LIFE 1936-1948

LIFE’s fourth issue on December 14, 1936 is filled with pictures from the U.S. and England. An Eastman Kodak pilot in Rochester, N.Y., gently lands his single engine plane in a backyard apple tree after the propeller fell off, shinnies down the tree, and goes home. Early LIFE issues are filled with similar photos that are soon eschewed for feature articles accompanied by at least a modicum of analysis.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is on this week’s cover because an American is making his job miserable. Wallis Simpson (Mrs. Ernest A. Simpson) is having an affair with Edward VIII and censorship of their relationship has just been lifted in England. Political and church leaders are scrambling to find a solution since remarriage after divorce is opposed by the Church of England and the people would not tolerate her as queen. Further complicating this matter is that the king is ex officio Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and the king reminds the archbishop that he is the archbishop’s boss. Edward proposes a morganic marriage in which he will remain king but Wallis will not become queen, and any children they might have will not inherit the throne. Although there was some precidence for this, the British Cabinet rejects it. As this issue of LIFE was going to press the King abdicates his throne to his brother on December 10, 1936 to marry the woman he loves.

Mrs. Simpson is faced with many enemies among the king’s ministers and family, and she comes with lots of “baggage.” The dowager Queen Mary believes that Mrs. Simpson has some sort of sexual control over Edward’s undefined sexual dysfunction through practices she learned in a Chinese brothel in the early 1920′s as the wife of a young U.S. Navy officer. What is very apparent to those close to the couple is some sort of sadomasochistic relationship as Edward basks in the contempt and bullying she showers on him. And police detectives report that she is also involved with a married Ford salesman and the Duke of Leinster. Most explosive, the FBI reports later that in 1936 she was having an affair with Germany’s Ambassador to Britain, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and both she and Edward are strong Germanophiles. After 1936 Ribbentrop sent her 17 carnations every day for several years.

Surrealism receives feature story treatment and like all modern art is met with cheers and jeers. The art depicts ordinary objects in arrangements that seem all mixed up. Freud’s work with free association, dream analysis and the unconscious to free one’s imagination helps to give birth to surrealism. Salvador Dali is the best known surrealist as he combines elements in the same picture that are not normally found together with startling effect. Several years later, in 1945, Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman starred in the surrealistic, psychological mystery thriller film, “Spellbound,” by Alfred Hitchcock. Dali served as advisor. He conceived scenes of mental delusion that have to be untangled to cure Peck’s character of his guilt complexes. “Spellbound” receives several Academy nominations and awards. The 1930′s is considered the Golden Age of Surrealism and after WWII it gradually morphed into other movements. Surrealism remains popular with museum patrons today.

The curtain is rising on 1937 and LIFE’s January 4 issue pauses to take a look back at the dramatic events of the last four years of FDR’s New Deal. During the first 100 days of his administration in 1933 Congress passes a host of legislation that fundamentally changes America and gives a shaken nation new courage. Banks are closed and reopened, the dollar is taken off the gold standard, prohibition is ended. The AAA, CCC, NRA, PWA and TVA become part of the fabric of the nation. No President had ever wielded more power. With borrowed money FDR put millions to work on thousands of projects. And the projects are breathtaking in scope. Slums are cleared, mountains tunneled, over 6,000 school houses constructed, dams tame mighty rivers, sewers are dug, the Los Angeles Aqueduct is launched, and 120 airports are added. All of this activity puts a dent into the 1933 unemployment rate of 25% and gives the nation a sense in early 1937 that America is on its way back to normal.

The Public Works of Art Project begins in late 1933 and over the next six months more than 15,000 works are produced in federal buildings by some 3,000  artists, such as the one by artist George Biddle pictured here. The Federal Arts Project (FAP) is created in 1935 and generates more than 200,000 separate works including posters, paintings, murals and sculptures. These are provided for non-federal building such as schools, hospitals, libraries and other local government sites. George Biddle is a Harvard-trained lawyer who soon leaves the legal profession to pursue art. He attended Groton School and is a classmate of FDR at Groton. The President hires him to run the FAP, and during WWII FDR makes him Chairman of the U.S. Department of War’s Art Advisory Commission. Biddle travels with the 3rd Infantry Division documenting their combat activities. When the Commission was retired late in the war Biddle produces combat art for LIFE.

The first four years of FDR’s administration are hammered with the devastating droughts of 1934 and 1936. Actually, the drought begins in some measure in 1930 throughout America’s Great Plains and eventually affects 100,000,000 acres of land. For years deep plowing had displaced the natural deep roots of the prairie grasses whose roots keep the soil in place and hold moisture during dry periods. Thick rolling clouds of dust blacken the sky, permeate the walls and windows of homes and drive livestock and people mad. Over 100,000 persons leave the Great Plains for good to seek a new life in California and other western states, where they are often exploited as they attempt to earn a living as sharecroppers. The New Deal’s Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) is launched in 1933 to pay farmers to leave fields fallow and reduce livestock, thus reducing supply. The act also educates farmers in modern agricultural practices that reduce the erosion of land such as cover crops, contour plowing and terracing. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) plants more than 200,000,000 trees from Texas to Canada to break the wind and hold the soil.

By the spring of 1937 profits were back to 1929 levels and unemployment was trending down. But as the curtain closed on 1937 America is back into the depths of depression and manufacturing output falls over 35%. Economists to this day debate the cause of this collapse. Several economic decisions are made in 1937 including cuts in federal spending, increases in taxes, and tightening the money supply. Which decision is the cause of the plunge? Or was it a result of the increase in money supply from 1933 to 1936? Keynesian’s and disciples of Milton Friedman will be more than happy to give you their interpretation.