Hattie McDaniel with Maureen O'Hara in Gone with the Wind

1940– Dale Messick becomes first female cartoonist with Brenda Starr, Reporter
1940– Hattie McDaniel is first African-American woman to win an Academy Award for Gone with the Wind
1941–DC. Comics introduces Wonder Woman, who along with Superman and Batman becomes part of DC Comics “Big Three”

Wonder Woman

1942–Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo performs Rodeo by choreographer Agnes de Mille
1943–The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand is published
1944–actress Angela Lansbury earns her first Oscar nomination for Gaslight
1945—the first twelve women enter Harvard Medical School [not entertainment but pretty monumental]
1945–Joan Crawford wins a Best Actress Oscar for Mildred Pierce

Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce

1946–Estee Lauder sells face creams that she creates herself, commencing her cosmetics empire
1947–actress Jessica Tandy appears on Broadway in A Streetcar Named Desire and wins a Tony for her acting
1947–Celia “the Queen of Salsa Music” Cruz records in Venezuela for the first time
1948–Stella Adler, a proponent of Method acting, starts teaching principles of acting, character and analysis of scripts
1949–Yoshiko Uchida publishes her first of 28 childrens books, The Dancing Kettle and Other Japanese Folk Tales
1949–Actress, writer and producers brings The Goldbergs, the first family sitcom, to television

source:

Her Story: A Timeline of the Women Who Changed America

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