View a timeline of key American film history dates during the Great Depression.

A changing post-war film industry

American Film Institute

Poster from The Son of the Sheik (1926), starring Rudolph Valentino.

Along with a booming economy, there were significant changes within the motion picture profession throughout the 1920s. While some of the biggest stars from the 1910s--such as Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Harold Lloyd and Mary Pickford--remained popular, they were joined by a new breed that was more appealing to Americans experiencing "The Roaring Twenties." The new stars included passionate screen lovers like Rudolph Valentino and Vilma Banky, John Gilbert and Greta Garbo, as well as new women like Colleen Moore and the "It" girl Clara Bow.

By the late 1920s, the business of filmmaking also changed as it began to move into the structure that flourished during the 1930s and 1940s, wherein the bulk of films made were produced among a small number of large studios. Consolidations of companies increased from the mid-1920s to the mid-1930s, with new corporations such as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Twentieth Century-Fox becoming powerful entities that outshined longer established studios such as Paramount and Universal. In addition to the corporate structure, the geography of motion picture production had also changed. While early filmmaking was centered in Eastern cities such as New York and Fort Lee, New Jersey, by the early 1930s, commercial filmmaking was virtually non-existent on the East Coast with the center of the industry firmly rooted in southern California.

Undoubtedly the greatest change in motion picture production, though, was precipitated by the end of the silent era in the late 1920s. Although The Jazz Singer (1927) is popularly considered to be the first talking picture, it was only a partial "talkie" and was not the first film released with synchronized sound. Yet its extraordinary popularity proved that sound, which had been experimented with for many years, was now viable, both for dialogue and music. The first 100 percent all-talking picture, The Lights of New York, was released by Warner Bros. in 1928, and by 1930, the silent film was virtually dead.

	Thinking Point
	The "talkies" gave rise to a new cadre of famous movie stars. How do you think modern special effects might help introduce new stars?

The talking picture became dominant almost at the same time as the start of the Great Depression that enshrouded the nation following the 1929 Stock Market Crash. In response to both technological changes in movie production and economic and sociological changes within the world, more new stars emerged. Actors such as Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Bette Davis, James Cagney and Shirley Temple replaced the old silent stars of the 1910s and 1920s. The new stars of the 1930s reflected the ambivalence between despair and hope that was prevalent in America throughout the 1930s. Hard-edged stars such as Cagney and Davis could evoke the dark, pessimistic side of the country, while stars like Lombard and Temple often shined in light comedies and musicals.

The Great Depression's impact on American film genres
Just as new stars reflected a changed outlook in the country, film genres also mirrored changes brought on by the Depression. Genres such as the gangster and horror film became increasingly important during the 1930s, and a new genre, the musical, became one of the most popular. Even the traditional genres of comedy and drama also changed during the Great Depression. This is particularly evident in films that depicted the rich. In films during the mid- to late-1920s, the wealthy had been depicted as happy, frivolous and eccentric. By 1931, a number of films followed the reversed fortunes of people who formerly seemed absolutely carefree.

One such film, M-G-M's melodrama Dance, Fools, Dance (1931) starring Joan Crawford, proved to be an interesting follow-up to some of Crawford's late 1920s "flapper" films like Our Dancing Daughters. In Dance, Fools, Dance, spoiled heiress Bonnie Jordan (Crawford), whose father died of a heart attack during the Stock Market Crash, chooses to get a job rather than taking the easier path of marrying her still-wealthy boyfriend. Working as a cub reporter investigating a bootlegging ring, she poses as a dancer in a cheap nightclub. Her weak-willed brother, who has become involved with the ring, is killed, but the criminals are eventually apprehended and, having finally proved her independence, she accepts her boyfriend's proposal.

