The Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression: Shirley Temple and 1930s America (6 page)

As moist-eyed men smiled, some women openly confessed their joyous tears. A woman from Des Moines, Iowa, wrote, “As I listened to your acceptance speech today over the radio—I said to myself ‘this is the very happiest day of my life’ and I found tears on my face—tears of peaceful happiness despite the dreadful predicament the country is now in. Your words carried the honest, truthful conviction of your sincerity to my troubled, worried heart and comforted me.” Writing in pencil on a small piece of paper, a self-described “Southern colored girl” working as a servant in New York City said that previously, “I never notice who or cared who was President,” but that listening to Roosevelt’s inaugural address on the radio, she was moved at first nearly to tears and then to cheerfulness. “Don’t forget us colored people as you serve,” she added.
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Responding to FDR’s militant resolve to fight the Great Depression with all of the powers at his command, a number of correspondents compared Roosevelt to Lincoln. A man in Flushing, New York, who called himself one of the “common people,” expressed confidence that “you will lead us all into a brighter day, and I hope be able to free the American people from slavery to that Master—Fear. A freedom far richer than Lincoln bestowed on the colored race.” A woman in Dayton, Ohio, added, “I am still keyed up with emotion from hearing your voice over the radio at the inaugural. Thank heaven you gave us no pollyannaism. We have had enough of that. You talked as if the country were at war and it was the war spirit that answered you. It was as plain and appealing and exalted as Lincoln at Gettysburg. To my amazement several Republican friends have said the same thing. I did not vote for you but I believe in you heart and soul. That you know what you are talking about and will not lie to us.”
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Again and again, listeners returned to the importance of Roosevelt’s voice in instilling new hope. “
Your voice
and
your voice alone
, is the one force that will carry conviction, restore confidence and, I firmly believe, banish this all-pervading fear,” a Rochester, New York, businessman wrote. An Arizona man expressed special appreciation for “these words spoken by you, with that clear and distinct voice, so clear so grand and with deep an[d] sincear [
sic
] meaning, to those millions of souls in our great country, who have lost all Faith Hope and Confidence in all former Leaders, and institutions of truth.”
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Unlike Hoover, Roosevelt keenly appreciated the potential of radio to carry his voice and message directly into the homes of ordinary citizens and to enlist their support. He had used radio extensively as governor of New York, and over the course of his twelve years as president, he gave thirty-one radio “chats,” as well as more formal addresses, as if “to a few people around his fireside.” Such “fireside chats” may not strike modern ears as especially informal, but at the time they provided a sharp contrast with customary high-flown, extravagant political oratory.
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The first of these, and one of the most momentous, came eight days after his inauguration in the midst of the national banking crisis, shortly after the passage of the Emergency Banking Act, and on the eve of the first reopening of banks across the country. All of Roosevelt’s efforts would be undone if panic broke out again and runs on the banks resumed. Repeatedly addressing his audience in his characteristic manner as “my friends” and using the most common words and idioms, he spoke slowly, simply, and directly.
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“My friends,” he began, “I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking. . . . I want to tell you what has been done in the last few days, and why it was done, and what the next steps are going to be.” He proceeded to explain how banks depended on confidence and credit and how no bank, however sound, could withstand sudden, anxious demands for withdrawals by all depositors. He carefully described the reason for the bank “holiday,” the reforms and restructuring that Congress had provided, and the stages by which banks would reopen. All the while, he spoke to his listeners as “you,” not impersonally but intimately. Anticipating their questions and worries as if in conversation, he gave cogent answers in calm reassuring tones. He thanked them for their understanding, cooperation, and support. Concluding with a mild rhetorical flourish, he still maintained the tone and tenor of his message: “Confidence and courage are the essentials of success in carrying out our plan. . . . Let us unite in banishing fear.”
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The address lasted less than fourteen minutes.

