…How did the world of tomorrow, as the New York World’s Fair of 1939 was dubbed, actually look to those who were trying to envisage a future world. The predictions were limited by the Great Depression and the shadow of war just ahead. Could any miraculous seer have overcome these limitations? …
In making any sketch of the country in 1939, eventually the war in Europe enters the scene; and the American attitude was still largely the suspicious, truculent, defensive ones articulated by Mrs. Trollope in the mid nineteenth-century. America had its Neutrality Act to keep them out of foreign squabbles, and a young generation brought up on anti-war attitudes arising out of the First World War, and embodied in plays like What Price Glory? and novels like Three Soldiers. Two years earlier, in 1937, an estimated half a million American students had taken part in a student strike against war. But the fact remains war in Europe fell heavily over the country in 1939. It stifled optimism and shortened perspective; it discouraged a forward view. In May, real estate men gathered in New York complained to each other that fear of war was “killing deals.”
—The British censor ruled out the play for London; but the screen version of this drama, it appears, says quite as much in the way of rough talk, and every theater in London, we are told, is clamoring to secure it.
“In ‘What Price Glory?’ McLaglen and the others have been made carefully to articulate and emphasize the full vocabulary of the profession of arms, especially that of the American soldier, which is rather richer and rounder than the rest, and this aspect of the film is affording censors much anxious thought.
‘”They who see this picture,’ says Variety, ‘are going to start tipping off on the cuss words used, words that can only be gotten by lip-reading, but the bunch that goes to see the picture will watch for that rough stuff.’ “—click image for source…
If David L. Cohn was right in his thesis that the year-by-year contents of the Sears, Roebuck catalogue faithfully reflect American moods, then a flourish or two may be added to the sketch of 1939 by taking a look into the editions of that year. Among many other things, the 1939 spring number shows beautiful new horse-drawn farm wagons: windmills for $29.95 and up; a great number of objects called “refrigerators,” although icebox would be a closer description, and a number of washing machines run by gasoline. The boys shown in the catalogue are usually wearing knickers; the men are wearing trousers so wide at the cuff that they now look ridiculous; and hte heels of the women’s shoes are so broad and low that they look as if they could actually be walked on without teetering, such was the practical wisdom of fashion in those primitive times.
—World’s Fair, Futurama (1939)
Seeing the world of tomorrow: The Futurama feature of the General Motors highways and horizons exhibit at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, showing how visitors viewed the world of tomorrow from comfortable moving sound chairs while touring a vast scale model of the American countryside, with the exhibit covering more than 35,00 square feet. Futurama was the largest scale model ever constructed; it included more than 500,000 buildings and houses, over a million trees, and 50,000 motor vehicles, many of which were in motion.—click image for source…
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