Last year I wrote a few blog entries about the 1970s and now 12 months later it’s time I fulfilled the promise (threat?) to write about a really strong candidate for runner up in the favourite decade sweepstakes – the 1930s.
Much like the 70s, the 30s often get a bad rap..to be fair this negative designation comes with some justification. After all, a whole heap of horrible events came to pass during this time, the Great Depression, the rise of Hitler in Germany and the outbreak of WWII, the famine in the Ukraine, the Japanese invasion of China, The Great Purge in Russia and the Spanish Civil War to name but a few of the lowest points.
Before I get into all the fantastic movies out there cooling their heels on the library’s shelves (my next blog topic), there are a whole slew of compelling reasons for thinking the 30s are best thing since the invention of sliced bread (Fun fact: Wonderbread first made sliced bread available across the land in 1930).
Here we see a photo from the Strand Palace Hotel in London, first unveiled in 1930. Consider this a not so subtle entreaty for you to enter the world of the 1930s as you would walk through the lobby of this amazing example of art deco architecture. Other examples of architecture in the style of art deco are two of New York’s most famous attractions, the Empire State Building (1931) and my favourite The Chrysler Building (1931). Learn more about art deco here.
I could not in good conscience discuss the 30s without getting into the pulps (see also old time radio programs, comics) which is largely what it comes down to for me. Check this out: What do Buck Rogers, The Green Hornet, Doc Savage, Superman, Batman, Dick Tracy, the Lone Ranger, Flash Gordon…throw in the Looney Tunes plus The Shadow (my personal favourite…in the 30s The Shadow had the incomparable Orson Welles doing his voice…more on Welles later) have in common? Well..naturally they all got their start in the 1930s via radio dramas, comics, film and magazines. That is quite a legacy as many of these characters have been featured in films (of varying degrees of quality) within the last 20 years. These are characters that endure. Throw H.P. Lovecraft into the mix and the 30s pulp reading list is nearing completion. One last mention of The Shadow radio show – it was sponsored for a long time by the Blue Coal company with The Shadow himself as the pitchman. Nothing quite breaks the spell of an episode called something scary – The House That Death Built for example- like hearing the following mid-episode announcement: Not only does The Shadow know what evil lurks in the hearts of men, he also knows that Blue Coal is the best coal to heat your home this winter! The Shadow knows!
Here we see Lovecraft’s own sketch of Cthulu. I like how he looks a bit depressed -just hanging out on the corner waiting for the bus or something.
Without a doubt one of the most unbelievable events in American popular culture came to us via what we now call Old Time Radio drama…Orson Welles’ mock transmission of an alien attack -based on H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (New Jersey being the natural landing point for the tentacled trespassers) that had thousands all too seriously panicked and heading for the hills to escape imminent annihilation by invaders from Mars and their murderous “heat ray”. Naturally, this being the US, many people tried to sue Welles afterwards..I assume for inadvertently making them feel dumb. I really think Benjamin Franklin’s quote of “Believe none of what you hear, and only half of what you see.” should have been given some serious consideration at the time but it does go to show that much faith listeners put in the broadcasters of the day.
The radio was central to home entertainment for both radio programs as well as music. – Below we see a hot date in progress – 1930s style. 
A big development in Canadian radio during the 30s was the first GM Hockey Broadcast across the airwaves in 1931. Saturday nights were never the same again.
Radio programs were obviously not the only things coming out of speakers during this time: a whole lot of vinyl was being played for the listeners as well…some of my favourites are The Carter Family, Robert Johnson, Django Reinhardt, Louis Armstrong, Leadbelly, Bob Wills as well as a lot of big band musicians Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw (he of the 8 wives) among others.
I like lists so here’s a list of the top 5 grossing artists of the decade.
1) According to family members he’d never make number one father but he does come in as top ranking recording artist of the decade – Bing Crosby (or Der Bingle as I like to call him)
2) Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians (London,Ontario’s own!) 
5) Tommy Dorsey
And just because she looks amazing in her fruit hat..here is number 13 Carmen Miranda. The biggest song of the decade was Judy Garland’s Somewhere Over the Rainbow.
I can’t think of any easy way to transition between Somewhere Over the Rainbow and my next topic so I won’t even try.
As the late great TV show Carnivale says of the 30s – it was “the last great age of magic”…it could also be said that it was the last great age of bankrobbers, gangsters and outlaws… by 1931 Al Capone was already in prison and losing control of mental faculties but the era of the Public Enemy was just getting started.
Generally, not part of any mafia or crime syndicate, these bandits generally hit banks and payrolls often looming larger than life in the imagination of the lower and middle classes who certainly were no fan of financial institutions at this time. And on the flip side, paranoid file keeper extraordinaire and long time head of the FBI – J. Edgar Hoover and his G-Men were no fan of the outlaws.
Among the bigger names in the bank robbing business were – the famous Barrow Gang made up of the infamous Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow who were immortalized in Arthur Penn’s classic 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde. 
The list is extensive as the Wikipedia entry on Depression Era Outlaws will attest – over 90 altogether although some operated in the 1920s. John Dillinger (and the Dillinger gang) was probably the biggest of them all. The charismatic Dillinger has been portrayed in films several times, most recently by Johnny Depp in Public Enemies. Like many of these outlaws he was shot dead – the other alternative seems to be a long stretch in Alcatraz which is where a lot of these men ended up. As an indication of his fame, the cinema that Dillinger was leaving as he was shot – The Biograph in Chicago – has since been placed on the National Registry of Historic Places.
Pretty Boy Floyd has been memorialized in song by Woody Guthrie and which portrays him sympathetically – more of a Robin Hood type character than a criminal – the line from his song Pretty Boy Floyd “Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen” shows the divided loyalties that some Americans felt towards him (and other outlaws of the day) and the banks who lost money. After assuming the mantle of Public Enemy # 1 when Dillinger was killed, Floyd too was gunned down by the FBI in 1934.
I could go on and on, but one last gang – The Barker-Karpis group has Canadian content so they get singled out. Like many of these criminals, stealing, murder and kidnapping were fairly common – and Montreal born Alvin Karpis (nicknamed “Old Creepy”) was working with Ma Barker and her boys until serving a whopping 26 years in Alcatraz. Weirdly, while in a different prison in 1962, Karpis meets another inmate – Charles Manson. In his autobiography, Karpis describes Manson as “lazy and shiftless”
And with that, this extremely selective look back at the 1930s is complete. Movies from back then will likely be up next. As much as I enjoy looking back at the past, the people of the 1930s were excited to imagine what the future would look like – in the 1939 World’s Fair in New York the theme was The World of Tomorrow. And with what prescience “Tomorrow” was depicted! They were spot on with Electro the Smoking Moto Man- naturally if so many humans smoked back then, it only stands to reason that once robots developed artificial intelligence, surely the first thing they would do is take up smoking.