FromThere's Magic in MusictoThe Hard-Boiled Canary: Promoting “Good Music” in Prewar Musical Films

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-178
Author(s):  
GINA BOMBOLA
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Transitional Period ◽  
Film Production ◽  
World War ◽  
Star Power ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Wide Debate ◽  
Good Music

AbstractIn 1941, Paramount releasedThere's Magic in Music, a film about a soprano who sings opera in burlesque and wins a scholarship to attend Interlochen. The movie's utopian view of art music, however, caused difficulties for the studio in regard to marketing, leading to a studio-wide debate over the film's title. Archival documents positionThere's Magic in Musicas a valuable case study for investigating the transitional period of musical film production between the Great Depression and the onset of World War II, particularly with respect to operatic musicals. Just prior to the United States’ entry into the war, Hollywood moved away from the escapist fantasy of 1930s cinema toward the realism that would mark the 1940s. To reboot fading interest in musicals, studios toyed with the formula of the backstage musical to focus more on dramatic narratives and star power.There's Magic in Musicthus serves as a lens through which we might examine changes both in musical film production and in notions of “good music” at the eve of World War II.

Bones of Contention: China’s World War II Military Graves in India, Burma, and Papua New Guinea

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linh D. Vu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Chinese State ◽  
International Status

Abstract Exploring the construction and maintenance of Nationalist Chinese soldiers’ graves overseas, this article sheds light on post-World War II commemorative politics. After having fought for the Allies against Japanese aggression in the China-Burma-India Theater, the Chinese expeditionary troops sporadically received posthumous care from Chinese veterans and diaspora groups. In the Southeast Asia Theater, the Chinese soldiers imprisoned in the Japanese-run camps in Rabaul were denied burial in the Allied war cemetery and recognition as military heroes. Analyzing archival documents from China, Taiwan, Britain, Australia, and the United States, I demonstrate how the afterlife of Chinese servicemen under foreign sovereignties mattered in the making of the modern Chinese state and its international status.

War and the Next Lesson

Money ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kenneth Galbraith ◽  
James K. Galbraith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Monetary Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Fiscal Policy ◽  
World War I ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
John Maynard Keynes ◽  
The Great Depression

This chapter examines the lessons of World War II with respect to money and monetary policy. World War I exposed the fragility of the monetary structure that had gold as its foundation, the great boom of the 1920s showed how futile monetary policy was as an instrument of restraint, and the Great Depression highlighted the ineffectuality of monetary policy for rescuing the country from a slump—for breaking out of the underemployment equilibrium once this had been fully and firmly established. On the part of John Maynard Keynes, the lesson was that only fiscal policy ensured not just that money was available to be borrowed but that it would be borrowed and would be spent. The chapter considers the experiences of Britain, Germany, and the United States with a lesson of World War II: that general measures for restraining demand do not prevent inflation in an economy that is operating at or near capacity.

From American Exceptionalism to the Great Compression

2021 ◽  
pp. 323-350
Author(s):  
Jon D. Wisman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
World War ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
First Time

The United States was an anomaly, beginning without clear class distinctions and with substantial egalitarian sentiment. Inexpensive land meant workers who were not enslaved were relatively free. However, as the frontier closed and industrialization took off after the Civil War, inequality soared and workers increasingly lost control over their workplaces. Worker agitation led to improved living standards, but gains were limited by the persuasiveness of the elite’s ideology. The hardships of the Great Depression, however, significantly delegitimated the elite’s ideology, resulting in substantially decreased inequality between the 1930s and 1970s. Robust economic growth following World War II and workers’ greater political power permitted unparalleled improvements in working-class living standards. By the 1960s, for the first time in history, a generation came of age without fear of dire material privation, generating among many of the young a dramatic change in values and attitudes, privileging social justice and self-realization over material concerns.

World War II Fiscal Policies and the End of the Great Depression

1994 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 850-868 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. Vernon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fiscal Policies ◽  
World War ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
United States Economy

The United States economy completed its recovery from the Great Depression in 1942, restoring full-employment output in that year after 12 years of below-full-employment performance. Fiscal policies were not the most important factor in the 1933 through 1940 phase of the recovery, but they became the most important factor after 1940, when the recovery was less than half-complete. World War II fiscal policies were, then, instrumental in the overall restoration of full-employment performance.

SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY AND TAX REGIMES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1763 TO THE PRESENT

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Elliot Brownlee
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
World War ◽  
Ability To Pay ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Tax Regimes ◽  
The Republic

The essay explores how ideas about social justice and economic performance shaped the debates over federal taxation in the United States since the origins of the republic. The debates were most intense during major national emergencies (the American Revolution, the Civil War, World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II), and each debate produced a new tax regime-a tax system with its own characteristic tax base, rate structure, administration apparatus, and social purpose. The criterion of "ability to pay" and a concern for economic efficiency powerfully shaped the formation of every tax regime, but "ability to pay" became the more influential of the two considerations during the national crises of the twentieth century.

The Great Depression

2009 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-121
Author(s):  
Alan Brinkley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Instability ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Great Depression

The Great Depression of the 1930s was the most catastrophic economic crisis of modern times. Although it began in the United States, it swept quickly through most of the industrial world and created untold misery to millions of people. It also created political and social instability and contributed significantly to the coming of World War II. Although the Depression has received enormous attention from historians, economists, and many others, there is still no consensus on the two major questions that the crisis raises.

Conclusion—Where Did We Go Wrong?

2021 ◽  
pp. 527-560
Author(s):  
Mark Lawrence Schrad
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
World War ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Masses

Having finished our history of prohibitionism, Chapter 18 asks: Where did our historical understandings go wrong? The chapter begins with the autumn years of Pussyfoot Johnson during the Great Depression, when prohibitionists had been thoroughly discredited. With the rise of Hayekian neoliberalism after World War II in the United States, any infringement on individual economic rights became understood as a necessary infringement on political rights too—which has made it difficult for contemporary historians to understand prohibitionism. In the 1950s and 1960s, Richard Hofstadter and Joseph Gusfield cast prohibition as solely a moral, religious issue, rather than a political or economic one, motivated by equal parts of “Marx, Jefferson and Jesus.” Ultimately, prohibitionism was a transnational normative shift about the inappropriateness of benefiting from addiction and misery of the masses, and an attempt to put the welfare of society ahead of the needs of the state.

Financing Industrial Expansion for War: The Origin of the Defense Plant Corporation Leases

1949 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald T. White
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Industrial Facilities ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
War Finance ◽  
The Government ◽  
Under Construction ◽  
New Facilities

One of the recent tendencies in the United States has been the movement away from private methods of finance to finance through government agencies, a trend that has been particularly noticeable during periods of national catastrophe such as wars and depressions. In these periods we have seen, in addition to other sources of government financing, the use of the War Finance Corporation during World War I and the use on a far larger scale of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation during the Great Depression and World War II.During World War II two thirds of a total expenditure for industrial facilities of approximately $25 billion was directly financed by the government. In contrast, during the three-year period of 1917–1919, only about one tenth of the $6 billion in new facilities under construction was directly financed by the government.

Public Accounting in the United States from 1928 to 1951

1956 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 444-471 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Don Edwards
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Basic Question ◽  
World War ◽  
Public Accounting ◽  
Accounting Practice ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Subject ◽  
External Forces ◽  
Almost Continuous

Public accounting practice and the nature of the accounting profession itself has, in the years under consideration, been shaped by a series of external forces. The Great Depression stimulated codification and regulation of practice. Further refinements of auditing procedures were introduced in the wake of the McKesson & Robbins case. The basic question of who was authorized to practice received almost continuous attention, and was the subject of much legislation and some important legal action. World War II introduced new practices, added responsibilities, and certain difficulties. And finally, the emergence of a strong national organization provided the profession with a means for achieving internal consistency and the capacity for co-ordinated reaction to rapid external change.

scholarly journals The Polish American narratives, memories and identities in the historian’s job

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 67-79
Author(s):  
Joanna Wojdon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
American History ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Large Group ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Official Sources

The article concerns different kinds of “personal” (in contrast to “official”) sources used by historians dealing with the post-World War II Polish American history. The Author considers advantages and shortcomings of analyzing personal correspondence, personal memos, diaries and memoirs, formal and informal interviews and other oral testimonies, but also difficulties and problems they bring to a researcher. Studying those types of source is however often crucial in the absence of official archival documents reflecting e.g. the ethnic identity of the large group of the Americans of Polish descent, or the backstage of the process of their assimilation and organization in the United States.

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