Talluluah Bankhead's character suffered a far more dismal fate than Crawford's in Faithless (1932). Refusing to believe that her father's money has run out, "Carole" (Bankhead) at first sponges off wealthy friends, but soon is reduced to being a paid guest for social climbers. She falls even lower when she becomes the mistress of a man she finds repulsive. She later gleans some happiness when she marries "Bill" (Robert Montgomery), whom she had once refused because he only made $20,000 a year. However, Bill, who had been forced to take a job as a trucker, is injured on the first day of his job and Carole is forced to become a prostitute to pay his medical bills. Like Dance, Fools, Dance and many similar films, the ending hints at a better future: Bill recovers and gets a job, while Carole is kept out of jail by a kind-hearted policeman.

	Thinking Point
	Why do you think screwball comedies about the rich were such a popular motif during the Great Depression?

While the average family found life difficult, even with an employed bread winner, 1930s audiences flocked to stories about the wealthy. Within a few years, melodramas about their travails soon gave way to escapist fare, called "screwball comedies," about madcap heiresses who lived in huge mansions with a seemingly endless supply of servants and champagne at their disposal.

American Film Institute

Poster from Frank Capra's screwball comedy, It Happened One Night (1934), starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert.

In My Man Godfrey (1936), perhaps the definitive Depression-era screwball comedy, goodhearted but spoiled heiress Irene Bullock (Carole Lombard) is on a scavenger hunt, hoping to outmaneuver her shrewish sister Cornelia (Gail Patrick) by being the first person to bring back the prize of the hunt--a forgotten man. Unknown to Irene, her forgotten man, "Godfrey" (William Powell), is actually from a wealthy Boston family and has chosen to live in the city dump following a romantic scandal. He soon helps the Bullock family through a financial crisis, and makes them realize their selfishness at a time when so many families were in need. Finally, he helps his friends turn the dump into a nightclub to employ them all, and marries Irene.

While many of these comedies and melodramas depicted the events surrounding the 1929 Stock Market Crash and the ensuing Great Depression, there was still a need for films that would help uplift the public mood and spirit.

Uplifting a nation's mood
Another type of film, with a more down-to-earth appeal, centered on the talents of the biggest box office star of the mid-1930s, Shirley Temple. Temple's cheerful, seemingly indomitable spirit delighted millions of people throughout the world. If movies could reflect how society changed during the Depression, the popularity of her films show how they could also influence the way people thought or felt about themselves. In film after film, Temple, little more than a toddler when she began, sang and danced and encouraged people to, as the title of one song from her film Little Miss Broadway (1938) said, "Be Optimistic." Her appeal even prompted President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to remark in 1934: "When the spirit of the people is lower than at any other time during this Depression, it is a splendid thing that for just 15 cents, an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his troubles."

American Film Institute

During the 1930s, the young Shirley Temple found enormous success at the box office, offering audiences upbeat films throughout the Great Depression.

The basic theme of most of Temple's films was that if people worked together and loved one another, things would be all right. One of Temple's most popular films, 1938's Just Around the Corner, exemplified this theme. That picture--which took its title from the popular mid-1930s slogan that "prosperity is just around the corner"--was an unabashed look at what optimism and confidence could do for the country.

	Titles of popular songs during the Great Depression:
	"We're in the Money" (1933) "Remember My Forgotten Man" (1933) "I Found a Million Dollar Baby in a Five-and-Ten-Cent Store" (1931) "Brother, Can you Spare a Dime?" (1932) "Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee" (1932) "Happy Days Are Here Again" (1929--but used as Roosevelt's campaign song) "Marching Along Together" (1932) "On the Sunny Side of the Street" (1930)

In the film, Temple plays Penny Hale, the beloved daughter of a prominent architect, who comes home from her exclusive school to find that her father is now working as an electrician at the hotel in which they once occupied the penthouse. Adversity does not dampen her spirit, though. When her father tells her that their situation will improve when "Uncle Sam" gets out of the Depression, she confuses the banker who has foreclosed on her father's building project with the Uncle Sam caricature and organizes a benefit for him. Her sweetness and optimism proves effective and the banker revives her father's long-dormant building.

The films of Shirley Temple, as well as films like Faithless, Our Man Godfrey and many others reflected the hard times into which the nation--and the world--had fallen. Yet, they also offered audiences a sense of hope and optimism that in the end, things would turn out all right. This was true in countless films produced during the Depression, even those which were more serious.

