A
How much did it cost for a child to buy a ticket to a Saturday afternoon movie matinee?
10 cents
What was the name of the government program that hired young men to work in national forests and parks?
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)
What common household item was used by radio artists to imitate the sound of galloping horses?
Coconut shells
Who was the famous child actress who became Hollywood’s top box-office star during the 1930s?
Shirley Temple
What homemade toy was often made using only a piece of wood, a clothespin, and a rubber band?
rubber-band gun
During the 1930s, music fans drew a sharp distinction between "sweet" bands and this alternative style, which was defined by its driving rhythms, improvised solos, and leaders like Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington.
"swing" bands
Because children could be hired for lower wages than adults, they often replaced their own parents in the workforce; the sources cite a thirteen-year-old girl who took over a job her father had lost in this specific type of factory.
cotton garment factory
To join Captain Midnight’s "Secret Squadron" and receive a "Mystery Dial Code-O-Graph," young listeners had to mail in a dime and a label from this specific sponsor’s product.
Ovaltine
During the tree-sitting craze of the 1930s, boys would sit in the highest branches of a tree for days to break records, often earning extra cash by selling their autographs or doing this for local merchants.
advertising their wares
This dedicated student managed to pay for his tuition at Fordham University by saving his tips from the family pizzeria and completing his homework on the shop's rear table between shifts.
Vincent Ferrara
While national youth unemployment was high, nearly 80 percent of out-of-school sixteen-year-olds in this specific city could not find jobs during the mid-1930s.
New York City
In this 1930s craze, young couples would dance for hour after hour until they dropped from exhaustion in hopes of winning a small amount of prize money.
dance marathons
This term describes the suspenseful ending of a weekly movie or radio serial where the hero appeared hopelessly cornered or trapped by a catastrophe, forcing fans to return the following week to see the escape.
cliffhanger
Under the National Youth Administration (NYA) program, high-school and college students were paid to stay in school by working part-time in these two specific roles.
library workers and research assistants
Audiences in 1939 were famously stunned when this film, which began in black-and-white, suddenly switched to vivid color once the main character arrived in a magical land.
The Wizard of Oz
While the National Youth Administration (NYA) was a popular federal program, its critics frequently charged that it was undermining these two specific character traits in the nation’s youth.
initiative and self-reliance
During the Depression, Black workers were often "the last hired and the first fired." This struggle was worsened when white workers began taking over unskilled jobs previously held by Black workers, specifically as garbage collectors, domestic servants, and this service role.
waiters
Popular radio show rings often featured secret compartments, compasses, or magnets; however, because they were made of "cheap metal," they were known to have this specific effect on the wearer's finger after a few days.
turning it green
During the national "tree-sitting" craze, boys would stay in the highest branches of a tree for days to break records; local merchants would often pay them to do this specific task for their businesses.
advertise their wares
To help listeners "see" the action during a broadcast, radio sound engineers used specific manual tricks; they would snap a wooden match near the microphone to perfectly imitate this specific sports sound.
bat hitting a baseball
Established by executive order in 1935 at the urging of the First Lady, this agency provided work-study grants that enabled over two million low-income students to stay in school by paying them to work in libraries or as research assistants.
National Youth Administration (NYA)
While national unemployment for youth aged sixteen to twenty-four hovered around 50 percent in the mid-1930s, this was the specific percentage of out-of-school sixteen-year-olds in New York City who could not find work.
80 percent
To create the specific auditory illusion of footsteps in the snow for radio "Theater of the Mind," sound effects artists would manually manipulate a box of this common kitchen ingredient.
cornstarch
Recognized as the first full-length animated feature, this 1937 Walt Disney classic required the creation of 250,000 individual drawings and broke all previous attendance records.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
These homemade vehicles, typically constructed from a discarded milk box, a wooden plank, and old steel roller skates, served as the direct ancestors to modern Soapbox Derby competitions.
push-mobiles