culture in the 1930s

Culture in the 1930s

23.4

MAIN IDEA

• Motion pictures, radio, art and literature blossomed during the New Deal.

WHY IT MATTERS NOW

• The films, music, art, and literature of the 1930s still captivate today’s public

NAMES AND TERMS

• Gone With the Wind

• Orson Welles

• Grant Wood

• Richard Wright

• The Grapes of Wrath

The Lure of Motion Pictures & Radio

• MOVIES:– Cost: $.25– 65% of Americans went to movies once a

week– 15,000 movie theater – more than the # of

banks, twice the number of hotels

• RADIO:– Sold: 13 million in 1930, 28 million in 1940– ½ of all American households owned a radio

Hollywood takes center stage

• Film stars:– Clark Gable– Marlene Dietrich– Jimmy Cagney

Movies of the ’30s

Gangster Films

RADIO

• Drama and variety– War of the Worlds

• Orson Welles later

directed movie classics:

“Citizen Kane” &

“Touch of Evil”

• Art, music, literature– Sober and serious– But conveyed an uplifting message about strength of

character and democratic values

• Many artists supported the New Deal’s spirit of social and political change

• Many of them also received financial support from the New Deal (Harry Hopkins and the WPA)– “They’ve got to eat just like other people.”

• Paid artists a living wage• Aimed to increase public appreciation of

art & promote positive images of America• Artists:

– created posters – taught art in schools– created murals

• These murals were inspired by Diego Rivera • Focused on dignity of ordinary Americans at work

Grant Wood’s American Gothic

Thomas Hart Benton

Dramatizing Labor struggles of the 1930s

• Music to capture the hardships of Depression America

• Supported by Federal Writers’ Project

• Future Pulitzer Prize winner – Saul Bellow – first job

• Richard Wright – African-American writer, Native Son (1940)

• Zora Neale Hurston – Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

• John Steinbeck – Grapes of Wrath (1939)

• James T. Farrell: Studs Lonigan trilogy (’32-’35)– Bleak picture of working class life in Irish

neighborhood of Chicago

• Jack Conroy: The Disinherited (1933)– Violence & poverty in Missouri coal fields

• James Agee & photographer Walker Evans teamed up for Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941)– Deals w/ difficult life of poor farmers – dignity &

strength of character

• Thornton Wilder – Our Town (a play written in ’38) beauty of small town New England life

To sum up . . .

• Though artists and writers recognized America’s flaws, they contributed positively to New Deal legacy

• Intellectuals praised the virtues of American life

• They took pride in the country’s traditions and accomplishments.