‘We’re Only Kids Now, But Someday …’: Hollywood Musicals and the Great Depression ‘Youth Crisis’

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Eldridge
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Parental Authority ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
Happy Ending ◽  
Commercial Success ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Hollywood Musicals ◽  
Depression Era ◽  
Good Cause

A number of Hollywood social dramas had documented the ‘youth crisis’ of the Depression era – limited employment prospects, vagrancy, delinquency, deprival of normal childhood. MGM’s Babes in Arms (1939), made when the worst of the economic crisis seemed over, was the first to do so in musical form. It confronted audiences not only with visions of an angry army of youth, but with young Americans facing impoverishment, crumbling parental authority, the threat of being taken into care, and incipient delinquency. Its commercial success spawned three other musicals – Strike Up the Band (1940), Babes on Broadway (1941) and Girl Crazy (1943), each of which raised the spectre of the ‘youth crisis’ that perplexed politicians, educators and sociologists. All of them had a happy ending, however, through the utopian instrument of kds putting on a musical show that demonstrated their capacity for collective action in a good cause, for still having wholesome fun, and for demonstrating patriotism.

Selling Historic Natchez to Depression-Era Pilgrims

2019 ◽  
pp. 153-210
Author(s):  
Susan T. Falck
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Racial Ideology ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Cultural Image ◽  
The World ◽  
Depression Era

This chapter recounts the early years of the Natchez Pilgrimage, a heritage tourism enterprise created by the Natchez Garden Club at the height of the Great Depression. The Pilgrimage dramatized a mix of decades-old southern racial ideology and white historical memory that was repackaged for 1930s consumption. Pilgrimage founder Katherine Miller and other leading clubwomen defined their community’s cultural image, while also redefining the meaning of traditional southern womanhood. The Pilgrimage is also the story of how one southern community’s selective expression of historical memory captivated white tourists eager to immerse themselves in the world of the Old South so vividly portrayed by popular writers and entertainers of the 1930s. The widespread appeal of the Pilgrimage home tours and pageant suggests the power of popular culture to shape a tenacious historical memory that remained in force for much of the twentieth century and lingers even today.

West, Nathanael (1903–1940)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Meehan
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
York City ◽  
Nathanael West ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Depression Era ◽  
Miss Lonelyhearts ◽  
Title Character

Nathanael West was an author and screenwriter whose work spanned the decade of the 1930s. He was born Nathan Weinstein on 17 October 1903 in New York City; his decision to change his name at the age of twenty-two reflects a life-long ambivalence toward his Jewish ancestry. He is best known as a novelist whose work teems with characters suffering from psychological traumas stemming from the bleak atmosphere of Depression-era America. He died tragically and in relative obscurity with his wife Eileen in an automobile accident outside of El Centro, California in 1940. Miss Lonelyhearts (1933), his second novel, is widely considered his best work. Unlike his first novel, The Dream Life of Balso Snell (1931) — which was influenced by French surrealism and was highly experimental in style — Miss Lonelyhearts is rooted in the everyday challenges of the Great Depression. The title character, whose actual name is never given, works as an advice columnist for a newspaper in New York City. Although he and others see the job as trivial, the desperate letters from readers begin to take a heavy emotional toll, leading him on an ill-fated search for meaning. Although the book’s plot is tragic, it also features elements of black comedy, a pervasive element of West’s work.

Elusive equalities and the Great Recession: restoration, retrenchment and redistribution

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-441
Author(s):  
Janine Brodie
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Crisis Responses

AbstractThe 2008 global financial meltdown, commonly called the ‘Great Recession’, was the most serious crisis in capitalism since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and a fundamental repudiation of neoliberal governing assumptions. This paper focuses on the contexts that informed two governmental responses to this economic crisis — restoration and retrenchment through public austerity. It explains that these responses were contingent, experimental, inequitable and, in the end, unsuccessful. Restoration and retrenchment, however, were entirely consistent with previous neoliberal crisis-responses and the abiding ambitions of this governing project. As the economic crisis crawled into the second half of a decade, the idea of inequality was increasingly identified as an underlying cause of crisis and its amelioration as a necessary part of rebuilding economies and communities in a post-crisis era. The paper tracks the case for the revival of equality politics and policies in the early twenty-first century.

Consumer Co-operation and Economic Crisis: The 1936 Roosevelt Inquiry on Co-operative Enterprise and the Emergence of the Nordic ‘Middle Way’

2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARY HILSON
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Nordic Countries ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Middle Way ◽  
Model Region

AbstractIn the wake of the Great Depression, Sweden and the other Nordic countries were widely perceived as a model region, a successful example of the ‘middle way’ between socialism and capitalism. Central to this idea were the Nordic co-operative movements, which became the focus of President Roosevelt's Inquiry on Co-operative Enterprise in Europe, conducted in 1936–7. Drawing mainly on the records of the Inquiry, the article explores the construction of the ‘middle way’ idea and examines the role of the Nordic co-operators in shaping international perceptions of the region, while also shedding new light on differences within the international co-operative movement during the same period.

The Workplace and Economic Crisis: Canadian Textile Firms, 1929–1935

2009 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 498-528
Author(s):  
Robert Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Product Line ◽  
Scientific Management ◽  
State Regulations ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Managerial Authority ◽  
The Face ◽  
Production Practices ◽  
Industrial State

The devastating conditions of the Great Depression forced manufacturers to rethink their approach to workplace control, economic policy, and production practices. Although we know a great deal about how industries responded to the depression, we know very little about the changes implemented by firms. This is unfortunate as firms in the same industry face quite different problems, possess dissimilar work cultures, construct an array of production formats, and have access to a range of financial resources. Based on a literature that documents the variety of strategies devised by industries and firms, this paper shows how four Canadian textile firms—two cotton and two hosiery and knitting—reacted to the economic crisis of the Great Depression. In the face of a different array of conditions, each firm devised different restructuring strategies. The large cotton corporations responded by combining mechanization, product line change, and a new division of labor. The smaller, more competitive hosiery and knitting firms, on the other hand, imposed either a harsh regime of scientific management or conservative, piecemeal changes. In the midst of restructuring the workplace, manufacturers reasserted their prerogatives of managerial authority, selectively took advantage of the opportunities opened up by economic crisis, and created a new regime of industrial-state regulations.

scholarly journals The “Hidden Depression” that never really went away

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-40
Author(s):  
Anaru Eketone
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Catch Up ◽  
Serious Disease

Covid-19 is a unique conjunction of a serious disease pandemic coupled with a serious economic crisis. I took the opportunity during level four lockdown to catch up on some reading. Two books in particular discussed the previous two named depressions that Aotearoa New Zealand went through. Children of the Poor by John A. Lee (1973) dealt with poverty in Dunedin following the “Long Depression” of the late 19th century and The Slump by Tony Simpson (1990) looked at the lead-up to the “Great Depression”, its effects and its lasting legacy.

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