Monthly Archives: December 2024

The depths of the Depression would seem an unpromising time to revive the 1929 song “Happy Days Are Here Again”. But after it was played at the 1932 Democratic convention, it caught on as a song of hope for better … Continue reading →

The Disney studio had a productive year in 1929. Along with releasing 12 new Mickey Mouse cartoons, it began a series of one-shot musical cartoons with animation designed to fit the music, instead of the other away around. The “Silly … Continue reading →

“I was so happy. I was so safe,” laments Lois Farquar to a suitor late in Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September. But from the book’s start, as she and her fellow Anglo-Irish gentry enjoy parties and dances, their Irish neighbors … Continue reading →

Lynd Ward’s Gods’ Man is a novel without words (apart from chapter titles) about an artist who makes a Faustian bargain with a masked stranger for artistic success. Told in 139 woodcuts, it was the first of 6 wordless novels … Continue reading →

Elmer Rice’s boisterous Street Scene wasn’t easily staged. Though set in front of a single tenement, it required over 30 actors, prompting many producers to turn it down. Rice eventually had to direct the first production himself. But that had … Continue reading →

In 2010 Israel Katz called Abraham Zevi Idelsohn “the undisputed pioneer-scholar of Jewish music”. Part of Idelsohn’s claim to fame is his comprehensive survey Jewish Music in its Historical Development, written while he was cataloging the Eduard Birnbaum Collection of … Continue reading →

In the midst a “cruel land, this South”, Christ makes an unexpected sort of appearance in Countee Cullen‘s long poem “The Black Christ”. It’s one of a number of poems in The Black Christ and Other Poems dealing with faith, … Continue reading →

Most Christmas songs Americans are used to hearing on the radio were published after 1929. But most Christmas songs they’re used to singing in church are older. Much of the traditional American repertoire is in George Rittenhouse’s World Famous Christmas … Continue reading →

Duke’s Public Domain Day 2025 post discusses René Magritte‘s pipe painting, “La Trahison des Images”, and the difficulty of determining whether US copyright law considers it “published” in 1929, and therefore public domain in 9 days. A related work we … Continue reading →

The first musical Cole Porter and Herbert Fields wrote together was 1929’s Fifty Million Frenchmen, whose title alludes to a 1927 song not actually used in the show. The most memorable song it does use is Porter’s “You Do Something … Continue reading →