1930's Final College Years: Talkies, Socialism, Prohibition

The University Theater last week advertised its double-bill with a large multi-colored poster which read "ALL CINEMASCOPE SHOW." Jut twenty-five years before, the same theater announced an equally alluring program with a similar billboard. That sign read "ALL TALKY SHOW."

A slower advance of "modernis" is found with an academic comparison involving the same 25-year span. In February of 1930, Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell proudly proclaimed, "There is no such thing as a Harvard type." Today more Harvard men represent the midwest and the far-west, but the University has yet to achieve recognition of its "type." While the movies and cigarettes and coca-cola grow bigger, the College Undergraduate still acts and thinks in his own private little way and a history of the final two years of today's reunion class could easily substitute for the last two of today's graduating class.

For example, during '30's junior year the University Band gained the distinction of possessing the largest bass drum in the country and paraded as the largest marching unit in the East. That year the football team collected its first victory over Yale since 1922. The Crimson's much-publicized line was sparked by James Douglas, Jr. '30, R. H. O'Connell '30, and James E. Barrett '30, captain of the 1929 eleven.

A typical reaction to the College was given that fall by a visiting Oxford student, John Maud: "I had come over here expecting to find Harvard a hot-bed of collegiatism. My disillusionment was most welcome." The English scholar added as explanation, "Oxford, you know, is tremendously amused at the so-called 'College Spirit'."

Despite raccoon coats selling for a bargain $350 at the Coop, the Class of '30 consistently shared the opinion of the exchange student, and the CRIMSON drew this comment from Presidential candidate Alfred E. Smith: "I am highly gratified at the interest being shown in public affairs by the college student of today. . . ."

High Hats for Bobbies

Though Republican Herbert Hoover finally carried the University, all three Presidential candidates in 1928, including Socialist Norman Thomas, were represented among undergraduate organizations--and sometimes violently. The Smith Club petitioned to let the world know "the vital meaning of the world America"; the Republicans announced that Hoover was "well-informed"; and Thomas's Socialists (who accounted for 3.7 per cent of the final College vote) merely pleaded for a "just industrial system."

Before the national election Candidate Thomas visited the College to criticize the Republican and Democratic parties as the "double-headed party of big business." Over 500 Smith and Hoover undergraduate supporters tangled in a parade on election eve although no one was arrested.

The less serious view of the election was evident in the spontaneous organization of the "King-George-For-President Club" which promised high hats for Boston Bobbies if its candidate was elected.

More strictly on the Cambridge scene, a professional wrecking crew began to clear the land at the corner of Winthrop and Dunster Streets and foundation work started on a building eventually named the "Blockhouse."

"Then, on November 9, President Lowell officially announced that $3,000,000 had been donated to assure the inauguration of the "House" system at Harvard. Later it was revealed that the donor was Yale's own Edward S. Harkness '97, America's leading philanthropist. Rumors said that Yale had refused the gift because it could not meet the special time limits set under the conditions of the donation.

Meanwhile, the junior class had elected Guy C. Holbrook, Jr. '20 of Clifton as president to succeed Wallace Harper '30. G. L. Lewis '30 was chosen vice-president, with J. W. Potter '30 as secretary.

On the stage, the individualistic H. D. C. barely managed to present "Fiesta," a play about Mexican peon life, without being banned by the City censors who claimed the show was "crude and immoral." A smash hit at the box office, "Fiesta" included F. K. Smith '30, G. W. Harrington '30, H. G. Meyer '30, P. S. Davis '30, and R. R. Wallstein '30 in its cast.

Rumors of a different sort circulated throughout the Yard and threatened to close the College three months before Spring vacation because of an "epidemic." Dr. P. H. Means '17 revealed, however, that only some fifty boys were actually hospitalized.

After this, the whisperers turned against the Lampoon, announcing that its mortgage was to be foreclosed and that the Old Lampoon Building would be used as a dining room in the new House system. 'Poon President Alan Blackburn answered the attacks with a famous "Revolt of the Masses" issue which eventually provoked a personal apology to donor Harkness from the comic magazine.

