Articles from 1937
Due to a highly involved and convoluted Mickey Mouse comic strip plot that we can’t possibly begin to understand in the least – but in 1937 managed to offend the crowned heads of the Karađorđević Dynasty in far-off Yugoslavia, all matters Mickey (films, books, comics, etc) were soon banned from the kingdom.
A report from the regional directors of the Resettlement Administration (an arm of the FDR’s Department of Agriculture) stated that:
15,000 farmers have moved out of the Dakotas, Western Kansas and Eastern Montana, leaving soil which because a aridity or exhaustion could not yield any crop… [Having moved to the states of the Pacific Northwestern] Some of them are squatting in shacks and makeshift dwellings made of tree branches, stray boards [and] strips of tin.
The cinematic tastes of ER II are, like the sovereign herself, deep and complicated. A vast number of geeks employed by this website were sent forth far across the deep green sea in order to find out what her favorite movies are, and we were not at all surprised to learn that she favors the James Bond films. Contrast those movies with the earliest of her film choices and you will be able to trace her development through the years – another article on this page makes clear that she enjoyed the Shirley Temple series – but hold the phone: the attached article from THAT SAME YEAR indicates that she enjoyed A DIFFERENT MOVIE AS WELL!
Washington Society, long shackled, kicked the lid off last week, swung into the most dazzling season it has had since the Depression spawned bread lines, and knocked the wealthy back on their heels.
Money is spinning again; hostesses are plotting major campaigns; diamonds and pearls are coming out for renewed display; caviar and terrapin reign supreme once more…
Click here to read about American high society during the Depression years.
A late Thirties article by Teet Carle (the old publicist for MGM) on how the brothers Marx figured out which gag created the biggest laughs; a few words about how the movies were tested in various cities prior to each release and how assorted jokes were recited to all manner of passersby for their effect.
Click here to read a 1951 article that Harpo Marx wrote about Groucho.
This article sums up the income data that was collected by the U.S. Department of Commerce and published in June of 1937. The report stated that
The national income increased in 1936 by a larger amount, absolutely and relatively, than in 1935. Income produced rose to 63.8 billion dollars, an increase of 8.8 billion dollars, an increase over the 1935 total.
A chart has been provided.
Click here to read about the economic disaster that 1937 was
Perhaps it was the practice of magazine editors during the Great Depression to instruct their reporters to find hope where none existed; that must have been the case for this article. The unnamed journalist who wrote this slender column reported on a few rare cases involving real jobs with real salaries being offered to recent graduates; the reporter wished to believe that this was a sign that the end was nigh – but these few jobs were flukes. The author saw economic growth where there really wasn’t any at all, however he certainly made the case for its existence. The title link posted above leads to a passage from FDR’s Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression
The old-style pogroms which made the life of Polish Jews a nightmare under the Czars have died out, yet the terror of Antisemitism still haunts their three million men, women and children, one-tenth of the country’s population.
Now they are a race apart, isolated, according to Sholem Asch (1880- 1957), a Yiddish writer who recently visited the country, like lepers. Young women in the Warsaw Ghetto look like dried skeletons, he says. Rickety children save scraps of bread from their free school lunches to feed their parents at night.
While strong on land and in the air, [the Soviet Union] is weak on the water. Most Russian ships are World War or pre-War in origin, and many of her best vessels are in the Baltic, facing Germany, or in the Far East, where Japan looms up.
The five-times divided Red Navy operates four 1911 battleships, seven cruisers, 35 destroyers, between 30 and 60 submarines, 60 gunboats, etc. Total tonnage: 200,000.
Click here to read about a Soviet submarine called the S-13…
Attached, you will find a survey of opinions drawn from diverse corners of the fruited plain regarding the restraint exercised by President Franklin Roosevelt in the wake of Imperial Japan’s sinking of the U.S. gunboat Panay:
[President Franklin Roosevelt] should be sustained in his effort to make Japan realize that she cannot continue a policy of aggression with disregard of treaties and international law. A firm policy now for law and order will save many lives.
