Film
Film in the 1930s: A Sweet Escape
On October 29, 1929, the stock market crashed. This marked the end of an era of nonchalant, carefree behavior and the beginning of an incredibly difficult struggle nationwide. During the Great Depression, many Americans were faced with the challenge of basic survival, many of them living in small shantytowns called “Hoovervilles”. These times were so hard some people just gave up and committed suicide. However, Americans still found a way to escape the nightmare and enjoy themselves for a few hours by going to the movies.
By 1933, unemployment throughout the nation peaked at twenty-five percent and many more found it hard to provide their family with enough food. Yet somehow sixty to seventy million people still paid money to sit in the local movie house for a few hours. Historian Dixton Wector believes that, “The content of the motion picture still was designed for escape, the majority reflecting the tastes of tired or jaded adults seeking a never-never land of luxury and melodrama, sex and sentiment.” In other words, Hollywood created movies with characters that the everyday American citizens could relate to. These characters were tired men whom had no choice but to stand in a breadline and farmers whom could not afford to attempt to revive their dying crops. People loved these types of movies because, not only could they relate to them, but the movie always had a happy ending which gave the public hope that they would not live in poverty forever.
Despite the fact that many businesses were forced to close due to the Depression, the movie business thrived. The 1930s were known as “The Golden Age of Hollywood” because of the advancement of technology used to produce movies. The first major breakthrough during the “Golden Age” was movies with sound, known as “talkies”. This allowed the actors to do the actual talking in a motion picture as opposed to title-cards being shown after every clip. The only downfall to this revelation was that various silent movie stars could not make the transition to movies with sound, most likely because their voice did not match their physique. Another innovation that came about during the 1930s was the production of movies in color. The first movie in color was created by Thomas Edison. However, the first few color films were two-color, meaning that only red and green were used in the movie. In 1932, the three-color camera was invented. This new invention made Technicolor films a reality. In the later years of the decade, special-effect processes were improved, making it possible to film a movie on a set rather than on-location.
The film industry was crucial to the survival of our nation as a whole. Movies, especially musicals, greatly boosted the morale of the American public and gave them something to focus on, other than their problems at home. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “During the Depression, when the spirit if the people is lower than at any other time, it is a splendid thing that for just fifteen cents an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his troubles.”