Listeners’ responses were immediate and overwhelming. To many, he seemed like a warm neighbor or relative, dropping into their homes to visit with them. A man from Iowa City, Iowa, wrote, “It was very cosy and friendly and cheery to have you with us last night. We invited some friends in ‘to meet the President,’ not forgetting to place an easy chair by the fireplace for the guest of honor, and when your voice came, so clear and vibrant and confident, we had but to close our eyes to see you sitting there with us, talking things over in friendly fashion.” In a similar vein, a woman reported the remark of a young girl who had listened to Roosevelt’s radio speech: “It seemed as if a Father were talking to me, and I felt like throwing my arms about his neck, he cheered me up so.”
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From Chicago a man wrote to say, “You are bringing back Confidence and driving out the fear that has been gripping the people for the past three years.” He related how he had lost his life savings in a bank failure and, married and past fifty years old, was now on sick leave with polio—a condition that he shared with the president. He concluded with a moving postscript: “Please pardon me for addressing you so familiar in some passages in this letter but your personality is such, and that kindly smiling face I see so much, on paper and that kindly voice I hear on the air, how can any human being keep from it. We all feel (us common people) that you are our friend, tho we may never meet face to face.”
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Roosevelt’s reassuring message dramatically quelled the banking panic. A judge from Syracuse, New York, listened to the chat with a group of Republican and Democratic friends: “When your radio talk began everyone seemed to become hypnotized, because there wasn’t a word spoken by anyone until you had finished and as if one voice were speaking all spoke in unison ‘We are saved.’ The frantic individuals of a few moments before declared that they would leave their money in the banks and that they were not afraid of the future.” Ruth Lieberman of Brooklyn listened to Roosevelt’s chat with her parents: “My father, who is a determined pessimist, was airing his views on the banking situation. He was sure that the banks would never open—that he would never regain his savings. Then you spoke. For fifteen minutes Dad was silent, his brow wrinkled in thought. Then, when you had concluded your talk, he grinned sheepishly and said, ‘Oh well, I wasn’t really afraid of losing my money anyhow.’ ”
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FDRs “persuasive, almost melodic voice” was praised again and again. A reporter remarked in 1936 that it “contained an ineffable quality” which “makes it the most effective voice, the greatest radio voice, in America today. That quality is a timber, something soul-searching which reaches into you and plucks at you.” “Like his picture,” Professor Jane Zimmerman of Columbia University’s Teachers College asserted, “his voice gives the impression of a genial smile.”
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A warm, relaxed tenor, the voice was lighter than the theatrical bass-baritones of many radio announcers. It was also one that he adapted to the new technology of the microphone, using it to develop a more intimate and informal style, analogous to the “crooning” of Bing Crosby, and a decisive break with earlier oratorical techniques, such as that of leather-lunged William Jennings Bryan, who prided himself on his ability to reach thirty thousand listeners in the open air without amplification.

Common listeners agreed. “Mr. President, you have an unusually fine radio voice,” a Sierra Madre, California, woman declared. It “radiates so much
human sympathy
and
tenderness
, and Oh, how the public
does love that
, on the radio especially.” From Milwaukee, Wisconsin, another woman wrote, “I am addressing you ‘Dear Mr. Roosevelt’ because you are so dear to the hearts of all of us, particularly to those who heard your address Sunday evening. There is that something in your voice conveying absolute sincerity and the positive assurance that we are to rise above all our difficulties in a very short time.” A San Francisco woman added, “There is no radio announcer anywhere who has a better voice than you and I think it would be a great idea if you could and would give a short and brief talk on the current issue of the day over the radio whenever possible. It inspires courage and confidence to hear the truth ‘straight from the shoulder.’ ”
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Nor did Roosevelt’s patrician accent, with its inclination to drop
r’
s after vowels—so that he declared “we have nothing to
feah
but
feah
itself”—seem pretentious. At a time when many radio and film personalities spoke in a British-American manner, his accent carried authority but not affectation.

