Twenty-Cent Movie
Students will research Thirties topics and present their
reports as a series of web pages on StudentNet.
Annotated List of Topics
How
to Get a StudentNet account
Grading
Criteria for Student ResearchProjects
How
to Create and Post Web Pages
Completed Student Projects,
Fall 2000
Norman Bel Geddes (1893-1958),
American stage designer and industrial designer. One of the most imaginative
set designers of the first half of the 20th century, Geddes was noted especially
for his sculptural settings and carefully controlled lighting. From the
1920's, Geddes devoted increasing attention to industrial design, producing
plans for streamlined automobiles and trains, airplane interiors, and the
first electric typewriter. He also designed museum and theater buildings
and created the World of Tomorrow at the 1939 New York World's Fair.
Father Divine (c.
1875-1965), African American religious cult leader. He was born George
Baker near Savannah, Ga., and began preaching in the South about 1900.
About 1915 he moved to New York, where he founded his Peace Mission Movement
and later adopted the name Father Divine.
Reginald Marsh
(1898-1954), American figurative painter known for his New York City scenes.
Marsh's compositions, characteristically teeming with figures
but muted in color, exalt the dynamism of urban life. Many
of his best works date from the 1930s, including The Bowery (Metropolitan
Museum, New York); Why Not Use the El? and Twenty-Cent Movie
(both in the Whitney Museum, New York); and Tattoo and Haircut
(Art Institute of Chicago). Marsh taught at the Art Students League (from
1934) and also at the Moore Institute of Art in Philadelphia (from 1949).
He also painted murals for the Post Office, Washington, D.C., and the Customs
House, New York City.
Twenty-Cent
Movie
Abraham Lincoln Brigade,
a force of 2,800 American volunteers who fought on the side of the Spanish
republic during the Spanish Civil War (19361939). The Lincoln Brigade (technically,
a
battalion), together with some 50 other international volunteer units,
was organized by the
Comintern (Communist International) as a means of assisting the popular
army of the republic
against the military revolt led by Gen. Francisco Franco and supported
by Hitler and Mussolini.
Margaret Bourke-White(1906-1971),
American photographer who recorded on film many of the important events
of the first half of the 20th century. Beginning her career in the late-1920s
as an architectural and industrial photographer, she did industrial photography
for Fortune magazine from 1929 to 1933 and also established
herself as a free-lance commercial photographer. She was one of the original
photographers for Life magazine, for which she worked from
1936 until 1969. During World War II she was accredited as an Army Air
Force photographer. In the postwar years she worked in India, where she
photographed Gandhi in 1946, and in South Africa and Korea.
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC),one
of the administrative agencies established by the federal government to
combat the effects of the Great Depression, the CCC ultimately employed
2.5 million young men on conservation and reforestation projects.
EPIC Campaign, Gubernatorial
campaign of radical Upton
Sinclair (perhaps best known for his authorship of The Jungle,
an expose of the Chicago meatpacking industry), who ran for governor of
California in 1934 as a Democrat, vowing to End Poverty in California.
He lost the election after a savage attack by his opponents.
Josephine Johnson,
(1910-90),
American writer who won the Pulitizer Prize for her novel Now in November
(1934) and also published
Winter Orchard and Other Stories (1935),
Year's
End (1937), and Jordanstown (1937) during the decade, while
also participating in activist union groups on behalf of dispossessed and
poverty-striken victims of the Depression. Among her later works
is the autobiographical
Seven Houses (1973). (Raub)
The River,1937
documentary by film maker Pare Lorentz (who also directed The Plow That
Broke the Plains the previous year). Focused upon the Mississippi
River and its tributaries, the film is a "haunting, memorable document
of misuse and an uplifting tribute to conservation." (Barsam
1973, pp. 102-03)
Diego Rivera (1886-1957),
Mexican painter who led the great mural-painting movement that flourished
in Mexico after the Revolution of 1910. The period of social upheaval
that followed the 1910 revolution inspired a nationalistic fervor among
young Mexican artists, and Rivera had a desire to be part of the creation
of a new art on revolutionary themes and to place these works not in museums
and galleries but in the great public buildings of the nation. In the early
1930s Rivera worked in the United States. He painted frescoes for the Detroit
Institute of the Arts and the lobby of Rockefeller Center in New York City.
The latter, depicting the modern industrial worker at a historical crossroad,
offended the sponsors, who ordered that the work be halted. (Rivera subsequently
reproduced this mural in the Palace of Fine Arts, Mexico City.)
Paul Robeson (1898-1976),
American actor and singer who was one of the great black performers
of his time and became a subject of controversy because of his leftist
political views. Born in Princeton, N.J., on April 9, 1898, Paul
Robeson graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Rutgers in 1919, where he was
named an All-America football player. He received a law degree from Columbia
University in 1923 but gave up law practice for a career on the stage.
Robeson was a great success in dramatic productions, such as Porgy
(1928), The Hairy Ape (1931) and Show Boat (1928 and 1932),
and also appeared in films, among them Body and Soul (1924), The
Emperor Jones (1933), Show Boat (1936), and King Solomon's
Mines (1937).
Shirley Temple (1928- )
Photograph available on AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE website
American movie actress and political figure who as a child star was
one of filmdom's greatest money-makers and an international celebrity.
