Roles of Women in 1930s

Astaire & Rogers in Swing
Time (1936)

The thrilling thirties saw the first nine films of the Astaire-Rogers  film series. They were The Gay Divorcee (1934), Flying Down to Rio (1933), Carefree (1938), Top Hat (1935), and Swing Time (1936), just to name a few. The controversial partnership between Shirley Temple and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. Their partnership in 1935's The Little Colonel was controversial back then because of Bojangles' skin color, which I found rather odd because we see the partnership as an OK thing today. The decade also saw a vengeful Clark Gable threatening to boycott the premiere of Gone With the Wind (1939) in a racially segregated Atlanta, Georgia and the first African-American to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She was the same woman who persuaded Clark to attend the premiere. Lastly, the Clark Gable and Carole Lombard secret affair that began after No Man of Her Own (1932) and ended in 1939 when they went public with their relationship.

Bonnie & Clyde posing with a car
and a gun, c. 1930's.

That was how the decade is depicted by many film students but for me, I thought that the decade told that way to film students was primarily because of the entire nation was under a huge amount of debt and made the entire population ration their income carefully as well as the hope of their bosses not laying them off their jobs.

Barbara Stanwych in Stella
Dallas, c. 1937.

It was a pretty harsh for the working class, especially for the people in West Dallas.

The women during the thrilling thirties were still being depicted as sexual beings although they've already proved to the men that they have their own voice, and that they could stand up for what they believed in. I think that the 1930s also saw more independence from a working woman because they are often seen by the general public today as the glamor girl, the heiress, and the actor as their way of life back then; however, an outlaw wasn't their way of living as most historians would say to someone who has no clue about how women lived during the 1930s.

Josephine Barker: a
famous burlesque
dancer during the 30s

In the 1930s, the most notable job that women had was an entertainer. They were gaining a lot of money, just by being someone else on the silver screen. One of those women was Bette Davis. Bette was notable for taking charge of her own career. She often made a few notes or changes with a script and direct the movie, so that the movie went her way. She also argued with the director; almost making the progress of making the movie close to impossible to make. This was in fact one of the many reasons why she was nicknamed the Fifth Warner Brother.

One of the most interesting thing about the 1930s is the discrimination against women, African-Americans, Latinos, and Asians. This was because of what the white male population still saw in them, but only the white female population have their independence; however, sexism played a major role in society and how the female population lived back then was almost the same exact thing that is going on today.

Astaire and her husband,
Lord Cavendish

A notable figure of those times was Adele Astaire. She was on Broadway doing a show called the Bandwagon in 1931 when she had to leave the show to marry a lord; thus, leaving Fred Astaire partnerless but they were able to remain in touch with each other and never lost the connection.

I love this period in time because a lost of what happened in the 1930s are still around today. I still have issues with why we are going backwards and how we went backwards. I thought that it's just in the movies but I might be wrong. While I was reading Fred Astaire's Steps In Time, I learned that giving up a profession to be a part of aristocracy was one thing, and the other thing was talent and presentation because people crowded for the movies and there was a lot of people in show business back then. They were also mostly female who reigned over Hollywood, and not a lot of the male population were actors compared to the ratio of male to female today.

Sources

1. Rogers, Ginger. Ginger: My Story. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991. Print
2. Astaire, Fred. Steps In Time. New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1959. Print
3. Dick, Bernard F. Claudette Colbert: She Walked In Beauty. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2008. Print