From Riches to Rags: Hollywood and the New Deal

April 1, 2009 - April 19, 2009

Wild Boys of the Road, April 5

As it did during the last Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s stock has risen as Wall Street’s has fallen. Boldly piloting the nation through the twin calamities of economic collapse and world war, FDR was so popular that he became the gold standard by which his successors are measured. But how did Hollywood respond to Roosevelt’s New Deal?

Americans sought relief from the grim reality of the Depression in movie palaces supplied with escapist fare, but studio heads and stars, like everyone else, were not neutral about “that man in the White House” and his policies. Films depicting the crisis thus appeared alongside the gleeful spectacles of Ginger and Fred, Judy and Mickey. Whether depicting hoboes riding the rods or hardscrabble farmers pushed to the wall, the tyranny of bloated government agencies or a president who, under divine guidance, makes himself dictator for the good of his people, Hollywood responded at a time when extreme notions like revolution and fascism tempted many as alternatives to despair.

Washington commissioned its own films, as well, to justify the vast expenditure of taxpayer money that put Americans to work in New Deal agencies such as the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps. The feature films and shorts in this series reflect the ways in which Americans and their institutions coped with the greatest economic catastrophe of the not-so-distant past. And perhaps through these films, we can reflect upon the newest of New Deals.

Gray Brechin
Founding Scholar, California’s Living New Deal Project

Wednesday, April 1, 2009
7:00 p.m. Our Daily Bread
King Vidor (U.S., 1934). Introduced by Eric Rauchway. With The Plow That Broke the Plains (Pare Lorentz, U.S., 1936).

Sunday, April 5, 2009
6:00 p.m. Wild Boys of the Road
William Wellman (U.S., 1933). Introduced by Harvey Smith. With the WPA-produced short We Work Again (U.S., 1930).

Wednesday, April 15, 2009
7:00 p.m. Gabriel over the White House
Gregory La Cava (U.S., 1933). Introduced by Gray Brechin. With shorts The Road Is Open Again (Alfred E. Green, U.S., 1933) and Hell-Bent for Election (Chuck Jones, U.S., 1944).

Sunday, April 19, 2009
6:00 p.m. Wild River
Elia Kazan (U.S., 1960). Introduced by Charlotte Brody. Live music by Jugology. With short The Columbia (Stephen B. Kahn, U.S., 1941).

Series curated by Steve Seid. PFA wishes to thank the following individuals and organizations for their contributions to this series: Gray Brechin, California’s Living New Deal Project; Harvey Smith; Eric Rauchway, UC Davis; Gary Handman, Moffitt Media Center; Charlotte Brody, Green for All; California Historical Society; Mat Rogers, Society for Agriculture and Food Ecology; Daniel Rooney, Special Media Archives Services Division, National Archives; and Mary Keene, MoMA Film Archive. Archival and restored prints and musical accompaniment for silent films are presented with support from the Packard Humanities Institute.