Shirley Jane Temple was born in Santa Monica, Calif., on April 23, 1928,
and began her motion-picture career at the age of 3. In her first feature
starring role, in Stand Up and Cheer (1934), she sang "Baby, Take
a Bow," which immediately made her famous. In Bright Eyes (also
1934), for which she received a special Academy Award, she introduced her
best-known song, "On the Good Ship Lollipop." Temple's curls, dimples,
and vivacious personality won her many roles in a series of enormously
successful films in 19341938, including Little Miss Marker, The
Little Colonel, Curly Top, Dimples, Heidi, Rebecca
of Sunnybrook Farm, and Little Miss Broadway. She retired
from her film career at the age of 21, though she appeared occasionally
on television in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Frances Perkins
(1880-1965), American social reformer and public official, who was the
first
woman to serve in the cabinet of a U. S. president.
As executive secretary of the Consumers' League of New York and of the
city's Committee on Safety, she became an expert on the health and safety
of working people, especially women and children. During the next
15 years, in the administrations of Governors Alfred E. Smith and Franklin
D. Roosevelt, Perkins was at the center of the American labor-reform movement.
As state industrial commissioner (1929-1933) during the Great Depression,
she became an expert on unemployment insurance and unemployment statistics.
President-elect Roosevelt chose Perkins as his secretary of labor, and
she served until just after
his death in 1945. A leader in shaping
the Social Security Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act, she also
dealt with the many labor-management disputes that emerged from the flood
of New Deal legislation.
Marian Anderson (1897-1993),
American singer who was the first African-American soloist
to appear with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Anderson's deep,
rich-textured contralto had a versatility that ranged from the direct simplicity
of African American spirituals to the dramatic grandeur of opera. It prompted
Toscanini to remark that "a voice like hers comes only once in a century."
In 1939 Anderson became the subject of a nationwide controversy. Because
of her race the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused her
the use of its Constitution Hall for a
concert in Washington, D.C. Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR
and helped sponsor a
concert for Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial, where she sang for 75,000
(millions more listened
over the radio).
Johnson Wax Administration Building. Racine WI, 1936-39. Since its opening on April 22, 1939, the SC Johnson Wax Administration Building has been a "mecca" for tourists, architects and Frank Lloyd Wright devotees from around the world. Today the building remains in use as the international headquarters for SC Johnson Wax. As photographs of the structure make clear, this building is a direct antecedent of Wright's Guggenheim Museum, designed less than a decade later. FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT IN WISCONSIN
S.C. Johnson Wax Administration Building, 1939
Will Rogers
(1879-1935), American humorist. Rogers grew up on an Oklahoma ranch
owned by his Irish and Cherokee father. After quitting school he joined
a Wild West show in Argentina in 1902. He was a skilled horseman and an
expert with the lasso, and his twirling and other feats with the lasso
were later to become part of a vaudeville act. By 1905 he reached New York,
where he performed at Keith's Union Square Theatre. Between his lasso routines,
he began to interject dryly humorous remarks about current events and soon
became noted for his homespun yet quick wit. In 1926 he began writing a
daily newspaper column, and in the late 1920's and early 1930's he made
a number of major films. Rogers was killed in a plane crash near Point
Barrow, Alaska, in 1935. At the time of his death, he was a legend and
a national institution.
Joe Louis (1914-1981), an American boxer who held the world heavyweight boxing championship longer than any other man. Joe Louis Barrow was born in Lafayette, Alabama, and moved to Detroit as a child. He turned professional in 1934, and won the title in June, 1937. Louis successfully defended his title 25 times, scoring 20 knockouts. He retired in March, 1949, and later failed in a comeback attempt. (World Book)
From Detroit
News
Benny Goodman (1909-1986),
American clarinetist and jazz leader, known as the "king of
swing." In 1933, Goodman formed his
own jazz orchestra, and in the following year he achieved a national reputation
when he began to appear with his orchestra on an NBC radio series called
"Let's Dance." In April 1935 he started a nationwide tour that
culminated in a sensational success in Los Angeles. From then on, he was
the "king of swing." For the next 10 years, Benny Goodman and his
orchestra enjoyed tremendous popularity. He engaged many of the finest
musicians in jazz history, and he employed the best arrangers. His own
extraordinary clarinet playing also contributed to the success of the orchestra.
He conducted jazz concerts in Carnegie Hall in New York, Symphony Hall
in Boston, and the Hollywood Bowl. The orchestra was disbanded in 1944
In 1939, Goodman published the autobiographical Kingdom of Swing,
written with Irving Kolodin. In 1955 he recorded the motion-picture sound
track for The Benny Goodman Story.
Bungalow
From
Vallonia Bungalow Advertisement, 1932
Middle-class house style popular from about 1905 through the 1930s is characterized by its wide, low-pitched roof and spacious front porch. The bungalow represented the antithesis of the Victorian home which preceded it as the bungalow was simple, informal, and efficient. (Clifford Edward Clark, Jr., The American Family Home)
Fiorello La Guardia
(1882-1947), American public official, reformer, and three-term mayor
of New York City. One of New York's most colorful mayors, La Guardia often
dubbed "The Little Flower" (from his first name) obtained a new charter
for the city, fought corruption, reorganized the machinery of municipal
government, balanced the budget, aided the drive for slum clearance and
low-cost housing, and improved the city's health and sanitary agencies.
He also promoted the beautification of the city and many large building
projects, which included playgrounds, schools, parkways, the Triborough
and Bronx-Whitestone bridges, the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, and the airport
later named for him.
Textile Workers Strike of 1934 The United Textile Workers of America ordered a general strike to begin on September 3, 1934 (Labor Day). In a few days, at least 300,000 workers had left their jobs in every textile manufacturing state from New England to the Deep South. In size and overall violence, this strike was the largest in American history. (Watkins, The Great Depression, 1993)
Photo from P.O.V.
Interactive
Note: Unless otherwise identified, the above descriptions appeared in the on-line version of the Encylopedia Americana