1937

Articles from 1937

Social Washington During the Depression (Literary Digest, 1937)

Washington Society, long shackled, kicked the lid off last week, swung into the most dazzling season it has had since the Depression spawned bread lines, and knocked the wealthy back on their heels.

Money is spinning again; hostesses are plotting major campaigns; diamonds and pearls are coming out for renewed display; caviar and terrapin reign supreme once more…


Click here to read about American high society during the Depression years.

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The Marx Brothers & the Joke Development Process (Stage Magazine, 1937)

A late Thirties article by Teet Carle (the old publicist for MGM) on how the brothers Marx figured out which gag created the biggest laughs; a few words about how the movies were tested in various cities prior to each release and how assorted jokes were recited to all manner of passersby for their effect.

Click here to read a 1951 article that Harpo Marx wrote about Groucho.

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I936 Saw A Wee-Bit of Prosperity (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

This article sums up the income data that was collected by the U.S. Department of Commerce and published in June of 1937. The report stated that

The national income increased in 1936 by a larger amount, absolutely and relatively, than in 1935. Income produced rose to 63.8 billion dollars, an increase of 8.8 billion dollars, an increase over the 1935 total.


A chart has been provided.


Click here to read about the economic disaster that 1937 was

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False Hope for 1937 (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

Perhaps it was the practice of magazine editors during the Great Depression to instruct their reporters to find hope where none existed; that must have been the case for this article. The unnamed journalist who wrote this slender column reported on a few rare cases involving real jobs with real salaries being offered to recent graduates; the reporter wished to believe that this was a sign that the end was nigh – but these few jobs were flukes. The author saw economic growth where there really wasn’t any at all, however he certainly made the case for its existence. The title link posted above leads to a passage from FDR’s Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depressionstyle=border:none by Jim Powell that explains the true situation that existed in 1937, when unemployment stood at 20 percent by Summer.

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Polish Jews Face Dismal Future (Literary Digest, 1937)

The old-style pogroms which made the life of Polish Jews a nightmare under the Czars have died out, yet the terror of Antisemitism still haunts their three million men, women and children, one-tenth of the country’s population.

Now they are a race apart, isolated, according to Sholem Asch (1880- 1957), a Yiddish writer who recently visited the country, like lepers. Young women in the Warsaw Ghetto look like dried skeletons, he says. Rickety children save scraps of bread from their free school lunches to feed their parents at night.

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The Out of Date Red Navy (The Literary Digest, 1937)

While strong on land and in the air, [the Soviet Union] is weak on the water. Most Russian ships are World War or pre-War in origin, and many of her best vessels are in the Baltic, facing Germany, or in the Far East, where Japan looms up.

The five-times divided Red Navy operates four 1911 battleships, seven cruisers, 35 destroyers, between 30 and 60 submarines, 60 gunboats, etc. Total tonnage: 200,000.


Click here to read about a Soviet submarine called the S-13…

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President Roosevelt and the Panay Incident (Literary Digest, 1937)

Attached, you will find a survey of opinions drawn from diverse corners of the fruited plain regarding the restraint exercised by President Franklin Roosevelt in the wake of Imperial Japan’s sinking of the U.S. gunboat Panay:

[President Franklin Roosevelt] should be sustained in his effort to make Japan realize that she cannot continue a policy of aggression with disregard of treaties and international law. A firm policy now for law and order will save many lives.

-Russell J. Clinchy,Washington Council for International Relations

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‘The Plainsman” by Cecil B. DeMille (Stage Magazine, 1937)

Why should a director risk it all with some anonymous film critic when a he is given the chance to review his own movie? With this thought in mind, Cecil B. DeMille (1883 – 1959) typed up his own thoughts concerning all his hard work on the 1937 film, The Plainsman, which starred Gary Cooper:

I think ‘The Plainsman’ differs from any Western we have ever seen for many reasons


– it is at this point in the article that DeMille rattles-off an extended laundry list
of reasons that illustrate the unique qualities of his Western. One of the unique aspects of the film mentioned only by publicists concerned the leading man Garry Cooper, who, being a skilled horseman from his Montana youth, chose to do most of his own riding stunts in the film, including the shot where he rode hanging between two horses.


Click here to read a 1927 review of Cecil B. De Mille’s silent film, King of Kings.

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Japan Sinks an American Warship (Literary Digest, 1937)

Bombs rained like hailstones and churned the waters all around the ship like geysers.’ said Earl Leaf, United Press correspondent in China and eyewitness of the sinking of the United States gunbpat PANAYstyle=border:none, by Japanese aviators, in the Yangtze River about 26 miles above Nanking; ….The British gunboat LADYBIRD and BEE also were fired on, and soon Foreign Minister Anthony Eden was telling an angry House of Commons that:

His Majesty’s Ambassador to Tokyo has made the strongest protest to the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs.’

Click here if you would like to read more about the sinking of the U.S.S. Panay.

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