1930s

Disasters

• The China floods of 1931 are among the deadliest natural disasters ever recorded.
• The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane makes landfall in the Florida Keys as a Category 5 hurricane and the most intense hurricane to ever make landfall in the Atlantic basin. It caused an estimated $6 million (1935 USD) in damages and killed around 408 people. The hurricane's strong winds and storm surge destroyed nearly all of the structures between Tavernier and Marathon, and the town of Islamorada was obliterated.
• The German dirigible airship Hindenburg explodes in the sky above Lakehurst, New Jersey, United States on May 6, 1937, killing 36 people. The event leads to an investigation of the explosion and the disaster causes major public distrust of the use of hydrogen-inflated airships and seriously damages the reputation of the Zeppelin company.
• The New London School in New London, Texas, is destroyed by an explosion, killing in excess of 300 students and teachers (1937).
• The New England Hurricane of 1938, which became a Category 5 hurricane before making landfall as a Category 3. The hurricane was estimated to have caused property losses of US$306 million ($4.72 billion in 2010), killed between 682 and 800 people, and damaged or destroyed over 57,000 homes, including the home of famed actress Katharine Hepburn, who had been staying in her family's Old Saybrook, Connecticut, beach home when the hurricane struck.
• The Dust Bowl, or "Dirty Thirties", a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 to 1936 (in some areas until 1940). Caused by extreme drought coupled with strong winds and decades of extensive farming without crop rotation, fallow fields, cover crops, or other techniques to prevent erosion, it affected an estimated 100,000,000 acres (400,000 km²) of land (traveling as far east as New York and the Atlantic Ocean), caused mass migration (which was the inspiration for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck), food shortages, multiple deaths and illness from sand inhalation, and a severe reduction in the going wage rate.
• The 1938 Yellow River flood pours out from Huayuankou, China, inundating 54,000 km² (21,000 sq mi) of land and killing an estimated 500,000 people.

Assassinations and attempts

Prominent assassinations, targeted killings, and assassination attempts include:

• Japanese prime minister Hamaguchi Osachi is shot and wounded by a right-wing extremist in 1930, dying of his wounds nine months later.
• French president Paul Doumer is assassinated in 1932 by Paul Gorguloff, a mentally unstable Russian émigré.
• Japanese prime minister Inukai Tsuyoshi is assassinated in 1932 by a group of young naval officers and army cadets.
• Chicago mayor Anton Cermak was fatally wounded in 1933 by Giuseppe Zangara, an Italian immigrant who intended to assassinate President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. Zangara fired five shots at Roosevelt, but Cermak was the one hit, succumbing to his wounds several weeks later.
• U.S. presidential candidate and former Governor of Louisiana Huey Long is assassinated in 1935 by Carl Weiss.
• Engelbert Dollfuss, Chancellor of Austria and leading figure of Austrofascism, is assassinated in 1934 by Austrian Nazis. Germany and Italy nearly clash over the issue of Austrian independence despite close ideological similarities of the Italian Fascist and Nazi regimes.
• Alexander I of Yugoslavia is assassinated in 1934 during a visit to Marseille, France. His assassin was Vlado Chernozemski, a member of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization. The IMRO was a political organization that fought for secession of Vardar Macedonia from Yugoslavia.
• Sergei Kirov, an early Bolshevik revolutionary and personal friend to Joseph Stalin, is assassinated in 1934, escalating political repression in the Soviet Union.
• Saitō Makoto and Takahashi Korekiyo, both former prime ministers of Japan, are assassinated by ultranationalistic Army officers during the February 26 incident in 1936.
• Adolf Hitler, dictator of Nazi Germany, survived an assassination attempt in 1939 when a bomb planted by Georg Elser exploded at the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich; he had left the building early, avoiding the blast that killed eight others.

Economics

• The Great Depression is considered to have begun with the fall of stock prices on September 4, 1929, and then the stock market crash known as Black Tuesday on October 29, 1929, and lasted through much of the 1930s.
• The entire decade is marked by widespread unemployment and poverty, although deflation (i.e. falling prices) was limited to 1930–32 and 1938–39. Prices fell 7.02% in 1930, 10.06% in 1931, 9.79% in 1932, 1.41% in 1938 and 0.71% in 1939.
• Economic interventionist policies increase in popularity as a result of the Great Depression in both authoritarian and democratic countries. In the Western world, Keynesianism replaces classical economic theory.
• In an effort to reduce unemployment, the United States government created work projects such as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) which was a public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 to maintain National Parks and build roads. Other major U.S. government work projects included Hoover Dam which was constructed between 1931 and 1936.
• Rapid industrialization takes place in the Soviet Union.
• Prohibition in the United States ended in 1933. On December 5, 1933, the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
• Drought conditions in Oklahoma and Texas caused the Dust Bowl which forced tens of thousands of families to abandon their farms and seek employment elsewhere.

