Notes 15.4 and 15.5  Culture and Impact of the New Deal

1.  What made the depression years the Golden Age of Film?

• Huge new stars of the talkies brought escape from the Depression through lavish romances, comedies & westerns
• Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers danced through romantic comedies
• Gone with The Wind was one of the biggest films of all times
• Romance set in the South around the Civil War
• Wizard of Oz showed the value of what you have
• There's no place like Home
• Snow White and the 7 Dwarves marked Disney's entrance to film
• comedies brought many vaudeville stars to film
• gangster films showed hard gritty reality mixed with hard characters struggling through troublewd times
• many films showed honest hard working people winning out over adversity

2. Why were the 30s the golden age for Radio as well?

• embodied the democratic spirit of the times
• families gathered and listened to Fireside Chats, comedies, soaps, westerns, dramas
• War of the worlds, Orson Welles, entertained and frightened many
• Many shows eventually moved to television in the late 40s and early 50s
• Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Burns and Allens, The Lone Ranger, all successful on both

3. How did the Depression affect art?

• Most art, music and literature was very serious but usually uplifting
• much about strength of character & virtues of Democratic life
• The WPA supported much art, music, lit
• The Federal Art Project promoted art through posters for the New Deal, Murals on public buildings, art taught in schools
• Federal Theater Project supported plays around the country
• Woody Guthrie sang about the Depression, workers, people trying to survive, traveled the country on the rails to do it.
• Most famous of his folk songs: This Land is Your Land

4.  How did the Depression impact Literature?

• The WPAs Federal Writers Project gave many famous writers their first paying jobs
• Richard Wright
• John Steinbeck
• Thornton Wilder
• Most lit focused on overcoming difficult situations and praised the New Deal and the Domocratic spirit in America

5. What New Deal reforms endured and why?

• By 1937 FDR tried to scale back New Deal programs to avoid more deficit spending
• production fell
• unemployment rose dramatically
• By then there was the danger of war in Europe
• and few relief programs returned
• Gov's role in the economy had grown during the New Deal
• Created jobs, CWA, PWA, WPA
• regulating supply and demand, NRA and AAA
• putting money into hands of people, FERA
• participating in settling labor disputes, like
• National Labor Relations Board
• Created new regulating agencies like
• SEC, FDIC
• programs reduced suffering of people
• programs also put nation into debt
• Depression ended only when WWII put all Americans back to work

6. What was the impact on Society and the environment of the New Deal?

• People's savings were insured
• Pople had a cushion of unemployment compensation until they found work
• farmers were finally able to stop over producing and driving themselves out of business
• Agricultural price supports were established
  
• min price for produce
• based on Parity
• purchase value of sale of each crop in 1914
• CCC planted trees, helped dusbowl recover, built park pathways, hiking trails
• Soil conservation service taught farmers contour plowing, terracing,  crop rotation to save the soil
  
• TVA generated electricity and prevented devastating floods