1932

 

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“This election is not a mere shift from the ins to the outs. It means deciding the direction our nation will take over a century to come.”

 

President Herbert Hoover

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A glut of crude oil, in the wake of huge discoveries in Texas and Oklahoma, drives the price down to 10 cents per barrel, vs. $3 a few years before.

 

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Babe Ruth.

 

In the 20s and 30s, Babe Ruth becomes the “first sports god.”

 

This quote is from 1932: “The rise, the existence, the being of Ruth is purely an American phenomenon, like…crooners…million dollar prizefight purses… skyscrapers …and freedom of the press.” Paul Gallico, in Vanity Fair (quoted in a September 2018 issue.)

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E.Y. Harburg and Jay Gorray publish the following song: 

“Brother, Can You Spare a Dime”

 

They used to tell me I was building a dream

and so I followed the mob

When there was earth to plow or guns to bear

I was always there right on the job,

 

They used to tell me I was building a dream
With peace and glory ahead
Why should I be standing in line
Just waiting for bread?

 

Once I built a railroad, I made it run
Made it race against time
Once I built a railroad, now it’s done
Brother, can you spare a dime?

 

Once I built a tower up to the sun
Brick and rivet and lime
Once I built a tower, now it’s done
Brother, can you spare a dime?

 

Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell

full of that Yankee Doodly Dum
Half a million boots went sloggin’ through hell
And I was the kid with the drum

 

Say, don’t you remember? They called me “Al”

It was “Al” all the time

Don’t you remember? I’m your pal

Say buddy, can you spare a dime? 

Jean Harlow is making big money in the movies.

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March 1: The Lindbergh baby, their 20-month old son, is kidnapped, in the “Crime of the Century.”

 

The intruder climbed through a second story window and took the sleeping infant, Charles Augustus, Jr., from his crib. On an isolated ridge about five miles away, he took the child into the woods, smashed in its head, removed its sleep suit (to be used later) and buried the body in a shallow grave.

 

He left a note on the nursery window which read:

 

Dear Sir

 

Have 50000$ ready 25000$ in 20$ bills and 15000$ in 10$ bills and 10000 $ in 5$ bills. After 2-4 days we will inform you where to deliver the money. We warn you for making anyding public or for notify the police. The child is in gut care.

 

Instructions for how the Lindberghs could retrieve the boy, the note added, would follow.

 

The first real “lead” came through a retired school teacher, to be known only as “Jafsie” in the papers. He had received a mysterious note from “John.” saying that he (Jafsie) would receive instructions thorough coded newspaper ads.

 

With full consent from the Lindberghs and the police, “Jafsie” demanded a token of authenticity. He received a package containing the sleep suit. A week later “Jafsie” held a midnight cemetery meeting with “John,” turned over the money and received a note in return saying the child was safe in a small sailing boat, “the Nelly,” off Martha’s Vineyard in the care of two “inosent” persons.

 

Of course, there was no boat. This was the first hoax. Others, even more cruel ones, were to come … friends were filched out of thousands of dollars and hopes raised and dashed again and again.

 

Wealthy widow, Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean, gave a shady confidence man, Gaston B. Means, $100,000 in cash on his promise to have the baby released. Of course, his larcenous negotiations never materialized.

 

Another “intermediary” presented A detailed plan – through information supplied by a bootlegger – for a rendezvous at sea where Lindbergh cruised for days until he learned by ship’s the radio that the infant’s body had been found in its New Jersey grave.

 

Finally, one September day in 1934, a Bronx service station attendant was given a $10 gold certificate for ninety-three cents worth of gas by a customer with a German accent. Because gold currency had recently been taken out of circulation, the service man noted the customer’s license number on the back of the bill.

 

Five days later, a mild-mannered, silent German carpenter with a wife and child of his own was arrested at his home.

 

His name was Bruno Richard Hauptmann!

 

He was brought to trial in January 1935. It is improbable that it was an impartial jury who convicted him. However, the evidence was conclusive. A $20 gold certificate of the ransom money was in his pocket when he was arrested. Other notes he had passed turned up. Later the police found $13,750 of ransom bills in tens and twenties and they also learned he had $24,000 to $25,000 on deposit with a brokerage house.

 

He was convicted of first degree murder, and after exhausting appeals all the way to the Supreme Court, he was electrocuted in New Jersey on April 3, 1936.

 

The kidnapping led to the passing by Congress of the Lindbergh Act, which makes kidnapping across state lines a Federal offense, and therefore within the province of the FBI.  (300/26)

 

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June 2: Nineteen-year old George Washington Perry goes fishing on Montgomery Lake, in Georgia. All morning, he fishes with little success. That afternoon he casts his line near a half-submerged dead tree. At first, he explained, “I thought I’d hooked a log.” Instead, he had hooked a 22 pound, 4 ounce, largemouth bass, a world record that stands to this day. 

It was the Depression. So he took it home and his family ate it.

 

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October 29: Mae West premiers in the movie “Night After Night.” West doesn’t appear on screen for the first 37 minutes, but when she does, at a nightclub, men part before her like the Red Sea parting for Moses.

 

Within her first minute onscreen, she has tossed off one of her signature lines, as a coat check girl coos, “Goodness, what beautiful diamonds,” and West replies, slyly, “Goodness had nothin’ to do with it, dearie!” West didn’t just take over the movie – she took over the movies, period.

 

The New York Times has this to say:

 

In “I’m No Angel” … [the following year], West is advertised as a “Marvel of the Age,” and that’s as good a description as any. Born Mary Jane West in Brooklyn, daughter of a prizefighter turned private investigator, she began performing in talent competitions as a child and hit the vaudeville stage in her early teens, eventually graduating to burlesque shows and Broadway revues. But West’s career didn’t take off until she began writing, producing and directing her own Broadway vehicles: lurid comic melodramas with attention-grabbing titles like “Pleasure Man,” “The Constant Sinner” and, simply and most memorably, “Sex.”

 

 

She was pushing 40 when she first appeared on screen. This is before enforcement of the Hays Code became the rule. As the Times critic explains, “The women she played were not just sexually independent; they were sexually voracious, unapologetic in their appetites (and their forthrightness about them).” 

Censors hated her because she covered herself from attack with comedy, and could suggest something racy with nothing more than a raised eyebrow, or a wink, using her sultry voice. 

 

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Herbert Hoover warns, “This election is not a mere shift from the ins to the outs. It means deciding the direction our nation will take over a century to come.” (1127/113)

President Herbert Hoover.

 

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Only 36,000 immigrants enter the U.S. during the year; meanwhile, 103,000 return to their homelands. (1127/14)