One film that dealt with Depression-era economics in a more serious tone than Temple's pictures, was Frank Capra's 1932 drama American Madness. In the film, the main character is bank president Thomas Dickson (Walter Huston), a man who has difficulties with the bank directors because he believes that they should be more lenient in their lending policies and get money back into circulation. When a bank robbery takes place, depositors panic and start a run on the bank, thus setting in motion a number of personal and professional crises for Dickson. Both his personal life and the solvency of the bank are saved when people begin to show their faith in him by making deposits, thus restoring his control of the bank and public confidence.

Documenting the Great Depression era

American Film Institute

Film poster for King Kong (1933), starring Fay Wray.

Those hardest hit by the Depression were depicted in a variety of ways in films of the 1930s. Although most films produced during the 1930s were not overtly concerned with the Depression, most films set in the present day included at least passing allusions to unemployment, low wages and general "hard times." King Kong (1933), for example, is remembered for its classic scenes of Kong and Fay Wray in the jungle and airplanes forcing the beast off the top of the Empire State Building. Yet few remember that the reason why Wray's character, Ann Darrow, so willingly agrees to embark on the voyage to the jungle is that she is destitute. When Wray is first seen by producer Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong), she is about to steal an apple from a fruit stand.

One film of several that dealt more directly with the effects of the Depression was Man's Castle (1933). The film centers on the relationship between a destitute young woman named Trina (Loretta Young) who falls in love with a free-spirited man named Bill (Spencer Tracy). What makes the love story poignant is the fact that they live in a shantytown, areas often sarcastically called "Hoovervilles" in the early Depression. Like most films of the 1930s, there was an optimistic ending in which Bill and a pregnant Trina marry and escape the shantytown by hopping a freight train.

Though not overtly stated, the end of Man's Castle implies that they are moving toward a better life. A darker view of a similarly themed love story, one that reflected the mood of the country after several years of hard times, was Fritz Lang's You Only Live Once (1937). In that picture, the young lovers, played by Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sydney, never get that better life and tragically die.

American Film Institute

Film poster for 42nd Street.

Throughout the 1930s and into the early 1940s, themes of poverty and hope recurred repeatedly, some with a serious tone, some comic. Warner Bros. musicals, which superficially seem to be prime examples of 1930s escapism, upon closer scrutiny, often reveal a serious side that reflected the hard times being experienced by contemporary audiences. The lavish Busby Berkeley dance numbers of films like 42nd Street (1932) and Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) did provide classic fantasy for people who wanted to forget their troubles. But each film also contained a long, stylized musical number that evoked the real world. In 42nd Street, the title song provided a lengthy musical panorama of the gritty side of New York.

An even more socially-astute number was presented in Gold Diggers of 1933, "Remember My Forgotten Man." The title refers to World War I veterans who were forced onto bread lines in the 1930s by a nation that seemed to have forgotten the terrible sacrifices they made during the war. In the number, while Joan Blondell sings and narrates the story of the forgotten man, a montage unfolds, showing men going to war and returning wounded and demoralized. The men then go to work in menial jobs and are finally thrown onto bread lines when their jobs disappeared after the Stock Market Crash of 1929.

Films developed throughout the Great Depression era documented the somber mood of the country in a variety of different ways: from escapist comedies to melodramas, and from dark love stories to inspirational triumphs of the human spirit. More often than not, these films of the 1930s reached out to audiences with an uplifting "things will get better" message.

One of the greatest films of the 1930s, The Grapes of Wrath (1940), realistically dealt with the hardships faced by "Okies" fleeing the droughts of the 1930s. Yet even the harshness of that film, produced after 10 years of economic instability, is offset by a hopeful tone added to the original text of John Steinbeck's novel. It is expressed by Ma Joad (Jane Darwell) after her son Tom (Henry Fonda) is forced to leave her to avoid a murder charge: "We're the people that live! We'll go on forever because we're the people."