"Hollywood's Golden Age"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Essays from Essex

“Hollywood’s Golden Age”

July 2, 2022

 

“One time I was bemoaning the end of the Golden Age of pictures. Welles laughed and said:

‘Well, come on. What did you expect? Even the height of the Renaissance only lasted 60 years’”

                                                                                                                                     Peter Bogdanovich (1939-2022)

 

Admittedly, I have a juvenile sense of humor. Among my favorite movies are those that distinctly did not come from Hollywood’s “Golden Age:” Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974), Animal House (1978) and Caddy Shack (1980). Lest there be any confusion, my wife does not share these likes. However, I like her, am also drawn to classics like Top Hat (1935), Jezebel (1938), Casablanca (1942) and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946).

 

Golden Age movies highlighted stars like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Claudette Colbert, Charles Laughton, Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant, and the creativity of directors like Frank Capra, Billy Wilder and Orson Welles. There were no special effects, so plot and dialogue were critical. Reflecting their time, they are often politically incorrect to today’s more sensitive eyes and ears. We cannot dance like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers, or sing like Judy Garland or Bing Crosby, but we admire their talent, and we empathize with the ageless, fallible human sentiments that endow their characters

 

Most commentators agree that the Golden Age of Hollywood began in the mid 1930s. As to when it ended, there is less accord. Some claim the end came with the spectacular year of 1939. Others argue it ended in the early 1960s. I believe the Age ended around 1950, when televisions became common. In 1946, there were 6,000 televisions in the U.S. By 1955 half of all U.S. households had a television. In the 1930s, with the Country mired in Depression, movies provided a means to escape, for a few hours, the hardships of real life. Encyclopedia.com estimates that 65% of the population – 85 million people – went to the movies once a week during that decade. The small town where I grew up – Peterborough, NH – had a theater where movies were changed three times a week. During the War, news reels were shown before the main feature, with clips from the fronts in Europe, the Pacific, North Africa and the Middle East.

 

Accusations of racism are made of movies from that period, and that would be correct – American Indians were almost always the bad guys and blacks were usually given stereo-typical roles. But values change, as do people. Nevertheless, in any age, respect for talent is eternal. Remember the “stair dance” Bill Robinson performed with Shirley Temple in the 1935 film The Little Colonel? Or the Oscar-winning performance by Hattie McDaniel as Mammy in the 1939 movie Gone with the Wind? Has anyone ever sung “Ol’ Man River” with more feeling than did Paul Robeson in the 1936 version of Showboat? Can anyone who has heard it forget the rendition of “Stormy Weather” by Lena Horne in the eponymous 1943 movie?

 

For centuries, books, pamphlets and conversation provided amusement. In the early 20^th Century movies offered shared entertainment, and in 1927 Warner Brothers released the first movie with sound, The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson. The Golden Age of movies was a remarkable period of innovation and innocence. With theater lights dimmed and the audience sitting quietly, people gathered for a common experience, so different from today when isolated people communicate by Snapchat and Instagram. Movies from that age are dated, but the messages they convey – of human relationships, of loves and hates – are forever.