The Great Depression Changes America Forever

The Great Depression Changes America Forever:

What Kept Americans Sane During the Great Depression?

The Great Designers

The period of American history called The Great Depression occurred during the 1930s.  During this time citizens faced many hardships.  The number of poor increased dramatically due to the banking crisis and a shortage of jobs with the unemployment rate peeking at approximately 25%.  Many families were left homeless.  Children were hungry and malnourished.  Countless Americans became hopeless,  believing their lives were ruined forever.

Music and entertainment during this time were among the few outlets that gave people hope of a better future. From magazines to movies, people looked for any means to escape from the harsh realities of the day.

Inexpensive forms of entertainment were especially prized. Families often purchased highly desired items such as a radio on credit, which was also known as the installment plan, for the opportunity to listen to their favorite radio shows.

Even though times were hard and money was scarce,  families found time to have fun with each other, friends and neighbors.  Board games such as "Monopoly" and "Scrabble" were first sold during the 1930s.

Neighbors also got together to play card games such as Whist, Pinochle, Canasta and Bridge. Playing cards, horseshoes,  dominos, or putting together a complex puzzle with hundreds of pieces helped families pass the time.

Comic books, which cost on average a dime each, were an affordable means of entertainment during the Depression.

The comic book character Batman and many "superhero" characters first appeared during the 1930's.

Many of the comic heros inhabited a world overrun by crime and hopelessness which are two themes that Americans dealt with during the depression.

Batman had no super powers other than his ingenuity and drive to fight crime and injustice. In this regard, he personified the power of the average person to use "whatever it takes" to rise above the hopelessness of the times. Much like Batman used his skills to overcome obstacles, average Americans were encouraged by the Roosevelt administration to do the same.

While the 1930s were difficult for many businesses, magazine publishing flourished! From the 'movie star rags' to editorial magazines, the wide range of content appealed to  Americans who wanted to distract themselves from their current hardships.

Pre-depression era magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post, Time, and Reader's Digest continued to sell well. New periodicals, such as Modern Screen and Fortune, were launched and continue to be published today.

The Great Depression marked a change in popular musical styles. Songwriters wrote music that identified with the  mood of the times or sought to keep people's minds off their hardships. While music was an extremely popular form of entertainment, record sales dropped significantly due to people's economic circumstances.

The song, "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime" is considered the anthem of the Great Depression because of its honest portrayal of the difficulties faced by the average American. 

Listen or read more about the song in this NPR story:

A Depression Era Anthem for Our Times

During the Great Depression somber blues and confessional ballads became very popular lamenting the tough times experienced by much of the nation. Tales of hardships suffered and the feelings felt by many were described by artists such as Barbecue Bob in, "We Sure Got Hard Times Now".

On the other hand musicians such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Fletcher Henderson, also associated with the Harlem Renaissance, were still very influential during the Great Depression with their complex and exhilarated forms of jazz.  For many people chasing the Depression blues away with music was far more beneficial than celebrating its woes.

Woody Guthrie was born in 1912 in Okamah, Oklahoma. In 1935 he experienced Black Sunday, the worst dust storm of the decade resulting in a "Dust Bowl" that killed crops and devastated farms in Oklahoma and Arkansas. The Dust Bowl greatly worsened life for people who were already suffering from the Great Depression.  Like so many others of the era,  Guthrie was unable to make a living. He left his wife, three children and his first band to look for work in California. While hitchhiking he wrote folk songs about the Dust Bowl, migrant workers, corrupt politicians and union organizing.   His song Talking Dust Bowl Blues (lyrics) provides a glimpse into farm life before and after the Dust Bowl. 

"A folk song is what’s wrong and how to fix it or it could be who’s hungry and where their mouth is or who’s out of work and where the job is or who’s broke and where the money is or who’s carrying a gun and where the peace is." Woody Guthrie 

Dance Marathons, an American phenomenon of the 1920s and 1930s, were human endurance contests in which couples danced almost non-stop for hundreds of hours (as long as a month or two), competing for prize money.  They continued into the 1930s.  They were said to mirror the marathon of desperation Americans underwent during the Great Depression.  They were also an escape of the harsh realities of daily life.

