PROJECT XX: LIFE IN THE THIRTIES (TV)
Summary
One in this series of irregularly scheduled documentaries. This program focuses on the United States in the 1930s, with special emphasis on President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration and the Great Depression. Highlights include the following: unemployment mounts during the Depression; as governor of New York, Roosevelt provides emergency public relief to umemployed; farms face the threat of foreclosure; World War I veterans lead a Bonus March on Washington, D.C.; humorist Robert Benchley analyzes the cause of the Depression; Roosevelt is inaugurated; Roosevelt closes the banks and in his first fireside chat discourages hoarding; the first one hundred days of the New Deal, when Congress passes all the president's legislation; Will Rogers and Gen. Hugh Johnson enlist Americans' support of the National Recovery Act (NRA); an NRA parade; Prohibition ends; Roosevelt's programs to fight the Depression; the dust bowl of the Great Plains, and the migrating Oklahoma farmers; demagogues, including Huey Long, Gerald L.K. Smith, Father Charles Coughlin, and Dr. Frances E. Townsend; Roosevelt at Hyde Park, NY, and Warm Springs, GA; the 1936 election, Roosevelt vs. Alf Landon; the kidnapping of Charles and Anne Lindbergh's baby, and the ensuing conviction of Bruno Richard Hauptmann; the golden age of radio; the Hindenburg disaster; the coronation of George VI as king of England, with Queen Elizabeth, Princess Elizabeth, and Princess Margaret; Edward, Duke of Windsor, marries Mrs. Wallis Simpson; Sen. Robert Wagner (D-N.Y.) and the Wagner Labor Relations Act; sit-down strikes at automobile plants; a parade and rally of a German-American Nazi Bund; June 1939, King George and Queen Elizabeth parade with President and Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt down Pennsylvania Avenue; and the 1939 World's Fair in New York City, with its theme of the "world of tomorrow." Commercials deleted.
Details
- NETWORK: NBC
- DATE: October 16, 1959 8:30 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:51:20
- COLOR/B&W: B&W
- CATALOG ID: T81:0409
- GENRE: Public affairs/Documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Banks and banking; Depressions (economic); Disaster Reporting - 1937; Kidnapping; Labor and laboring classes; Nazism; New York World's Fair, New York, N.Y. - 1939; Prohibition; Radio - History; U S - Elections - 1932 - 1936; U S - Economic conditions; U S - Presidency - Inaugurations - 1933
- SERIES RUN: NBC - TV series, 1954-1971
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Donald B. Hyatt … Producer, Director
- Robert Garthwaite … Assistant Producer
- Richard Hanser … Writer
- Henry Salomon … Based on a Concept by
- Robert Russell Bennett … Music by
- Alexander Scourby … Narrator
- Robert Benchley
- Charles Coughlin
- Edward, Duke of Windsor (See also: Edward VIII, King of Great Britain)
- Elizabeth, Princess of Great Britain
- Elizabeth, Queen Mother of Great Britain
- George VI, King of Great Britain
- Bruno Richard Hauptmann
- Hugh Johnson
- Alf Landon
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
- Charles A. Lindbergh
- Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr.
- Huey Long
- Margaret, Princess of Great Britain
- Will Rogers
- Eleanor Roosevelt
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Simpson, Wallis Warfield (see also: Duchess of Windsor, The)
- Smith, Gerald L. K.
- Frances E. Townsend
- Robert F. Wagner