1929
Middletown: A Study in American Culture by Robert S. Lynd and Helen
Merrell Lynd was published, examining the tastes in homes, clothing, and
automobiles of the citizens of Muncie, Indiana.
Construction on the Empire State Building began.
Construction began on the modernist McGraw-Hill building, designed by Raymond
Hood.
The Metropolis of Tomorrow by Hugh Ferriss was published.
Popular movies included The Taming of the Shrew starring Mary Pickford
and Douglas Fairbanks, The Love Parade starring Jeanette MacDonald
and Maurice Chevalier, Hallelujah directed by King Vidor, The Broadway
Melody starring Charles King and Bessie Love, Steamboat Willy
produced by Walt Disney and starring Mickey Mouse, In Old Arizona
starring Warner Baxter and Coquette starring Mary Pickford.
Popular fiction and verse included Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms,
Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel, William Faulkner’s Satoris and
The Sound and the Fury, Sinclair Lewis’s Dodsworth, Dashiell
Hammett’s Red Harvest, Theodore Dreiser’s A Galley of Women,
Ring W. Lardner’s Round Up, John Steinbeck’s Cup of Gold, Edith
Wharton’s Hudson River Bracketed, Chic Sale’s The Specialist,
Oliver LaFarge’s Laughing Boy, Lloyd C. Douglas’s The Magnificent
Obsession, S.S. Van Dine’s The Bishop Murder Case, Robinson Jeffers’s
Dear Judas, Conrad Aiken’s Selected Poems, Louise Bogan’s Dark
Summer, Countee Cullen’s The Black Christ and E.A. Robinson’s
Cavender’s House.
Popular songs included Nick Lucas’s “Tiptoe Through The Tulips With Me,”
Cliff Edwards, The Rounders & The Bronx Sisters’s “Singin’ in the Rain,”
Ethel Waters’s “Am I Blue?” Rudy Vallee’s “I’m Just a Vagabond Lover,” Lillian
Taiz & John Hundley’s “With a Song in My Heart,” Louis Armstrong’s “Ain’t
Misbehavin’,” William Glaxton & Genevieve Tobin’s “You Do Something to
Me,” Ruth Etting’s “Button Up Your Overcoat,” Lilly Holman’s “Moanin’ Low,”
Helen Morgan’s “Why Was I born?” Al Jolson’s “Liza,” and Charles King’s “Broadway
Melody.”
Edward Hopper painted The Lighthouse at Two Lights.
Charles Shuler painted Upper Deck.
Thomas Hart Benton painted Georgia Cotton Pickers.
Isamu Noguchi sculpted Martha Graham.
According to a Woman’s Bureau study of 169,255 working women showed that
46% were married.
Women at Goucher College were permitted to smoke.
The New York City Board of Education announced that the word Negro should
be spelled with a capital N.
February: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
opened its Contemporary Decorative Arts Show.
March: In Elizabethton, Tennessee, five
hundred women began to strike.
July 2: Showgirl opened with songs
by George and Ira Gershwin starring Ruby Keeler and Jimmy Durante.
September 3: The bull market peaked.
October 29: Black Tuesday, the stock market
crashed. New York City mayor Jimmy Walker announced that movie houses
show cheerful pictures.
November 13: The stock market hit bottom.
Unemployment rose from 700,000 to 3.1 million.
November 27: Fifty Million Frenchmen
opened with songs by Cole Porter.