The following fall, the first real pangs of prohibition began to rise at the College. One of the University's more casual bootleggers published his own exclusive story in the CRIMSON explaining that the students could no longer trust the "hypocritical state cops" who were, incidentally, responsible for the arrest of one of the bootlegger's best friends.

The Jury Was Plastered

At the bootlegger's trial on the charge of selling beer, the jury confiscated the remaining 50 bottles of beer in the bootlegger's possession and went into the jury room to decide the case.

Three hours later, the bootlegger reported, the jurors all came out completely plastered and had the nerve to render a decision of "guilty." The lawyer for the defense jumped up, protesting futilely that "these men aren't jurors; they're witnesses."

Groucho Marx, in town for the Boston showing of "Animal Crackers," said that the only trouble with Prohibition was that "everyone in America was so busy drinking they don't give it a thought."

Elsewhere in theatricals, scores of University professors were quick to defend Eugene O'Neill's latest play. "Strange Interlude," which had been banned in Boston.

Politically, the Socialist Club again took the spotlight when Lawrence B. Cohen, Jr. '32 managed to get himself arrested in the Square for distributing pamphlets which welcomed England's Premier MacDonald. The alert Cambridge police jailed him on Chapter 27 of the General Ordinances, it was learned afterward. Cohen was eventually fined $10, but his literature was restored after pleas that it was not radical but only explanatory.

Following the appointment of J. Pierpont Morgan '89 as president of the Harvard Alumni Association for 1930, it was revealed that University officials were having difficulty with students who were changing their names on University records with aspirations of social and financial success. One man, in fact, had changed his name on registration cards three times during the same term.

Between hour exams that Fall, the Class of '30 relaxed by watching singer Ruth Etting, star of Ziegfeld's "Whoopee." In a CRIMSON interview, Miss Etting said that she picked most of her songs by the "heart throb" in them because "the kids like the sob stuff." Today, the currently most-popular motion picture in Boston now at Loew's State Theater, is the life story of this same performer as portrayed by Dovis Day.

On Soldiers Field, Athletic Director William Bingham was busy denying the Carnegle Report on Intercollegiate Athletics, which claimed that Crimson athletes had a share in concession profits. The football team, meanwhile, was busy edging Yale, 10-6, and football fans had again stolen the Elis' fence, the tra- ditional background for Yale's Captain pictures. It was later mysteriously returned.

That fall, too, a popular young novelist named Ernest Hemingway published "A Farewell To Arms,' 'and critic Lincoln Kirstein '30 wrote: "'Though we cannot now give him the title of "the" or even "a" great American novelist, if he progresses as logically away from uncertainty as up to the present, and grows in every technical power as he has so far done, he will undoubtedly be placed in the company of Melville, Stephen Crane . . ."

1930 also found an astute sergeant of the Cambridge Traffic Bureau tagging 'foreign cars" which had been in the State more than the 30 days allowed. That sergeant was the present State Registrar of Motor Vehicles, J. Rudolph King.

As the "talkies" gained popularity in 1930, star Janet Gaynor appeared in a sentimental story about a prostitute which ran for weeks at the UT. This same story, entitled "Street Angel," this year was converted into a musical comedy and two weeks ago opened on Broadway--but without a similar success.

Looking ahead to graduation, the Class of '30 elected James Roosevelt as treasurer; Douglas Adams as poet; Albert Churchill as Ivy Orator; Wallace Harper, James Barrett, and Gardner Lewis as Marshals; Edward Warburg as Orator; Bernard Hanighen as Chorister; and Otto Schoen-Rene as Odist.

Chosen on the Class Day Committee were James G. Douglas, Jr., William Wetmore, Josiah Potter, Foster S. Davis, Vincent L. Hennessy, Charles B. Lakin, and James L. Ware. John Cross was the Class Secretary.

Another reaction to Harvard was expressed by visiting Cambridge Fellow, Arthur Darby Nock, who said that the Yard had a unique atmosphere which he found "charming." Nock today is the Frothingham Professor of the History of Religion at Harvard.

That winter many members of the class attended the trial of bookshop proprietor James A. DeLacey who had been charged with selling a prohibited book at his student news stand. The novel was D. H. Lawrence's latest, "Lady Chatterly's Lover."

