In November-December 1938 poet Stephen Vincent Benet, novelist Willa Cather, novelist-playwright Thornton Wilder, and novelist Ellen Glasgow were elected to fill vacancies in the fifty-member American Academy of Arts and Letters.

In January 1930 novelist Louis Bromfield went to Hollywood to write screenplay for the new sound motion pictures, telling reporters: "There is intelligence and talent gathering in Hollywood as it never gathered there before. . . . I am fed up with Europe. It gives me a stomach-ache."

In December 1938 the Limited Editions Club presented a gold medal to literary critic Van Wyck Brooks, proclaiming his 1937 Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Flowering of New England "the most likely to become a classic" of all the books published in the last three years.

In March 1937 director George Cukor said the actress he selected to play Scarlett O'Hara in the movie version of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind...