Best Oscar film The Broadway Melody, and The Hollywood Review of 1929 gives us a song and a Charleston dance by Joan Crawford, as well as the first presentation of the song "Singin' in the Rain."
We have a few firsts and lasts among the 1929 films: Blackmail, director Alfred Hitchcock's first sound film; Hallelujah, the first film produced by a major studio with an all African-American cast; and Spite Marriage, Buster Keaton's last silent movie.
From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books. From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation.
James Stewart's dazed expression at the panicked customers demanding all their deposits in the aftermath of the 1929 stock market crash speaks volumes to the audience who remembered the crash and lived through its aftermath. His quick decision and energetic parceling out of meager funds saves the bank with two dollars to spare at closing time. Today we mark the 90th anniversary of the 1929 stock market crash.
Many movies of the 1930s reflected and illustrated the Great Depression with unblinking frankness despite, as Mary Astor noted in her memoir Mary Astor--A Life on Film:
“The national
situation was tragic, but it wasn’t our tragedy. It was something that was happening ‘out
there’ and wasn’t it awful, but did you read Variety today? People stood in line at the employment
agencies but they also stood in line at the theaters.” (p.81)
“These were the years
called by the extravagant name of the Golden Years, maybe because nobody ever
had it so good as the movie-makers. In
our fortress of films we were safe from dust bowls and grinding poverty,
breadlines and alphabet agencies.”
(p. 109)
The buildup to the Crash was also extensively covered by Hollywood in its 1920s pre-Code party mode -- the vamps, the lascivious key-hole views of wild parties, and occasionally, a look at the even more wild spree on Wall Street. The Marx Brothers capped the madness by adding more of their own in The Cocoanuts from 1929 a few months before the crash, which we covered in this post.
The Roaring Twenties (1939) attempts to cover it all -- the boom, the bust, the gangsters that appeared to usher the era in and out again, but takes the Crash with a clearly clichéd and nostalgic view. It's easier to put a label on an event or an era when we are looking at it in the rearview mirror. Here 90 years on from that event, from which we have only a few images of people swarming to the Stock Exchange when the panic began, we still dismiss it with a bemused and somewhat condescending eye. We cannot imagine ourselves running to our local banks and screaming for our money, and not getting it (not all banks were so fortunate as to have George Bailey and his two dollars left).
We covered The Roaring Twenties here in this post -- ten years ago on the 80th anniversary of the Crash. Have I really been writing this blog for twelve years? We were coming down off a financial crisis then, ten years ago. I have, I confess, feelings of more ominous foreboding for the one we're entering right now, but I can still take comfort in George Bailey's desperate and gusty response to a crisis.
The timeline of the crisis that ultimately launched us into all those great Great Depression movies was this:
On Wednesday, October 23, 1929, the stock market fell about 4.6 percent, but rallied on Thursday the 24th in heavy trading. Bankers stepped in and bought up shares, similarly to what the Fed is doing today, to prop up the market. By Friday the 25th, the crisis seemed to have been averted.
But Monday, October 28th, when the market reopened, stocks dropped again. Tuesday, October 29th, "Black Friday," the bottom fell out and the stock market collapsed.
That event is what we like to peg the beginning of a new era, but the market did not actually stop falling. It slid down a bit more through several months and did not actually hit its bottom until July 1932, when 90 percent of its 1929 value had been lost.
Of course, as devoted investors like to point out, if one had bought stocks in August 1932 and held them, they would be rich because the stock market went up after that. Well, yes, but it did not reach its 1929 level until 1954 -- 25 years later. Fine if you're young and bought in (not a whole lot of people had the money, let alone confidence in Wall Street, to buy stocks in the depths of the Depression), but if one was middle-aged or a senior, the ball game was over. What was lost was never to be recouped.
History, as is said, does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes, in a quote often attributed to Mark Twain. I like to take a lesson from charts and graphs, from the testimony of people who experienced an event -- and from George Bailey, who always seemed to be behind the 8-ball but who thought fast and stayed on his feet.
May we all be here in ten years, marking the 100th anniversary of the start of the Sound Era with curious, bemused, and somewhat condescending commemorations of the Crash of 1929.
