1929 - 1945 the glamor years1929 - 1945 the glamor years
 4 Modern Industrial Buildings, Automotive Giants
The Chicago Century of Progress fair, in 1933, introduced many novel schemes of construction, most of which were too bizarre to be practical. The chief advantage to be gained from a study of this Chicago fair lay in the use of color in architecture and in the development of lighting effects, which began to play an increasingly extensive role in the design of buildings after 1930. Read More
4 Living in Advanced Technology
In 1933 General Electric launched a new, "streamlined" refrigerator, designed by Henry Dreyfuss, which instantly made its competitors look oldfashioned. Westinghouse employed Donald Dohner as an... Read More
4 Hollywood Glamor
The fashion image most associated with the 1930s - a decade of Depression, unemployment, fascism and the approach of war - is probably the glamorous Hollywood pale satin evening gown, a bias-cut creation slithering to the floor, lowbacked and clinging... Read More
4 Filmic Images of Women
The movie stars became role models to their female fans in many senses: the fans demonstrated their admiration and loyalty by attending all of their favorite stars' movies and buying whatever product they endorsed. Peroxide sales went up when Jean Harlow became a blonde; fashions, especially by designer Adrian who dressed Joan Crawford in all of her films, were copied for the masses. Read More
4 Makeup and Cosmetics
Even more important than Hollywood's influence on clothes was the way in which the movies popularized cosmetics. In the 18th century and earlier, powder and paint had been freely worn, but for most of the 19th century makeup had been taboo for respectable women. Read More
4 Word Jazz
It was in Chicago that the word "jazz" (or "jaz" as it was sometimes spelled at first) came into general usage. On October 27, 1916, Variety commented as follows: "Chicago has added another innovation to its list of discoveries in the so-called 'jazz bands.' The jazz band is composed of three or more instruments and seldom plays regulated music. The College Inn and practically all the other high-class places of entertainment have a jazz band featured, while the low cost makes it possible for all smaller places to carry their jazz orchestras. Read More
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4 Wall Street Crash
In the autumn of 1929 came the catastrophe which so few had anticipated but which in retrospect seems inevitable--prices broke on the New York Stock Exchange, dragging down with them in their fall, first the economy of the United States itself, subsequently that of Europe and the rest of the world. Read More
4 Bing Crosby's Sweet Music
The improvement in the quality of broadcast sound that followed the introduction of the electric microphone in the mid- 1920s led to a corresponding rise in the quality of radio receivers. It became possible to discern greater delicacies of instrumental sound and of the singing voice, particularly in the middle range. Read More
4 Radio Music at Home and Wartime Dance Halls
As the United States pulled out of the Depression, a more vigorous style of band music began to be widely heard. Reviving fortunes far the record industry - in particular Decca's introduction of a cheap (35-cent) record - played a part, but radio... Read More
4 V For Victory
A slogan devised in 1941 by the British propaganda offices as a rallying cry for the citizens of European countries which had been occupied by German troops during World War II. Read More
4 Depression Era and Sports
The Depression left an uneven pattern of poverty and prosperity. Like the rest of the service sector and the mass entertainment industry, spectator sports expanded during the Depression, as those who could afford it grasped the alternative vision of fun... Read More
4 Alternatives to Conventional Sports
There was still opposition, on both moral and biological grounds, to women competing in vigorous sports. Sports heroines such as the Americans Mildred "Babe" Diedrikson and "the world's fastest woman", Helen Stevens, who disavowed conventional images... Read More
4 The Nazi Olympics
The 1936 Olympics were the first Games to be televised, although only to 160,000 people in and around Berlin. They became a stage for the incitement of nationalism and ritualistic struggle of one nation... Read More
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 4 Dominance of the Big Five
By the time of the Wall Street Crash in 1929 Hollywood had switched over entirely to "talkies", but even six months later no more than half of the 22,624 movie theaters in the United States... Read More
4 Morals at the Movies
Few Americans understood the economic causes of the Crash, but there was a widespread view that the Depression was a result not so much of the unstable economic expansion of the Jazz Age as of its hedonism. The movies themselves... Read More
4 Gone With The Wind
To provide a comprehensive service to its exhibitors, a studio also needed to keep a stable of stars representing each of the most prominent... Read More
4 The Gangster Movies
January 1938: Warner Bros announced they had bought Roland Brown's story, Angels with Dirty Faces, for $12,500, as one of the three movies starring James Cagney that they would make... Read More
4 National Film Traditions
The influence of American culture in other countries was not always welcome. In the 1930s Japan was the most prolific filmmaking country in the world, producing 400 to 600 features a year.
Like Hollywood, Japanese cinema had its established genres. The most popular were historical films, swordfight action dramas appealing... Read More
4 Nationalism in the Cinema
The United States, the largest consumer economy in the world despite the Depression, remained immune to cultural incursions from abroad... Read More
4 Film and War Propaganda
"If it's December 1941 in Casablanca," Humphrey Bogart asks Dooley Wilson, "What time is it in New York? I bet they re asleep in New York.I bet they're asleep all over America." Working with the... Read More
4 Soviet and Nazi Cinema
Among the combatant nations of World War ll, only the Soviets had a cinema which was dedicated completely to the war effort, with all its production geared "to help in the moral... Read More
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