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The Great Depression and Franklin D Roosevelt

Updated September 18, 2022
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The Great Depression and Franklin D Roosevelt essay

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Despite following the start of The Great Depression and leading into World War II, the 1930s surprisingly saw significant development of what is now one of the largest entertainment industries in the world, Hollywood. This time period is frequently referred to as

“The Golden Age of Hollywood” or the period of classical Hollywood cinema since it saw the production of more than fifty “classic” American films such as Gone With the Wind and the Wizard of Oz. The eight large entertainment companies (Paramount Pictures, Fox Film Corporation, Loew’s Incorporated, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Warner Bros., RKO Radio Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Universal Pictures, United Artists) produced a record thousands of films within the decade, which really brought film into a larger aspect of American culture with 80 million Americans watching at least one film a week but was only possible with major developments in technology.

Silent film faded away and in came what was then dubbed a “talkie,” or a picture with sound thanks to the introduction of short-motion films and then full-color films, almost necessary advancements in convincing a country in great economic despair to use its scarce amount of money on entertainment. Convinced indeed were Americans and thus, by the end of the decade there were more movie theaters than banks and the film industry ranked 14th by revenue, second in profit share of executives and stars like Gary Cooper whose salary in 1938 was a whopping $370,214 or more than six million dollars today.

This, again, can seem counterintuitive to both the country and world’s economic states at the time; the average annual salary of a working American was just $890 in 1937. The stock market crash had lead to widespread poverty and unemployment in not just the United States but other great powers with economic ties like Germany, which was already dealing with its repercussions from World War I. A series of severe dust storms in the Great Plains of the American West that destroyed farms and crops, referred to as the Dust Bowl, additionally had detrimental effects on the agricultural sector and wealth further disintegrated.

President Herbert Hoover had tried his best to balance the budget but raising taxes ultimately failed and Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected in 1933. As president, Roosevelt initiated a multitude of reforms in his infamous “New Deal” purposed for immediate relief from The Great Depression but often faced pushback from conservative Republicans who weren’t too fond of programs hostile towards businesses, even if they were helping the unemployed, youths, elderlies, farmers, and other groups critically impacted by the economic downfall. Thus, America wouldn’t see true economic prosperity until after the second world war and most of the country stayed financially stressed, despite some successful projects.

Politically, America clearly had so many other issues to focus on that the large studios were able to take advantage of the situation and implement the “studio system” control over the film industry. This process of vertical integration over the creation of film, in the way that Warner Bros. bought a theater chain and production company immediately after its successful “The Jazz Singer” and two, even more successful sequels, allowed for such studios to dominate the entertainment field with very little regulation. Anti-trust laws were not strongly taken into consideration against the companies until a much later Supreme Court case in 1948 so for the time being, the “Big Five” (Paramount Pictures, Fox Film Corporation, Loew’s Incorporated, MGM, Warner Bros., RKO Radio Pictures) were given free reign to set the market and drive down smaller companies, effectively eliminating much competition and monopolizing the industry.

The majority of Americans as well, however, were similarly unfocused on the behind-the-scenes doings of the film companies and instead looked to the scenes on the screen. After all, it only took fifteen cents to go see a movie that would distract them from the economic depression and hard realities of their everyday lives.

Despite the enormous sums of money being made during Hollywood’s golden age, the film industry was a Goliath with a weak spot. Film workers were the backbone of the industry, and a single strike could destroy a studio by ruining projected timelines and budgets. Recognizing this weakness, two Chicago mobsters decided to fly towards the silver screen and take Hollywood hostage.

Frank Nitti, a former associate of Al Capone’s, and William “Willie” Bioff took hold of the International Alliance of Theatrical State Employees (IATSE), the largest union in Hollywood. They manipulated the union in order to intimidate executives, suggesting that there would be “accidents” on set if they was not paid large sums of money or holding movies hostage by threatening workers’ strikes if they were not paid ransom money. If the mobsters were feeling more cooperative, they would instead take payments from executives in exchange for suppressing the wages of their union workers.

This contentious power dynamic played out in the shadows of the glittering screens of the Hollywood Golden Age. Behind closed doors, executives had to do everything in their power to appease Nitti and Bioff while keeping their association with the mobsters hidden from the public. While it may seem preposterous today, that’s show business—at least it was in the 1930s.

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The Great Depression and Franklin D Roosevelt. (2022, Sep 18). Retrieved from https://sunnypapers.com/the-great-depression-and-franklin-d-roosevelt/