Vintage Cars: 1939 plymouth headlight rings, sealed beam headlights, chrysler products

Question
I have a 1939 plymouth 2-door business coupe.  I am re-rebuilding it.  The
headlights and rings that were on it when I got it are round.  All of the
information I have been able to see/find shows the 1939 plymouth had
rectangular headlights and rings.  I need new rings and when I couldn't figure
out what kind of car they had come off of.  I found a guy parting out a 1939
plymouth business coupe and the headlight rings were for sale and they were
round, exactly like the ones that were on my car.  SO after all of that here is
my question, how may shapes of headlights and rings were on 1939
plymouths and do they have names that designate the shape?
Thanks for your help.

Answer
First, I apologize for taking so long to reply, but this is one of the most intriguing questions I've ever received.  I'm not sure I have the definitive answer, but I'll give it a shot.

The OFFICIAL answer is that all Chrysler products for 1939 had some sort of custom, "flared-in" headlight for 1939.  The Chrysler's was almond-shaped, DeSoto was a tall rectangle, etc...  I can find no record of any Plymouths leaving the plant with round lights.  Also, it was about this time that sealed-beam headlights became mandatory equipment on all new vehicles.  I've seen photos of 1939 Plymouths with both square and round headlights, but the round ones appear to be sitting in very large rims.  I can only come up with two explanations:

1) As the sealed-beam headlight became mandatory, some Plymouths were modified with them due to fears that the law may become retroactive, so some people (maybe due to some fear-inducing, "you-better-update-your headlights-NOW" advertising by aftermarket companies) changed them over before they were "ordered" to.

2) People felt the new sealed-beam headlight was more modern-looking, and aftermarket suppliers were only too happy to provide these as consumers demanded them.  As I look at the '39 Plymouths with round headlights, that would certainly explain why the rings looked so large, as they had to cover the area left by removing the square headlights.

As I said, there doesn't appear to be a definitive answer on this, but you might try posting your question on this site:

http://plymouthbulletin.com/smf/index.php