Radio provided a source of entertainment which reached millions of American homes within three years.  Radio was the nation's first mass medium.  It linked the country and ended the isolation of rural residents.  Radio was so important that the 1930 Census asked if the household had a radio.  Radio provided free entertainment and connected country people to world events.  Although radio programs were entertaining, they had to be paid for; and this brought about the commercial. Everything from aspirin, toothpaste, soft drinks, etc. were advertised on radio. The commercials were a huge success and businesses saw sales of their brand names boom. Thus "radio's" effect on the economy was immense.  During the Great Depression, the significance of the radio for rural families grew despite the lean conditions.  Families struck with poverty would rather choose to give up an icebox or a bed before they would part with their radios.  The radios symbolized lifelines to the outside world.

Radio broadcasts helped Americans cope with the tough times allowing them to laugh and cry, living the lives of soap opera characters and brave men such as the Lone Ranger and Green Hornet.  Nothing beats the blues like music.  On their radios, people listened to Bing Crosby and the Mills Brothers as well as Guy Lombardo's orchestra and the Grand Ole Opry. Families that could not afford the costs of attending baseball games could now listen live  and cheer on their heros like Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio.  Special events like the horserace between Seabiscuit and War Admiral became a national event due to the radio.  Nearly 40 million people listened to this race. Americans learned of news events within hours now instead of days.  They heard the famous words of Herb Morrison, "Oh the humanity," as he described the Hindenburg catching on fire.

Many businesses went bankrupt or suffered major losses during the Depression. The movies were an exception; in fact, they gained popularity and were so successful that many historians of the Depression consider this time period to be their golden age.

Full-length motion pictures were most popular.  Disney studio's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first feature-length cartoon, was released in 1937. 

Movies provided an escape from the daily hardships of the Great Depression.  They allowed a peek into the lives of high society.  Not only were people fascinated by the movies themselves, they wanted to know all about the glamorous lives of the actors who starred in them.

People particularly loved movies starring the handsome Clark Gable, mysterious Bette Davis, sexy Greta Garbo, swashbuckling Errol Flynn, dangerous Humphrey Bogart, and precocious Shirley Temple. 

Musicals starring the elegant dance team of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were also favorites. W.C. Fields, Bob Hope and the Marx Brothers made comedic films which made people laugh and forget their difficulties.

During the Great Depression many immigrants that came to America worried that perhaps they had made a mistake. On the other hand, many citizens of the United States believed that some of the problems the country was facing were directly caused by the large number of  people from "The Old Country" immigrating into the US. Universal Studios produced numerous horror films during the 1930's, believing that watching them would provide the masses a way to release their inner fears. Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932),  and The Wolf Man(1941) all had common themes. Providing more than a simple distraction from the horrors of life during the Depression era, these movies reflect the hopes, dreams, and fears of Americans during this most difficult time.

"...of all of the types of films, horror films are the greatest reflection of modern culture. The hopes and fears of society are displayed in full motion in the horror films of the day." L. Vincent Poupard

Laughing was another way to escape the woes of the Great Depression.  The clown like appearance of an underprivileged gentleman made Americans laugh as Charlie Chaplin, who was known as the "little tramp", ate his boot for Thanksgiving in the movie The Gold Rush.  The audience could relate because of the desperate times experienced during the Great Depression.

Since sound in movies was a recent invention with the introduction of "talkies" in 1927, Depression era musicals were popular and often included themes of the unemployed, or "down and out " making it big.  Listen to the lyrics of "We're in the Money" from The Gold Diggers of 1933.   

By most accounts The Great Depression began in 1929 with the crash of the stock market and lasted until the the beginning of World War II. It defined a generation of Americans in which every family felt its effects in one way or another, and all sought a way to deal with it and get some form of relief. Entertainment in some form was necessary to cope with the daily challenges, and with hard economic times people had to be creative in how they were entertained. In the end survival was the key and we still see the effects in much of daily life today.