet landmark in a segregated era. Down in a San Antonio hotel room in November, a Mississippi bluesman named Robert Johnson cut his first recordings, songs like 'Cross Road Blues' that would one day shape rock and roll.
At the movies
MGM's lavish The Great Ziegfeld waltzed off with Best Picture, and its star Luise Rainer began a back-to-back Oscar streak. The studio also lost its guiding genius when producer Irving Thalberg died suddenly at just 37; the Academy created the Thalberg Award in his memory the next year. Chaplin's Modern Times, meanwhile, was a farewell in disguise: it marked the last screen appearance of the Little Tramp, still stubbornly nearly silent nine years into the talkie era.
Cartoons kids loved
Popeye starred in the deluxe two-reel color special Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor
Disney's The Country Cousin won the Oscar for best cartoon
Porky Pig headlined the Looney Tunes series for Warner Bros.
The Fleischer studio fought Disney's polish with ingenuity: their two-reel Popeye color specials were filmed with the Stereoptical process, in which the drawings were photographed in front of miniature three-dimensional model sets built on a turntable, giving the cartoons an astonishing depth decades before computer graphics. Disney, for his part, was pouring everything into his feature gamble, hiring and training hundreds of new artists for the push to finish Snow White.
The world in 1936
World population: about 2.2 billion
U.S. President: Franklin D. Roosevelt
American sprinter Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the Berlin Olympic Games.
Britain had three kings in one year: George V died, Edward VIII gave up the throne to marry Wallis Simpson, and George VI took the crown.
The BBC began the world's first regular high-definition television service from Alexandra Palace in London.
Civil war broke out in Spain in July, drawing worried attention from around the globe.
1936 birthday questions
How old is someone born in 1936?
Someone born in 1936 turns 90 in 2026 (89 if their birthday has not come round yet).
What was the number one song in 1936?
"Pennies from Heaven" by Bing Crosby was among the biggest hits of 1936.
What movie came out in 1936?
Modern Times was one of the films packing theaters in 1936.
How much did gas cost in 1936?
A gallon of gas ran about $0.19 in 1936, and a postage stamp cost 3¢.
How much did a house cost in 1936?
The average home went for roughly $3,500 in 1936, against a typical household income of about $1,180.