The Cocoanuts (1929) is a
sublime way to end this series on The Era of Wonderful Nonsense, not only for
the nutty hijinks of the Marx Brothers, but of their shrewd assessment of the
foibles of their era so skillfully worked into the story.
We
continue our series on the 1920s and its similarities to our era that began with our
introduction here, The
Racket (1928) here, and Joan
Crawford’s Our
Dancing Daughters (1928) and Our Modern
Maidens (1929). They bring us a
gamut of Jazz Age stories: flappers, college capers, hip flasks, gangsters and
bootleggers, a world of societal revolution and at the same time a breakdown of
what has been termed traditional morals, that was even celebrated.
The
Marx Brothers had a hit on Broadway with their musical comedy The Cocoanuts, and its transference to
film as one of the very early “all singing, all dancing – all talking movies”
is remarkably clever due to some intelligent
and laugh-out -oud lines that are a match for any cynical banter in a modern
television sitcom.
But
instead of using this sarcasm to paint themselves as the leaders of popular
taste – since neither “cool” or “hip” or “groovy” were invented yet – and “the
cat’s pajamas” just don’t seem to fit the Marx Brothers even if the phrase fits
the 1920s – this talented gang of four never aspire to anything but holding
themselves apart from society and enjoying the freedom of being outcasts.
As
such they are free to mock and parody one of the decade’s most sacred shrines –
investment and speculation. It was an era where wealth disparity created a
chasm between the very rich and the very poor at an alarmingly fast rate and
would have terrible consequences by the end of the decade. To be sure, there
was a middle-class somewhere in between which, after World War I, sought to
reward themselves with all the newfangled gadgets that were making life so much
more easy and exciting, and perhaps expensive, than for their parents’
generation. Consumerism, commercialism, and credit joined together in a frantic
dance as people for the first time were able to buy home appliances like
electric stoves and washing machines and not only purchase them, but purchase
them through credit on-time payments. Buying on credit meant that people could
own property and suburban homes in a manner such as they could not at one time
and this marvel of credit also extended to the new opportunity of buying common
stocks.
Once
the world of only the most educated and wealthy investors, now every man could
own stocks. Most of the purchases were made “on margin,” which meant one was
paying only a fraction of the stock’s price—buying on credit.
Among
the myriad of get-rich-quick schemes that occurred in that decade, one of the
most enticing, and flawed, was the great Florida land boom. This is the topic
of the Marx Brothers play, The Cocoanuts.
It
opened at the Lyric Theater in December 1925 and ran through August 1926.
George S. Kaufman wrote the book of the musical, and music and lyrics were by
Irving Berlin. With this stellar Broadway pedigree was added the brilliant and
chaotic four Marx brothers: Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo. Straight man, or
woman, Margaret Dumont was in the cast as well and made the leap to film with
the boys.
The
real estate bubble satirized in the play and film had been centered around Miami,
which was promoted as an exotic tropical paradise for those who wanted to live
there, retire there, and many others who just wanted to invest, flip properties
and get in on the ground floor of what was sure to be a spectacular land boom.
However, the area saw not so much extensive construction as of mere speculation
on land value. At the start of 1925 investment was beginning to look shaky when
land was offered at prices not according to appraised value, but
according to how much brokers could jack up the price – whether it was
swampland, which many naïve outsiders were surprised to find there was so much
of in Florida, or land that really had any value for commercial or residential
use. Soon the authorities and the banks began to take a closer look at what was
revealed to be a bit of a shell game operated by unscrupulous brokers. There
were other elements that caused the boom to go bust including difficulties with
existing infrastructure and railroad service. In another portent of really bad
luck, a schooner sank in Miami Harbor and blocked access to shipping.
Soon
the hucksters could not find enough suckers to maintain this game, and the soaring
prices of land began to plummet. That September 1926, as if matters weren't bad
enough, a hurricane slammed into Miami which drove developers into bankruptcy.It was a month after The Cocoanuts closed on Broadway.
