1930

Articles from 1930

Howard Hughes Buys Multicolor (Film Spectator, 1930)

When the deep-pocketed film director Howard Hughes (1905 – 1976) decided to tint a few sequences from his film HELL’S ANGELS (1930) he purchased the company that he believed capable of filling such an order: Multicolor in Hollywood, California (as it turned out, the work was actually done by Technicolor). Hughes was such a curiosity to the press and they followed his every whim; in this article, critic Donald Beaton refers to Hughes as a pioneer and salutes him for experimenting with color.

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Hollywood, California: American Legion Post 43 (American Legion Monthly, 1930)

The attached article tells the story of American Legion Post 43, which is housed at 2035 North Highland Avenue in Hollywood, California. Designed by the Weston brothers in 1930 (both men were members) the building represents not only the home of the a Legion post but also [serves as] a memorial to the fighting divisions of the American Army and every American who took part in the World War.

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The Four Horsemen and Knute Rockne in His Own Words (Collier’s Magazine, 1930)

An article written by one of the grand old men of football and one of the game’s most legendary coaches: Knute Rockne (1888 – 1931). Before there was the NFL, there was only college football and it was football pioneers like Rockne who brought out the excitement of the game, generating such enthusiasm for the sport and creating a fan-base that grew steadily throughout the century. Just as Redskin Coach Joe Gibbs had The Hogs in the Eighties, Knute Rockne was famous for a group of players in the Twenties called the Four Horsemen (Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Elmer Layden, and Jim Crowley), and that is who the coach wrote about on the attached pages:

Individually, at first, they were just four compact youths, no better than football’s average…Within a season they became famous – the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame…They amazed even their own coach

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The Most Powerful American Men During the Depression (Pathfinder Magazine, 1930)

In 1930 a seasoned diplomat and respected attorney by the name of James Watson Gerard (1867 – 1951) created quite a dust-up in Depression-era Washington when he took it upon himself to release his list of those Americans who he believed to have the most power on Capitol Hill. The reason his compilation turned as many heads as it did was because there wasn’t the name of a single elected official to be found on the list – not even President Hoover was mentioned (although his treasury secretary was, the millionaire industrialist Andrew Mellon).


Click here if you wish to read more on this subject and see Gerard’s list of the most powerful men in Cold War Washington.

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Various Remarks About the First Talkies (Photoplay Magazine, 1930)

Assorted quotes addressing some aspects of the 1930 Hollywood and the entertainment industry seated there. Some are prophets who rant-on about the impending failure of talking pictures, others go on about the obscene sums of money generated in the film colony; a few of the wits are well-known to us, like Thomas Edison, George M. Cohan and Walter Winchell but most are unknown – one anonymous sage, remarking about the invention of sound movies, prophesied:

In ten years, most of the good music of the world will be written for sound motion pictures.


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