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Advice & More August 2015

Silver Screen, Golden Years

CCC Movie Fan

By Jacqueline T. Lynch

This is only about as much propaganda as the film contains, but it’s enough, along with the occasional statement that their folks are getting $22 a month, to remind the audience in this seventh year of the CCC’s existence that it was still kicking and still saving boys and their families from starvation.

Pictured here is a photo of Priscilla Lane pasted on the inside cover of a young man’s footlocker. The footlocker was part of his equipment as a member of the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression.

This particular footlocker is on exhibit at the Civilian Conservation Corps Museum in Stafford Springs, Connecticut.

Seeing the pretty young face of movie ingénue Priscilla Lane on the inside of this CCC boy’s footlocker brings another realization: there weren’t a great many movies that dealt with the Civilian Conservation Corps as a subject.

One comes to mind: Pride of the Bowery (1940) featuring those stumblebums, the Bowery Boys.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt initiated many programs during the Great Depression, and most were fairly controversial among Republicans in Congress. The “blue eagle” logo of the NRA (National Recovery Act) plastered like an imprimatur on the end of many Depression-era films reminds us that though the very controversial NRA was afterward nullified by Congress, young viewers today can still notice it, and ask what that meant.

Conversely, the CCC, though not supported by Republicans as much as by Democrats, nevertheless it achieved a slight majority in favor even among Republicans. It was easily FDR’s most highly regarded program. If representing the CCC might seem too political for some studios, one would think that Warner Bros., at least, would have tackled the subject, being more apt to present gritty films during the Depression and stances supportive of the then current administration. They gave us Wild Boys of the Road (1933). There would have been a lot more wild boys of the road if not for the CCC.

The Civilian Conservation Corps put thousands of young men into hundreds of outdoor camps to work in forestry, the establishing of state and national parks, conservation, public works projects, and even helped out communities during floods and fires. The money they earned that was sent home supported thousands of families during the bleakest years of the Depression and kept them from starving.

In Pride of the Bowery (1940), Leo Gorcey and the so-called East Side Kids (aka Dead End Kids, aka Bowery Boys) in their fourth film leave the urban jungle for a different sort of rough-and-ready experience.

This B-movie, only about an hour long, takes the boys out of the city into the rugged wilderness and the rough-hewn CCC camp as more of an escapade than a struggle to find employment. Gorcey plays Muggs, a Golden Gloves boxing hopeful, who gets unwittingly enrolled in the CCC by his pals to provide him with his much desired outdoor boxing training camp, like the pros have.

It’s a difficult adjustment for the bombastic showoff when he must submit to military-style discipline and hard work. We get pick and shovel scenes, and crystal mountain lakes, the regimentation of the mess hall and saluting the flag at sundown.

The film avoids too much cheerleading about the virtues of the CCC and manages to fill the time with subplots of stolen money, revenge in the camp boxing ring against a rival, played by Kenneth Howell, and a day of freedom with a pass into town. At one point Leo Gorcey pushes Howell out of harm’s way when the boy is about to be crushed by a falling tree. The camp’s Captain approvingly remarks: “I think this camp is going to be the means of you finding yourself.”

This is only about as much propaganda as the film contains, but it’s enough, along with the occasional statement that their folks are getting $22 a month, to remind the audience in this seventh year of the CCC’s existence that it was still kicking and still saving boys and their families from starvation.

One boy is pleased to be accepted into the cooks’ training program, and others are told they will be qualified for jobs in the U.S. Forestry Service when their hitch is up.  It would exist only about another year or so, when our entry into World War II provided young men with far more urgent duties.

The boy who pasted Priscilla Lane’s picture in his footlocker is unknown to us. The only thing we know about him is he loved Priscilla Lane. He probably went to the movies on a pass to go to town to see her.

 

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time: Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century, available online at Amazon, CreateSpace, and the author. Website: www.JacquelineTLynch.com.

Meet Jacqueline