Harvard's most sensational fire broke out immediately after vacation that January when a three-alarm blaze completely destroyed the Soldiers Field Licker Building before a crowd of 4,500. The loss meant almost nothing to College athletes, however, since Clarence Dillon '05 had already offered the University a sum large enough to build a new and adequate building. Little attempt was made to determine the cause of the $125,000 fire after Dillon phoned the University the next day and urged that the new structure be started immediately.

The spring's theatricals included "Face the Music," the Hasty Pudding Show written by C. M. Churchill '30 with music by H. C. Adamson '30. The HDC gave the American premiere of Galsworthy's latest London hit, "'The Show."

After the hockey team upset a heavily-favored Yale team in overtime, undergraduates were determined to get something with which they could legally celebrate the joys of college life. Thus began the monster college campaign against Prohibition.

The CRIMSON organized Harvard's bid which extended to 15 colleges and 24,000 students. Only Johns Hopkins refused to aid the College in forcing the issue of Prohibition.

Over 600 undergraduates attended a mass meeting on Prohibition at the Union and only ten raised their hands to indicate they were in favor of retaining the 18th Amendment in its present form.

On the day of the poll, a majority of 15,000 (out of 24,000) wanted modification of the Amendment; almost 5,000 admitted that they had, during Prohibition, been drunk on different occasions. Of the 15 colleges participating, Princeton and Harvard polled the wettest vote.

Soon after the polling was over, undergraduates began to take up more violently the cause of 20 scrubwomen who had been fired from the staff of Widener Library without advance notice or advance pay. Immediately students began to organize the Square Deal Association, whose members marched out into the Square attempting to solicit funds for the fired scrubwomen by holding out wash buckets to passers-by. Sufficient funds for the women were finally raised at the "Scrubwomen's Ball."

The new pool in the I.A.B., meanwhile, was dedicated, Harvard's first rugby team took the field, and a Crimson mile relay team of V. L. Hennessey '30, F. E. Cummings '30, Vernon Munroe '31, and E. E. Record '32 set a Triangular Meet record of 3:20.6. Also in the record-setting class, cyclists A. T. Gray '30 and K. G. Pender '30 pedalled from the Lampoon to New York in something just over 24 hours to establish another record--of sorts.

Most important nationally that spring was the discovery of a new planet just beyond Neptune. The discovery was made by the Lowell Institute in Arizona, which had been started by President Lowell's brother, Percival Lowell '76. Suggested names for the new planet included Kronos, Constance (after the founder's widow), Percival (after the founder), and Atlas.

Most of the spring's activities centered around the Lampoon. After the Ibis had been annually stolen, the comic organization published its Tercentenary number, which was followed with threat of a suit from Boston Mayor James Curley.

A parody of the Massachusetts Bay Charter referred to Curley as "J. Curley, alias J. Crookyde," and mentioned that the mayor "left jail to serve another term as mayor." 'Poon President Paul Brooks '31 hastily rushed to offer the magazine's apologies to the mayor. The mayor, because of "the complete and abject apology of the president of the Harvard Lampoon, in view of his extreme youth and the effect that court proceedings might have on his future . . .," accepted the apologies.

In studies, the Class of '30 moved to the front early in its career and gave evidence of finishing with one of the University's most outstanding scholastic records. It placed Despres, Doob, Hurwitz, Koetzle, Landy, McKeever, Schoen-Rene, Smethurst, Watkins, and Wood in Group I at mid-term of the senior year.

In June, almost 25 years ago to the day, the Class of 1930 set its only real Harvard mark. Including graduate students, it graduated 1,965 men, more than ever before. Even if the movies of the time were still only talkies, the total would have filled a giant-size Cinemascope screen.Three generations of Masons are marking Harvard milestones in this week's Commencement festivities. CHARLES E. MASON (center), secretary of the Class of 1905, is celebrating his 50th Reunion. His son, CHARLES E. MASON, Jr. (right), is a member of the 25th Reunion Class. And PETER MASON GUNDERSON, grandson of Mr. Mason, Sr. and nephew of Mr. Mason, Jr. is a senior.