With money short, people during the Depression found happiness where they could. Movies were escapist fare. Parlor games and board games became popular. Parker Brothers introduced Monopoly, which allowed people who had lost land and homes to buy imaginary real estate with play money.
Radio was king, offering everything from Jack Benny to the Lone Ranger to Franklin Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats. Mystery novels by writers like Agatha Christie, Dashiel Hammett and Raymond Chandler were popular. Swing music became the rage, as people danced to the big bands of Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey.
Artists were put to work with funds from the WPA. Gutzon Borglum completed Mount Rushmore. Others were commissioned to paint murals, on themes of American history and culture, on the walls of government buildings. The Federal Music Project promoted American composers like Aaron Copland. The Department of the Interior hired Woody Guthrie to travel through the Northwest performing his folk songs.
Clothes were designed to last, with simple print dresses with waistlines and longer hemlines and zippers rather than buttons. Men wore wide, high waisted pants and hats.
Women were coming into their own. Mary McLeod Bethune, a member of the board of the National Youth Administration, extended benefits to African Americans. Georgia O’Keeffe painted landscapes in both New York City and the Southwest. Mildred (Babe) Didrikson won distinction in sports as varied as baseball, basketball, track and field and golf. Amelia Earhart was the first woman and second person to fly solo across the Atlantic. Frances Perkins, the first woman cabinet member, advocated the eight-hour work day, stricter factory safety laws and laws to protect women and children in the labor force.
And one woman, Irene Young Mattox, was tapped to head relief efforts in Oklahoma City. Mother of seven, a schoolteacher since she was 17, and a member of the 12th & Drexel Church of Christ, she’d drive around the city to markets, restaurants and bakeries picking up gifts of food to distribute to the hungry living in shantytowns near the Canadian River. |
