1930

DRIVING through Eldon, Iowa with a friend, the painter Grant Wood notices an “incongruous Gothic window on an otherwise modest frame house.” As a writer for The New Yorker explains, “It looked as if the cottage was impersonating a cathedral. Wood tried to imagine who ‘would fit into such a house.’” To do the painting he wanted, he recruited his sister and dentist, for what became his famous “American Gothic.” 

According to the Art Institute of Chicago, the painting was an instant hit.

 

When it was exhibited at the Art Institute in 1930, the painting became an instant sensation, its ambiguity prompting viewers to speculate about the figures and their story. Many understood the work to be a satirical comment on midwesterners out of step with a modernizing world. Yet Wood intended it to convey a positive image of rural American values, offering a vision of reassurance at the beginning of the Great Depression.

"American Gothic" by Grant Wood.

*

The gangster flick, Little Caesar is a hit, and movie producers learn “that multiple murders” mean “multiple box-office dollars.” A spate of similar films followed, “whose swaggering stars were accused of schooling a generation of real-life punks. Hollywood, to duck accusations it was glorifying the underworld, always knocked off the crime lord in the last real.” (1129/197)

 

*

 

Sir Douglas Mawson is sent to Antarctica, in the wake of the Byrd expedition. Flying south from where his vessel was anchored, he sights land in areas “closely corresponding to those reported by Captain Wilkes ninety years before. Wilkes had claimed to have seen eight new lands – suggesting a continent. Only Wilkes Land had been accepted.

 

The explorer had been tagged “the biggest liar in the navy.” See: Year 1840. ( Finley, 86)

 

*

 

Baseball in 1930 is different. Teams in the National League averaged 66 complete games from their pitchers. The New York Giants led the eight team league with a team batting average of .319. The St. Louis Cardinals finished a point behind the Phillies at .314, but all eight of their regular players hit .300 or above. The entire league averaged .303.

 

The pennant-winning Cardinals were the first club ever to score 1,000 runs (1,004) in a season. (The Boston Red Sox hit .302 in 1950, the last American League team to achieve that feat. By 1968, the American League average was only .230. The only regular to hit over .300 was Carl Yazstremski, at .301.)

 

*

 

October 24: The movie director Raoul Walsh gives a screen test to a “strapping young stunt man” named Marion Michael Morrison. When he shows promise, Walsh signs him to a contract, says his name sounds like the name of a circuit preacher, and his screen name becomes “John Wayne.” 

Walsh advises him, “Speak softly but with authority, and look whoever you’re talking to right in the eye.” Wayne then stars with Marguerite Churchill in the movie, The Big Trail, which comes out on this day.

John Wayne in The Big Trail.

 

*

 

August 5: Judge Joseph F. Crater, appointed to the New York Supreme Court in April, disappears:

 

In August he suddenly interrupted a vacation to return to New York City to attend to some unspecified business. He was in his office on August 5 and again the following morning, when he sent his court attendant to cash two checks amounting to just over $5,000 – substantially all his cash holdings; it was later learned that he also sold stocks, receiving some $16,000 in cash. That evening, after carrying several portfolios of his files home from the office, he dined with friends in a restaurant on West 45th Street; shortly after 9:00 p.m. he stepped into a taxi in front of the restaurant and rode off. He was never seen again. A ticket he had ordered earlier for the evening’s performance of Dancing Partner at the Belasco Theater was called for by an unidentified person. Judge Crater’s wife soon began discreet inquiries, but friends and political associates advised her to avoid publicity. Late in August however, he failed to appear for the opening session of his court and on September 4, the police were officially informed that he was missing. The investigation, which eventually included a grand jury hearing lasting for months and involving hundreds of witnesses, discovered no evidence as to his whereabouts but came upon hints of political corruption in the Cayuga club that later led to the much publicized Seabury investigations. The grand-jury investigation ended in January 1931; a few days later Mrs. Carter discovered that someone had entered her apartment and left an envelope containing $6,690 in cash, her husband’s will, various other papers, and a note listing his debtors and signed “Joe.” No other trace of Judge Crater was ever found. (From a book of biographies, source not noted.)