Science and technology

Technology

Many technological advances occurred in the 1930s, including:

• Frank Whittle obtained his first patent for the turbo-jet engine in 1930. He tested his first jet engine on the ground in 1937.
• On March 8, 1930, the first frozen foods of Clarence Birdseye were sold in Springfield, Massachusetts, United States.
• Alan Blumlein invented the stereophonic sound in 1931.
• Nestlé releases the first white chocolate candy as the Milkybar.;
• Ub Iwerks produced the first Color Sound Cartoon in 1930, a Flip the Frog cartoon entitled Fiddlesticks;
• In 1930, Warner Brothers released the first All-Talking All-Color wide-screen movie, Song of the Flame; in 1930 alone, Warner Brothers released ten All-Color All-Talking feature movies in Technicolor and scores of shorts and features with color sequences;
• In 1931 American aviators Clyde Edward Pangborn and Hugh Herndon, Jr., complete the first non-stop flight across the Pacific Ocean, flying their plane, Miss Veedol, from Misawa, Japan, to East Wenatchee, Washington, in 41½ hours.
• Air mail service across the Atlantic Ocean began;
• Radar was invented, known as RDF (Radio Direction Finding), such as in British Patent GB593017 by Robert Watson-Watt in 1938
• In 1933, the 3M company marketed Scotch Tape;
• In 1931, RCA Victor introduced the first long-playing phonograph record.
• In 1935, the British London and North Eastern Railway introduced the A4 Pacific, designed by Nigel Gresley. Just three years later, one of these, No. 4468 Mallard, would become the fastest steam locomotive in the world.
• In 1935, Kodachrome is invented, being the first color film made by Eastman Kodak.
• In 1936, The first regular high-definition (then defined as at least 200 lines) television service from the BBC, based at Alexandra Palace in London, officially begins broadcasting.
• The Volkswagen Beetle, one of the best-selling automobiles ever produced, had its roots in Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. Created by Ferdinand Porsche and his chief designer Erwin Komenda. The car would prove to be successful with over 21 million units built and was in production until 2003 with last model built in Mexico. It was superseded by all-new front-wheel-drive New Beetle whose production began in 1997 continued until 2019.
• In 1935, Howard Hughes, flying the H-1, set the landplane airspeed record of 352 mph (566 km/h).
• In 1937, flying the same H-1 Racer fitted with longer wings, the ambitious Hughes sets a new transcontinental airspeed record by flying non-stop from Los Angeles to Newark in 7 hours, 28 minutes, and 25 seconds (beating his own previous record of 9 hours, 27 minutes). His average ground speed during the flight was 322 mph (518 km/h).
• First intercontinental commercial airline flights.
• The chocolate chip cookie is developed in 1938 by Ruth Graves Wakefield.
• The Frying Pan becomes the first electric lap steel guitar ever produced.
• Edwin Armstrong invents wide-band frequency modulation radio in 1933.
• The bass guitar is invented by Paul Tutmarc of Seattle, Washington, in 1936.
• EMI research team, under Isaac Shoenberg, developed the 405-line (Marconi-EMI system), the first fully electronic television system in 1936.

Science

• In 1930, Astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto, which goes on to be announced as the ninth planet in the Solar System.
• In 1935, Irene Joliot-Curie and Jean Frederic Joliot are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for synthesis of new radioactive elements for application in medicine.
• In 1936, Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann was able to conclude that the Earth had a solid inner core and a molten outer core to explain inconsistencies in seismic wave data from earthquakes
• In 1939, Marguerite Perey, a student of Marie Curie, discovered the element francium by purifying samples of lanthanum
• In 1939, Nuclear fission is discovered by Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassman. Albert Einstein's equations form the basis for creation of the atomic bomb.

