Movie Monday
I don’t know why the death of Natasha Richardson touched me as much as it did. Perhaps because its publicity reminded me so vividly of each human’s appointment in Samarra.* An appointment most of us will go to quietly and forgotten; and some in a blaze of lightening.

Ironically, she was one of the lucky ones in that she was able to leave a legacy on film. In the last scene of The Handmaid’s Tale she is sitting in a trailer, safe, awaiting the birth of her second child, staring out the window with her voice-over saying that she hopes her first child (from whom she was forcibly separated) will never forget her. Ah, yes, I thought, you couldn’t have known it then but you articulated all mothers’ fear and your eulogy.
*see W. Somerset Maugham, John O’Hara, or Wikipedia

1932 at the Movies:
The popular myth says the Great Depression occurred in the U.S.A. in 1929. It didn’t. The steady decline may be traced to that year but the policies which set the economy downward started years earlier and the full blown effects of these policies didn’t hit the entire country until the early 1930s. Another myth is that everyone was poor in the 1930s. There were still Americans who were very, very rich, including Hollywood moguls and stars.

By 1932, 50% of the working class in Harlem (NYC) were jobless; 75% of the nation's poor were not getting government relief; municipal workers (teachers and policeman) who were the last to be fired, had not been paid in 8 months and were being fired. But protests by the poor and unemployed were local, not national. You didn’t have another Bonus Army camping out in D.C.http://www.nps.gov/archive/elro/glossary/great-depression.htm (Scroll down and click: America from the Great Depression to World War II and then click and click until you come to amazing pictures from this time.)

There were 685 movies released in 1932 and ticket price averaged 22 cents, up 1 cents from the previous year. http://www.waynesthisandthat.com/moviedata.html
But, according to an article in the LAT from October 2008, 1932, movie box office receipts were off 26.7% from 1931

Remember that in the 1930s, Hollywood turned out movies nonstop so the movies of 1932 we made in “real time” not in prior years. During the dark days of 1932, this is what Americans saw in their darkened theaters:

Crime and Mystery:
Hell Fire Austin
Rome Express
The Most Dangerous Game
The Mouthpiece; Without Honor
The Roar of the Dragon

Horror films:
The Mummy
White Zombie
Freaks
Vampyr
Murders in the Rue Morgue

Westerns:
The Local Badman
The Big Stampede
Between Fighting Men
When the West Was Young

Lovey-Dovey; Or Not:
As You Desire Me
Back Street
A Farewell to Arms (should have been a war tale, but wasn’t)
Impatient Maiden
Trouble in Paradise

Academy Awards for 1932:
Picture: Grand Hotel

That’s the only category I can use since until 1931, awards were given for movies made two years prior. The award ceremony in 1933 honored the previous year’s pictures - as they do now - and the pictures two years' previous. Therefore, the 1932 Oscars for Best Actors (yes, there were two awards) went to: Wallace Berry in The Champ (1931) and Fredric March in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931.) Which is surprising since there were a great number of pictures made in 1932from which to choose. However, the ceremony was in its infancy and pictures from the awards looked like a bunch of people in a big restaurant. It was some time later before Hollywood realized that the awards production itself could be a money-maker. (Sources: Yahoo, Wikepedia, IMDB)

This is just a sampling of the 600+ movies made this year but you can see the trend. The only socially-conscious popular movie seems to be I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang with Paul Muni. This movie got changes made in the brutal Georgia penal system but I can’t find out if it caught the eye of the “right” people (i.e., policymakers) or was popular with all moviegoers.

Just some final comments on few movies:
Grand Hotel - was this the first of the perennial Hollywood trend of assembling a cadre of stars for interlocking stories? Dinner At Eight, Crash, (including Cronenberg’s ); Death On The Nile; Airport....the list is endless. Usually you get affluent people’s angst or once-affluent people’s angst. Barrymore playing the aging jewel thief here is interesting but his meatier role was the aging actor in Dinner At Eight. Crawford comes off much better than Garbo, who always seems to be making her entrance to trumpet playing.
As You Desire Me - another Garbo. I remember this movie! Either AMC, before it went to the Dark Side, or TCM has shown it. It’s a dog. Garbo emotes. Is she really the lost wife? Who cares? They sure all live pretty though.
White Zombie - with Bela Lugosi. The moral: be careful what you ask for. Local rich guy desires bride-to-be of another and enlists the local zombie controller for help with his plan. Hokey, but the whites did live well.
A Bill of Divorcement – Hepburn emotes; Barrymore emotes. Mentally ill dad returns just before his wife is about to remarry. Meets his grown daughter and therein the reason for the emoting. All live neatly – no poor boys here.
Emma – with Marie Dressler who was nominated for an Oscar. Unusual film and actress. Dressler was no-beauty and in the competitive world of the stars, of which she was a major one in her time, she did not play the “wallpaper” role (background candy.) Just look at her in Dinner at Eight to see what I mean. In Emma she comes to nursemaid three small children when their mother dies and stays on to marry their father later when he becomes a rich inventor. You may look at this film as Hollywood’s slap at the rich but it’s really a slap at spoiled brats. Emma gets no satisfaction is discovering the children she raised turned out so selfish.

That’s it for his Movie Monday. I think I’m dealing with more than I expected when I proposed: How did Hollywood portray the rich during the 1930s depression? But it sure beats having to review Saw XLVI.