HUMOR

Sigmund Freud's astute observation about the design of humor broadly refracted the tone of laughter throughout the Great Depression: "Humour is not resigned, it is rebellious. It signifies the triumph not only of the ego, but also of the pleasure principle, which is strong enough to assert itself here in the face of the adverse real circumstances."

From the earliest settlements in the seventeenth century, humor has been axial in American culture, a rebellious, rallying, and ribald dynamic. Pinpointing its enduring relevance, Constance Rourke noted in American Humor: A Study of the National Character (1931) that "Humor has been a fashioning instrument in America, cleaving its way through the national life, holding tenaciously to the spread elements of that life. . . ." Its ultimate objective, Rourke asserted, was uniting "the unconscious objective of a disunited people . . . and the rounded completion of an American type."

Salient motifs of humor, a melange of resistance and rebellion, irony and nonsense, coursed through the travails of the Great Depression, as they had during previous domestic crises. The articulation of humor mirrored and uplifted people in their attempt to cope with events that were confusing, contradictory, and seemingly incessant: "We'll hold the distinction of being the only country in the history of the world that ever went to the poor house in an automobile," offered Will Rogers, the popular crackerbarrel wit in the early decades of the twentieth century.

The comical is often a spirited interplay with incongruity. Initially, the stock market convulsion and swift economic decline recorded instant disbelief. Theatrical comedian Ed Wynn, playing the classic fool in Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's Simple Simon (1930), would lay flat on his back on the stage and insist that business was looking up. As financial adversity mounted, the urge to retaliate against the power elite, the Wall Street bankers, investment brokers, and corporate managers, assumed robust comic proportions. Will Rogers cracked that "every international banker ought to have printed over his office door, 'Alive today by the grace of a nation that has a sense of humor.'"

At the same time, distrust of political and economic institutions loomed large. The memorable song, "Whatever It Is, I'm Against It," rendered by Groucho Marx in Horsefeathers (1932), summed up the pervasive, anarchistic feeling that nothing was going right and everything deserved condemnation. Several films spoofed the state outright. The public's rebellious resentments could be scene in the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup (1933) and W. C. Fields's Million Dollar Legs (1932), both set in fictitious countries beset with chaotic economic conditions and corrupt politicians. As the president of "Freedonia," Groucho Marx sings "If you think this country's bad off now, wait till I get through with it," while W. C. Fields, head of "Klopstockia," manages to remain in office as long as he triumphs at arm wrestling.

Virtually every major segment of media, including the stage, novels, magazines, cinema, and radio, sought in humor a means of expressing people's desire to escape from the economic distress while grappling with its tangled meaning. Reaching the largest audience throughout the decade was the comic film. Across the regions, an astonishing sixty to seventy-five million persons, approximately 61 percent of the population, went to the movie theaters each week.

Several themes infused the early films. The comedy of pathos, of irony and frustration, in the early years gave way to the humor of aggression and an expression of hope later in the decade. The major film figures of the 1920s were small, wiry, and resilient. Against the antagonistic environs of the modern city, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Harry Langston survived with classical, comedic dignity. The Great Depression forced a shift from the comedy of individual poignancy to the comedy of resilience and retaliation. W. C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, Mae West, Carol Lombard—as well as the radio comedians, Fred Allen, Jack Benny, George Burns, and Gracie Allen—used their comedy as a buffer against the economic harshness. On occasion, their routines plunged deep into working-class hostility.

A prominent cinematic take-off of the theatrical comedy of manners was the screwball comedy: In addition to Duck Soup, Horse Feathers, and Million Dollar Legs, these include Bringing up Baby (1938), It Happened One Night (1934), My Man Godfrey (1936), and You Can't Take It with You (1938). This farcical leitmotif satirized the harsh realities of economic plight and lampooned the upper class, their negative impact and banal life style. Invoking the homeless in My Man Godfrey (1936)—particularly "the forgotten man" emphasized in President Franklin D. Roosevelt's speech—was a scene of men in a Hooverville shelter by a city dump that dramatically contrasted the woeful condition of the unemployed against the asinine game of a scavenger hunt of the wealthy elite.

Concomitantly, the application of the "Production Code" in 1934 that promulgated "the moral importance of entertainment" altered the language and plot of comedy films. Eschewing the amoral, dark, and surreal comedy that had formed the keystone of farcical routines early in the 1930s, the Production Code led to a rollicking, subversive sexual humor, an imaginative comedy that suggested but never exposed sexual antics. Mae West, whose comedic fare had incited the Code, wrote, directed, and starred in films where her sexual innuendoes became repeatable rejoinders: Night after Night (1932), She Done Him Wrong (1933), and My Little Chickadee (1940). Entering a speakeasy in Night after Night, for example, West replies to a hatcheck girl who exclaims, "Goodness, what lovely diamonds," that "Goodness had nothin' do with it, dearie."

Additionally, radio comedy was a coalescing comedic force that extended through the difficult times of World War II. The most popular shows featured Jack Benny, Amos 'n Andy (Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll), Fred Allen, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Fibber McGee and Molly (Jim and Marian Jordan), Eddie Cantor, Bob Hope, and Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, plus a comedy panel, audience-participation program, Can You Top This?

Writers, poets, novelists, and essayists fashioned comic plots that directly or obliquely spanned the economic rupturing: James Thurber, E. B. White, S. J. Perelman, Langston Hughes, H. L. Mencken, and Stephen Leacock. Cartoonists in the preeminent literary magazine, The New Yorker, offered sharp social criticism together with a sardonic look at the crumbling conditions, as well as changes in social mores shaped by the Depression.

In sum, the vast resource of rebellious humor was in full play as the populace confronted the enormous distress and mystery engendered by the Great Depression.

HUMOR

BIBLIOGRAPHY