The
film version included Mary Eaton as the daughter of Margaret Dumont, both come to
stay at a Florida hotel run by Groucho Marx. He is also involved in the shady
land deals. A side story involves Oscar Shaw and Cyril Ring as rivals for Mary’s
hand, and Kay Francis along as a jewel thief in partnership with Cyril Ring. Their
scheme is to swipe the jewels of Margaret Dumont. Built around this plot is a
zany kaleidoscope of music – several tunes by Irving Berlin but not all that
were in the play – and Harpo and Chico generally turning the place into
mayhem.The movie, produced by Paramount was filmed at
the Astoria Studio in Queens. Soon, the movie industry pulled up stakes on the east coast, put on sunglasses, and headed to Hollywood.
Being
an early talkie, the movie seems to be taken pretty much as it might have
been produced on stage, a succession of quick gags, skits interspersed with
sudden lavish musical numbers, lots of chorus girls (high heels on the
beach?).The idyllic seascape is a
noticeably fake backdrop, the kind Wile E. Coyote would usually smash into.
It
was an era where men still wore tank tops attached to their bathing suits. For
younger classic film fans, I’ll just note that this was not an affectation of
the movies. On public beaches right up until the late thirties and even early forties,
men were required to wear either a tank top or some kind of shirt along with
their swim trunks. Going topless was not allowed.
The
lines, a lot of them really laugh-out-loud, are often specifically reflective
of their era and may go over the heads of some younger fans. Even something
like Groucho’s remark, “There’s nothing like liberty, except for Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post.” Liberty and Collier’s were, like The Saturday Evening Post very popular
magazines. The newsstand on the corner, in the train station, or on the first
floor of your office building was the nerve center, the communications
headquarters of the day
Mary
Eaton and Oscar Shaw sing a romantic duet and Bob has one of those trilling
tenors. It really sounds like it’s sung live. Mary’s hair is Marcel-waved.She is also equipped with a trilling voice considered
proper vocal technique of the stage-trained of the day.
Other
favorite lines “This is the biggest development since Sophie Tucker.”
Chico
and Harpo arrive at the hotel and are asked “You want a suite on the third
floor?” Chico’s response, “No, I want a polack in the basement.”Inappropriate for today, but funny and evocative
of the “melting pot” with which were we once so comfortable.
Groucho
remarks, “All along the river there are levies.”
To
which Chico responds, “That’s a Jewish neighborhood?”
And
then of course, we have the famous viaduct and “why a duck?” exchange.
Kay
Francis, sleek and sophisticated, with her short, boyish flapper hair slicked
back off her forehead, spends time tussling with Harpo, who of course, has a
habit of trying to get people to hold his leg. It was Kay’s second movie after
several years in the theater, and her stardom was ahead of her. She seems a
little too high voltage for this silly slapstick, but we can see at least the
promise not only of her career in the 1930s, but that here, although looking
like a flapper, she is not a flighty, man-chasing coed, but instead looks as if
she has spent the decade as one of the “Lost Generation,” in Paris with Hemingway
and Fitzgerald, and not doing the Charleston with young men who swallow
goldfish.
The
movie, as with other Marx Brothers movies, breaks for intermittent and
surprising cultural interludes as both Chico and Harpo display their splendid
musicianship, which brings the chaos down to a quiet reflective center before
it revs up again. It is as surprising as their silliest antics because it keeps
us off-balance.
It
is a way, the movie is like a perfect bridge between the innocent and
lighthearted and somewhat sophomoric banter of the 1920s and the more
sophisticated screwball comedy of the 1930s with its emphasis on social
commentary. The Marx Brothers perfectly bridge the eras.
Groucho
conducts a land auction, a common scene in the Florida land boom and he tries
to get Chico to jack up the price by putting in outrageous bids. He utters the
immortal words “You can get any kind of house you want, even stucco – oh, how
you can get stuck-o.”
The
jewel thieves are foiled, and true love prevails, although I think the most
exquisite moment is the “He wants his shirt” song to the tune of “Habanera”/“Toreador”
in Carmen sung by Basil Ruysdael in a
bass-baritone.
The
Florida land boom had an unhappier ending, that for a time, never seemed to
end. A month after The Cocoanuts
closed on Broadway, the September 1926 Miami Hurricane hit, leading to a lot of
bankruptcies among the land developers, and a second killer Okeechobee
Hurricane of 1928 (over 2,500 fatalities) and the stock market crash of 1929
effectively capped off the decade for Florida investment opportunities, real or
imagined. The 1930s were bleak.
