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Introduction to Life During the Depression
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Throughout the Great Depression, Americans
flocked to the movies as an affordable form of
entertainment and social interaction. For a
quarter or so, customers could forget their
troubles with glitzy musicals (Gold Diggers of
1933) or screwy comedies (My Man Godfrey,
1936), while rubbing elbows with others who
were temporarily escaping harsh realities. Still
today, movies are considered a recession-proof
industry; the tougher the times, the greater
the need for escapism.
Yet many Hollywood movies of the 1930s
were more than mere entertainment, offering
an examination of hot-button topics of the day
including socialism (Our Daily Bread, 1934),
vagrancy (Wild Boys of the Road, 1933) and the
role of financial institutions in the country’s
woes (American Madness, 1932). To mark the 80th
anniversary of the Wall Street Crash of 1929,
our festival includes The Crash (1932), in which
a wealthy couple struggles to survive its losses.
The Depression left such a deep mark on
the country that filmmakers over the decades
have continued to examine this turbulent
time. With his screen version of John
Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940), John
Ford dramatizes the plight of Dust Bowl
migrants. Sydney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses,
Don’t They? (1969) looks at the grueling dance
marathons of the period, while Hal Ashby’s
Bound for Glory (1976) tells the story of
Depression-era troubadour Woody Guthrie.
In a lighter vein, Woody Allen’s The Purple
Rose of Cairo (1985) blurs the line between
reality and film fantasy as a movie hero of the
’30s steps out of the screen to romance a lonely
young woman. Joel and Ethan Cohen’s
boisterous O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000),
proudly presented in its TCM premiere,
follows the misadventures of three escaped
convicts in the Deep South of the Depression.
 
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31 Days of Oscar Highlights for Feb. 21
Revel in Marlon Brando's Oscar®-winning performance in On the Waterfront and catch other Academy Award honorees such as Alec Guinness in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Orson Welles in Citizen Kane (1941) and 7 others.
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