Making the American Way: Moderne Theatres, Audiences, and The Film Industry 1929–1945

Abstract

Three years after the start of the Great Depression, and shortly after A Franklin Roosevelt assumed the presidency, Terry Ramsaye, editor of the motion picture industry's major trade journal, wrote an editorial entitled “New Deal, Superman and Today.” No doubt many readers thought the world had turned upside down. For years civic reformers had attacked the movies for incarnating the dangers of city life: consumption, class mixing, and a sexual revolution. Now Ramsaye assumed the critic's stance, seeing hard times as divine retribution for the industry's folly. Atop the editorial pulpit, he condemned the Hollywood producers as equal to the monopolists whose speculation and grandiose illusions brought about the stock market crash in 1929. Even more dangerous, film producers spread lavish ideals through the powerful medium of sound films, which were displayed in sumptuous theatres that corrupted public life. After three years of bankruptcies and theatre closings, Ramsaye saw a New Deal pointing the way toward business and cultural reform. Like an old-fashioned revivalist, he then exhorted Hollywood to shed the foreignstyled theatre and create models more in touch with national traditions, “more a part of the town and less something that was imposed by outside Supermen.”