A large vocabulary intimidated listeners far more than did a voice marked by class and region, and FDR’s clarity and simplicity won considerable praise. After the first fireside chat a man from Haskell, Oklahoma, wrote, “Although you have culture, aristocratic breeding and wealth you have one priceless gift, that of reaching out to the ‘common people’ with a deep sympathy and understanding, that goes into their hearts and you can talk their language and when you talked banking you talked banking so all could understand.” An “old janitor” in Chicago remarked, “I know everything he talks about, even my boy could understand, no foolish words but
all good plain
talk, and our president is already helping the people.” Will Rogers, himself a master of plain vernacular style, remarked approvingly, “He showed these radio announcers and our public speakers what to do with a vocabulary—leave it right in the dictionary where it belongs.” Detailed analysis of Roosevelt’s word choice shows he did just that: 70 percent of his words were among the five hundred most common in general reading material, and roughly 80 percent among the thousand most common.
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In these broadcasts, Roosevelt intentionally addressed each listener as “an intimate friend.” Frances Perkins described how, as he spoke, “his head would nod and his hands would move in simple, natural, comfortable gestures. His face would smile and light up as though he were actually sitting on the front porch or in the parlor. . . . People felt this, and it bound them to him in affection.”
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Such apparent simplicity took considerable effort. The fireside chats, Eleanor Roosevelt remembered, “entailed a great deal of work on Franklin’s part. . . . I have known . . . Franklin to take a speech that had almost reached the final stages and tear it up and dictate it from the beginning, because he felt the others had not made it clear enough for the layman to understand. Franklin had a gift for simplification.” Replying in 1942 to a letter asking him to give his radio chats more frequently, he wrote, “I suppose you know that every time I talk over the air it means four or five days of long, overtime work in the preparation of what I say.”
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Roosevelt made equally skillful use of film newsreels. His was the first presidential inauguration to be carried as a sound newsreel, and he continued to appear in newsreels roughly twenty-six to thirty times a year through the 1930s, so that, as the actor Melvyn Douglas pointed out, “he was seen by more people in the movie houses than the two most popular Hollywood stars in any year.”
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Douglas, himself one of the most popular leading men in 1930s movies, paid tribute to FDR’s great acting skill, as displayed in a 1936 newsreel in which Roosevelt greeted cheering throngs on a hot June day in Arkansas: “He smiled his warm, inspirational smile. He was playing the role I think he liked best, leading man in a drama featuring People, Crowds, Speeches, and the Spirit of Pioneering. . . . FDR knew,” Douglas added, “that millions of Americans would see the pictures and would feel happier if their President looked fit and healthy.”
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To that end, “he was the most cooperative presidential subject the newsreel cameramen had ever known.”
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Journalists frequently compared FDR to leading actors. Marveling at his performance in the 1940 presidential campaign against Wendell Willkie, one reporter exclaimed, “He’s all the Barrymores rolled in one.” Veteran newspaperman William Allen White similarly told Roosevelt, “For box office attraction you leave Clark Gable gasping for breath.”
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These newsreels emphasized Roosevelt as a vigorous, dynamic personality rather than as a politician. An analysis of the
Universal News
during FDR’s first two terms found him most frequently shown on trips (34 percent) or in nonpolitical ceremonies (30 percent). By contrast, his official speeches accounted for only 24 percent of his appearances. The newsreels also captured his mastery of humor—and his ability to reduce partisan attacks to absurdities. In 1938, receiving an honorary degree from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, he confided, “You have heard for six years that I was about to plunge the Nation into war; . . . that I was driving the Nation into bankruptcy; and that I breakfasted every morning on a dish of grilled millionaire.
(Laughter)
Actually I am an exceedingly mild mannered person . . . a believer in the capitalistic system, and for my breakfast, a devotee of scrambled eggs.
(Laughter)
.”
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Roosevelt relished this theatrical role. He once said to Orson Welles, “Orson, you and I are the two best actors in this country.” On another occasion, when the sound squeaked in one of his newsreels, he quipped to Melvyn Douglas, who had costarred with Greta Garbo in three films, “That’s the Garbo in me.”
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