30

Brother Can You Spare a Dime?

Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell

Full of that yankee doodly dum

Half a million boots went sloggin' through hell

And I was the kid with the drum

Say, don't you remember, they called me Al

It was Al all the time

Why don't you remember, I'm your pal

Say buddy, can you spare a dime?

Once in khaki suits, ah gee we looked swell

Full of that yankee doodly dum

Half a million boots went sloggin' through hell

And I was the kid with the drum

Oh, say, don't you remember, they called me Al

It was Al all the time

Say, don't you remember, I'm your pal

Buddy, can you spare a dime?

They used to tell me I was building a dream

And so I followed the mob

When there was earth to plow or guns to bear

I was always there right on the job

They used to tell me I was building a dream

With peace and glory ahead

Why should I be standing in line

Just waiting for bread?

Once I built a railroad, I made it run

Made it race against time

Once I built a railroad, now it's done

Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once I built a tower up to the sun

Brick and rivet and lime

Once I built a tower, now it's done

Brother, can you spare a dime?

Government and Culture

New Deal - WPA (1935) - tries to put people back to work

Federal Art Project - gives artists jobs - murals in post offices, public housing - theme: working class

Federal Writers Project - WPA guides for each state, literature to be useful not highbrow

Put black writers back to work, Richard Wright, Chicago FWP, then Harlem - hired Ralph Ellison

Federal Theater Project - Orson Welles directed black performances of Shakespeare

https://livingnewdeal.org/us/sc/

Farm Security Administration

Use of photography to document abject poverty - those benefiting from the programs

Documentary genre seen as democratic

Dorothea Lange - known for "Migrant Mother"

John Steinbeck visited FSA camps

Fireside Chats

Franklin Roosevelt reaching out to American people through radio

30 chats between 1933-44

Media

Life Magazine

Media

Art Deco

Chrysler Building

Radio City Music Hall

Art Deco

Swing

Develops from Jazz

Benny Goodman - b. 1909 in Chicago to Eastern European Jews - plays clarinet, starts his own band

Swing

First person to perform Jazz at Carnegie Hall

Groucho Marx

Background in vaudeville, singing acts

Play - musical comedy "The Coconuts - Grouch brought audience onto the stage

Groucho

Turns plays into series of movies

Socialist Party

Founded in 1901 - grew quickly - won more than 900,000 votes in elections in 1912 and again in 1920

380 party affiliated newspapers and 353 cities and towns that elected Socialist mayors and other officials

Eugene V. Debs received 6% of the vote in 1912 presidential election as Socialist candidate (1 million votes in 1920 from jail cell)

http://depts.washington.edu/moves/SP_map-members.shtml

Communist Party USA

Socialist party split in 1919 - communists left to form their own party

Membership peaked at 66,000 in 1939

With rise of fascism in Europe - pursue Popular Front approach in 1936- incorporate more center/left groups

http://depts.washington.edu/moves/CP_map-votes.shtml

American Artist's Congress

John Reed Clubs - “abandon decisively the treacherous illusion that art can exist for art’s sake, or that the artist can remain remote from the historic conflicts in which all men must take sides.”

Arm of Popular Front - sponsored exhibits

When does art become propaganda?

https://greyartgallery.nyu.edu/exhibition/the-left-front-radical-art-in-the-red-decade-1929-1940/sec/images/

Woody Guthrie

Born in Oklahoma in 1912

Becomes a story teller - starts playing ballads and spirituals

Elements of Will Rogers - down-home wisdom

Dust Bowl Ballads - 1939

https://www.pbs.org/video/dust-bowl-woody-guthrie/

Folkways

Alan Lomax - Library of Congress Folkways Project

Preserve folk music before it becomes extinct

Considers folk music from an academic perspective

http://www.folkstreams.net/film-detail.php?id=109

John Steinbeck

B. 1902 in Salinas, CA - father a failed businessman

Grew up in farm country - interested in natural world - society part of larger biological reality

Influenced by Jack London

Marries Carol Henning - a socialist, introduced to leftist politics

Carol gets job at Emergency Relief Organization (ERO) - a New Deal agency - inspires Tortilla Flat - about jobless drifters

"The Novel is Dead"

Early works are not well received - wants to write drama for Hollywood to achieve success

Writes stories in 1936 about "harvest gypsies" - published in The Nation

Reads WPA guides, meets with Farm Security Administrators as part of research

Wants to write contemporary history - sees Great American Novel as the medium

John Ford

B. 1894 in Maine - father a saloon owner and involved with local political machine

Begins to direct movies in 1917 - known for Westerns - fascinated by the Western landscape, myth of the frontier

Directs a movie with Will Rogers - Judge Priest - 1934

Other movies include Stagecoach with John Wayne and Young Mr. Lincoln - where Lincoln presented as a folk hero

Ford depoliticizes the film - focus on the family, New Deal is succeeding

https://www.charliechaplin.com/en/articles/29-The-Final-Speech-from-The-Great-Dictator-