-Russell J. Clinchy,Washington Council for International Relations
Why should a director risk it all with some anonymous film critic when a he is given the chance to review his own movie? With this thought in mind, Cecil B. DeMille (1883 – 1959) typed up his own thoughts concerning all his hard work on the 1937 film, The Plainsman, which starred Gary Cooper:
I think ‘The Plainsman’ differs from any Western we have ever seen for many reasons
– it is at this point in the article that DeMille rattles-off an extended laundry list
of reasons that illustrate the unique qualities of his Western. One of the unique aspects of the film mentioned only by publicists concerned the leading man Garry Cooper, who, being a skilled horseman from his Montana youth, chose to do most of his own riding stunts in the film, including the shot where he rode hanging between two horses.
Click here to read a 1927 review of Cecil B. De Mille’s silent film, King of Kings.
Bombs rained like hailstones and churned the waters all around the ship like geysers.’ said Earl Leaf, United Press correspondent in China and eyewitness of the sinking of the United States gunbpat PANAY
His Majesty’s Ambassador to Tokyo has made the strongest protest to the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs.’
Click here if you would like to read more about the sinking of the U.S.S. Panay.
The old flesh sculptor himself, Donald Loomis, late Physical Director for MGM Studios, let loose with some 1930s tips as to how he was able to make all those movie stars look so utterly fabulous – some are quite useful (some are pathetic).
Symmetry is the objective of Hollywood body sculptors. For bust-reduction, Loomis has a simple formula: Jump up and down with no support. Exercise in which the arms are forced backward and forward horizontally are used to develop the upper chest…
Click here to read an article about the demise of a popular 1940s hairstyle.
The New York café society of the Thirties was well documented by such swells as Cole Porter and Peter Arno – not so well-known, however, were the goings-on in the ladies’ bathrooms at such swank watering holes as El Morocco, Twenty-One, Kit Kat, Crystal Garden and the famed Stork Club. That is why these columns are so vital to the march of history – written by a noble scribe who braved the icy waters of Lake Taboo to report on the conversations and the general appearance of each of these dressing rooms.
The Rainbow Room, Waldorf, and Crystal Garden are modern and show a decorators hand, but the only really plush dressing room we know is at Twenty-One.
Strangely enough, it doesn’t matter whether it’s the ladies’ room of El Morocco, Roseland, or a tea room; the same things are said in all of them. First hair, then men, then clothes; those are the three favorite topics of conversation in the order of their importance.
Royalty and rulers of the world are movie fans. The cinema tastes of the great are disclosed for the first time in this article.
Listed in the attached 1937 Hollywood fan magazine article are the names of the favorite movies of Gandhi, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, Hirohito, Roosevelt and many more.
Click here to read about happy Hollywood’s discovery of plastic surgery…
Royalty and rulers of the world are movie fans. The cinema tastes of the great are disclosed for the first time in this article.
Listed in the attached 1937 Hollywood fan magazine article are the names of the favorite movies of Gandhi, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, Hirohito, Roosevelt and many more.
Click here to read about happy Hollywood’s discovery of plastic surgery…
Written in response to the loud cries generated by those would-be pioneering couch-potatoes, this article presents a lengthy list of all the technical difficulties the young television broadcasting industry had to deal with in 1937.
First to have commercial television, it is agreed, will be New York City, then Philadelphia. In both of these cities transmitting-stations already exist. Advancement to other urban centers will be slower. Chicago, for example will have commercial television only after it has been made to pay in New York and Philadelphia. As each city’s television enterprises become self-supporting, installation will be begun in a new center.
In New York last week, on the polished floor of the Rainbow Room, Rockefeller Center’s skyscraping night club, Hawaiians, Chinese, Scandinavians and Africans stamped whirled, leaped, and gesticulated to a dozen different kinds of music…it was an exposition of no little cultural and social importance – ‘Dance International,’ a festival showing the progress of the dance in all nations since 1900.
In their quest to document the evolution of dance in the United States, the audiences were treated to Modern Dance performances by Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Paul Weidman and Paul Haakon.
