When the Great Depression hit the United States in 1929 and lasted until the late 30s, it wiped out millions of investors, and the economy came crashing down. Industrial output declined rapidly, and many people got laid off of their jobs.
It’s not just the industry that was affected by the Great Depression; entertainment, too, was heavily affected.
According to Dickstein, the 1929 economic crash hit the entertainment business hard. Movie studios, broadcasters, nightclubs, and the rest of the sector suffered, and numerous ventures went out of business. Meanwhile, many writers and artists who had left the U.S. to seek creative freedom lost much of their incomes and returned home.
But thanks to the efforts of the Works Progress Administration headed by Harry Hopkins, the United States managed to keep the entertainment industry alive, which helped in keeping the spirits of its citizens alive.
The New Deal brought federal support for artists. As Harry Hopkins, the head of the Works Progress Administration, supposedly told President Franklin Roosevelt, “Artists have to eat, too.” The WPA hired muralists, writers, theater directors, and actors to keep supplying the country with entertainment. It also employed photographers and writers to document the lives of their fellow Americans. Among the products of this effort were oral histories that still inform historians’ work today.
This is the reason why the people still managed to laugh even in the midst of an economic crisis.
More details about this story over at JSTOR Daily.
(Image Credit: Dorothea Lange/ Wikimedia Commons)