Episode Four: Brother Can You Spare a Dream (1929-1941)
Monday Nov. 22 at 8 pm & 11 pm ET
Wednesday Nov. 24 at 10 pm ET
Saturday Nov. 27 at Noon ET
Monday Nov. 29 at 7 pm ET

The movies broke their silence in 1927, as Warner Bros. introduced the first major synchronized sound film, The Jazz Singer. Stage-trained actors were suddenly in demand, and among those to break though in the early sound era were James Cagney, Bette Davis, Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn and Edward G. Robinson. For the most part, the movies were able to ride the storm of the Great Depression, as crowds flocked to escapist Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals. Most of the moguls toughed out the hard times, though some tumbled. Hungarian-born William Fox, after being a dominant force with his production company and chain of theaters, faced bankruptcy. Laemmle was forced to sell Universal in 1935. However, Harry Cohn prospered at low-budget Columbia Pictures, which gained new respect with director Frank Capra's Oscar®-winning It Happened One Night (1934). Darryl F. Zanuck, at 20th Century Fox, blossomed into one of the youngest moguls. A new generation of filmmakers from Europe included Ernst Lubitsch, William Wyler and Alfred Hitchcock, while homegrown genius Walt Disney created magic through the wonders of animation. As producer David O. Selznick capped the decade of the 1930s with his epic Gone With the Wind (1939), the great conflict of modern times was waiting in the wings.