The
stock market crash was also personally devastating to Groucho Marx.Though known for being very frugal, ever
mindful of his poverty-stricken childhood, he invested his entire life savings
in the market that came to its own spectacular bubble in 1928. He lost it all
in 1929.
In
the excellent television documentary from the American Experience series on PBS The Crash of 1929 (1990), Groucho’s son Arthur was interviewed and
recalled, “My father was ready to kill himself.”
Eventually,
unlike millions of Americans, Groucho had a reprieve from destitution and found
a lucrative career with his brothers in Hollywood.
These
movies we discussed for the past few weeks tell us a lot about where our
mindset was at the end of the Jazz Age but one aspect of that decade I
suppose was difficult for the filmmakers then to capture, at least in one
single movie, was the great struggle between conservative fundamentalists
represented by the bankers and by Wall Street that were seen as demigods who
were reflected in the glow of their fabulous ever-rising stock market, with
extremists such as the KKK at the height of its power, with the animosity and
outright hostility to immigrants and immigration, when Republicans controlled
both houses of Congress and the WhiteHouse – versus progressives whose influence on the decade must have
seemed appallingly radical, such as women flooding of the workforce in jobs
such as secretarial work, which was once restricted for men (the new occupation
of being a telephone operator was actually deemed better for women than men
because it was reckoned that women had more pleasing voices and were more
inviting on the phone); the almost shocking change in women’s apparel from what
it had been during World War I – as we noted in our introduction, so comically
and charmingly alluded to in the 1920s musical parody Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967); and the flaming youth that somehow
took the spotlight in a society where the media was beginning not only to
reflect who we were but to create who we were.
As
regards the stock market, there are ominous similarities today, not only
because of the great wealth disparity in our country that, when it happens no
matter what era it happens, always leads to crashes, but because of allowing
once again our greed to make us so naïve as to think the systems we have put in
place are not fallible. Economist Roger Babson is well known for having
predicted the 1920s stock market crash and also well known for being greatly
disparaged because of it. Nobody wanted such bad news. Recently, we have
experienced some market swings, and the market watchers, particularly on CNBC, rather
than reporting dispassionately, instantly became cheerleaders and indignant
deniers. Granted, money is an excitable issue, but journalists should just
report what happens and not make excuses for what happens or attempt to deflect
what is happening as if loathing to be held responsible for bad news.
This
is not to say that we’re going to end up with bread lines and bank failures if
the market takes a dive, but whether we do or not, whether the market crashes
and we end up in another depression, we should receive the facts as simply and
as unemotionally as possible. The truth, even when it is unpleasant, is better
to hear than the same old spin.
We
should pay more attention to the 1920s not just because of our bouncing stock
market, but because of so many other coincidences that exists between that
decade and ours. We might well learn valuable lessons. That’s what our parents,
our grandparents, and our great-grandparents are for, to teach us.
As
we noted in the intro to this series, historian William E. Leuchtenburg in his The Perils of Prosperity 1914-32
remarked, “Never was a decade snuffed out so quickly as the 1920s.”
The
Great Depression loomed on the other side of the door, but also a more liberal
and progressive era culturally, artistically, and politically that saved the
nation in a frightening time.It took
courage to sing “Happy Days Are Here Again,” and make it so.
Groucho
Marx, whose screen persona created sanity from havoc, wrote in his book The Groucho Phile: An Illustrated Life, "I've
been a liberal Democrat all my life," and observed, "I frankly find Democrats a better, more
sympathetic crowd.... I'll continue to believe that Democrats have a greater
regard for the common man than Republicans do."
Have
a look here at the documentary The Crash
of 1929.
Thank
you for joining me on this series.This
Sunday we’ll take part in the 31 Days of Oscar Blogathon hosted by Aurora of Once Upon a Screen, Kellee from Outspoken & Freckled, and Paula from
Paula’s Cinema Club.My contribution—Joan Crawford’s Oscar for Mildred Pierce.
