Citizen Kane is written, directed and starred in by 26-year-old Orson Welles

John Huston, for his first film, directs Humphrey Bogart in the third screen adaptation of The Maltese Falcon

US author Eudora Welty publishes her first collection of stories, A Curtain of Green

President Roosevelt defines to Congress his concept of Four Freedoms – of speech, of worship, from want, from fear

Congress passes the Lend-lease Act, enabling President Roosevelt to provide much needed help to US allies

Roosevelt appoints Douglas MacArthur commander of US forces in the Far East

US choreographer Merce Cunningham begins a long creative partnership with the composer John Cage

Aaron Copland's ballet Rodeo has choreography by Agnes de Mille

US poet Randall Jarrell publishes his first collection, Blood for a Stranger

Michael Curtiz directs Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca

James Cagney stars in the screen musical Yankee Doodle Dandy, directed by Michael Curtiz

Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy star in the first of many films together, Woman of the Year

Thornton Wilder's play The Skin of our Teeth has a mixed reception at its New Haven premiere

US crooner Bing Crosby sings Irving Berlin's White Christmas

US physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer is appointed director of the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon

US general Dwight Eisenhower is appointed to command Allied landings in north Africa

Enrico Fermi and his team in Chicago achieve the first nuclear chain reaction

The musical Oklahoma! launches the partnership of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II

11-year-old Elizabeth Taylor co-stars with a collie in Lassie Come Home

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is repealed in the US, but there are to be only 105 Chinese immigrants each year

The Allied destruction of U-boats climbs to its highest level in the Battle of the Atlantic, with 56 sunk in two months

Carl ('Tooey') Spaatz is appointed to command the US Strategic Air Forces in Europe

Saul Bellow publishes his first novel, Dangling Man, a study of an intellectual adrift as he waits to be drafted into the army

Composer Leonard Bernstein and choreographer Jerome Robbins work together on the ballet Fancy Free

Fancy Free becomes On the Town, a Broadway musical by Leonard Bernstein, directed by Jerome Robbins