Christmas 1935

So it's the week before Christmas 1935 and you're living in New York City. You've got a little vacation and are looking for a way to spend this hard earned leisure time. Of course, you were most likely to have a "vacation" in 1935 due to job loss. The unemployment rate in 1935 was over twenty per cent. Paid vacations were common but not universal. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

In 1937, a BLS survey of 90,000 firms found that approximately 95 percent of the 700,000 salaried workers received annual vacations with pay, compared with 36.7 percent of the 9.5 million wage earners.

For salaried workers, most paid vacation plans were initiated between 1920 and 1930. Vacations were practically all for either a 1- or 2-week period, with 2 weeks reported for 57 percent and 1-week plans for 37 percent of salaried workers. The usual length of service to be eligible for a vacation was 1 year, reported for 80 percent of the plans. . ..

For wage earners, survey results indicated approximately 70 percent of plants reported initiating a paid vacation plan during the 1930-37 period; and about 40 percent gave vacations for the first time in 1937. Wage earners were typically eligible for a vacation after 1 year of service, although 40 percent required 2 years’; and 20 percent required 5 years’ or more service.

And hourly wages appear modest by our standards. According to the BLS, a survey in the fall of 1936 found that the average hourly wage in the construction industry was $.91. However, this translates to $12.74 per hour in 2005 dollars. Of course, construction work was often seasonal or occasional.

Another source gives the average weekly wage in manufacturing as $16.89. This works out to $.42 an hour. In 2005 dollars this comes to $240 per week or $12,480 a year.

Well, we got off track a bit. Back to Christmas. You buy the December 21st issue of the New Yorker ($.15 then/$2.13 today). The cover features a Christmas tree salesman working the sidewalk in front of poultry and vegetable stores.

If you're interested in a film, A Night at the Opera is playing at the Capitol. Admission is $.25 (about $3.50 in 2005 dollars) before 1 pm. In fact, Night was showing on four screens in Manhattan. The Capitol was located at Broadway and 51st. It was the largest cinema in the world when it opened in 1919.

Among its most striking features were a glorious white marble staircase that connected the mahogany-paneled lobby to the mezzanine and 16 dazzling rock-crystal chandeliers that were salvaged from the legendary Sherry's Fifth Avenue restaurant before its demolition. With Major Edward Bowes as its managing director and Samuel "Roxy" Rothapfel as producer of the stage shows, the Capitol set standards for all the big "presentation" houses that followed.

Bowes started an amateur radio show as a promotion for the theater. By 1934 it had evolved into the Original Amateur Hour - a concept later transferred to television by Ted Mack.

If you want to see a musical, Jubilee! is playing at the Imperial. The show had opened on October 12th. It was a gentle spoof of royalty and was written and composed - during a world cruise - by Moss Hart and Cole Porter. According to American Musical Theatre, the show was "lighthearted, escapist fun."

When a left-wing outbreak led by a rebellious nephew prompts their advisers to order them into seclusion [the royal family] decide to have a fling as commoners instead. The Queen flirts briefly with Charles Rausmiller, the ape man Mowgli of the movies . . . while the Prince takes the famous dancer Karen O'Kane to the Cafe Martinique where they "Begin the Beguine."

In addition to the "Beguine," the score included "Just One of Those Things" and "Why Shouldn't I?"

Theater tickets ran from $1 to $3 - depending on whether you attended a matinee or evening performance or sat in the balcony or orchestra.

What are you doing New Year's Eve? The Hotel Pierre promised "the happiest New Year's since 1928 . . . happiest in the optimism that is once again stirring in America." Taking part in this festival of optimism would set you back $10 ($142 in 2005 dollars)

At the Savoy-Plaza the same ten bucks would treat you to entertainment by a "galaxy of stars" including Medrano & Donna - the "world's greatest exponents of Spanish dancing."

A less expensive alternative was the Waldorf-Astoria where you could get dinner and listen to Xavier Cugat "and his tango band" for just two dollars.

What about Christmas gifts? If the ads in The New Yorker are any guide, liquor and candy were popular choices. A box of candy - like a Whitman's Sampler - would run you a dollar or two.

What about a book as a gift for your literate friends. The New Yorker seemed taken with The Asiatics which it described as a "brilliant and poetic first novel" which "will introduce you to a host of queer people and a fine new writer." In non-fiction it liked George Seldes' Sawdust Caesar which does "an energetic job of removing the Blackshirt whitewash" of Mussolini. The magazine also liked Walter Duranty's I Write as I Please - which whitewashed Stalin.

Finally, a few verses from Frank Sullivan's annual "Greetings, Friends" may serve to show one of the chief differences between then and now:

The Frog hates the Heinie; the Heinie, the Jew;
The world's in a hell of a hulaballoo.
Things must be come to a pretty odd fix
When the only peaceable folk are the Micks.