Popular culture

Literature and art

• Height of the Art Deco movement in North America and Western Europe.
• Notable poetry include W. H. Auden's Poems.
• Notable literature includes F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night (1934), T. H. White's The Sword in the Stone (1938), J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit (1937), Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath (1939) and Of Mice and Men (1937), Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not (1937), John Dos Passos's U.S.A. trilogy, William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (1930) and Absalom, Absalom! (1936), John O'Hara's Appointment in Samarra (1934) and Butterfield 8 (1935), and Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind (1936), which was later famously adapted into a film in 1939.
• Notable "hardboiled" crime fiction includes Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934).
• Notable plays include Thornton Wilder's Our Town (1938).
• Near the end of the decade, two of the world's most iconic superheroes and recognizable fictional characters were introduced in comic books; Superman first appeared in 1938, and Batman in 1939.
• The 1930 also saw the widespread popularity of the pulp magazine. Printed on cheap pulp paper, these magazines provided affordable entertainment to the masses and quickly became one of the most popular forms of media during the decade. Many prominent writers of the 20th century would get their start writing for pulps, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dashiell Hammett, Isaac Asimov and H. P. Lovecraft. Pulp fiction magazines would last in popularity until the advent of television in the 1950s.
• Popular comic strips which began in the 1930s include Captain Easy by Roy Crane, Alley Oop by V. T. Hamlin, Prince Valiant by Hal Foster, and Flash Gordon by Alex Raymond.
• The beginning of the Golden Age of Science Fiction in the late-1930s, spurred on by writer and editor John C. Campbell, launching the careers of such writers as Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and A. E. van Vogt.
• David Alfaro Siqueiros paints the controversial mural América Tropical (full name: América Tropical: Oprimida y Destrozada por los Imperialismos, or Tropical America: Oppressed and Destroyed by Imperialism) (1932) at Olvera Street in Los Angeles, California.
• Jorge Luis Borges publishes A Universal History of Infamy in 1935. Angel Flores, the creator of the term "magical realism", claims this book originated the movement.
• Roberto Arlt publishes The Flamethrowers, the second part of his novel The Seven Madmen

Best-selling books

The best-selling books of every year in the United States were as follows:

• 1930: Cimarron by Edna Ferber
• 1931: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
• 1932: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
• 1933: Anthony Adverse by Hervey Allen
• 1934: Anthony Adverse by Hervey Allen
• 1935: Green Light by Lloyd C. Douglas
• 1936: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• 1937: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• 1938: The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
• 1939: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Film

• Charlie Chaplin's groundbreaking classic, City Lights, was released in 1931.
• Charlie Chaplin's last film featuring his signature character, "The Tramp", was subsequently released in 1936.
• Walt Disney's original animated feature-length film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released in 1937.
• The Little Princess was released in 1939.
• The Wizard of Oz was released in 1939.
• In the art of filmmaking, the Golden Age of Hollywood enters a new era after the advent of talking pictures ("talkies") in 1927 and full-color films in 1930: more than 50 classic films were made in the 1930s; most notable were Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz.
• In 1930s, animated cartoon short films including Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, Betty Boop, Popeye, Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies.
• The new soundtrack and photographic technologies prompted many films to be made or re-made, such as the 1934 version of Cleopatra, using lush art deco sets, which won an Academy Award (see films 1930–1939 in Academy Award for Best Cinematography).
• Universal Pictures begins producing its distinctive series of horror films, which came to be known as the Universal Monsters, featuring what would become iconic representations of literary and mythological monsters. The horror films (or monster movies) included many cult classics, such as Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, King Kong, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and other films about wax museums, vampires, and zombies, leading to the 1941 film The Wolf Man. These films led to the stardom of stars such as Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr, and Boris Karloff.
• Recurring series and serials included The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, Tarzan, Charlie Chan and Our Gang.
• In 1930, Howard Hughes produces Hell's Angels, the first movie blockbuster to be produced outside of a professional studio, independently, and at the time the most expensive movie ever made, costing roughly 4 million dollars and taking four years to make.

Highest-grossing films

Radio

• Radio becomes dominant mass media in industrial nations, serving as a way for citizens to listen to music and get news- providing rapid reporting on current events.
• October 30, 1938: Orson Welles' radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds is broadcast, causing panic in various parts of the United States.

Music

• "Swing" music starts becoming popular from 1933, the dawn of the Swing era. It gradually replaces the sweet form of Jazz that had been popular for the first half of the decade.
• Crooning is a smooth, intimate singing style that developed in the United States with the advent of microphones and radio, allowing singers to deliver soft emotional performances rather than projecting loudly. It became particularly popular in the 1930s, and performers such as Bing Crosby and Rudy Vallée are among the most representative early crooners, exemplifying this warm, close‑to‑the‑listener vocal approach.
• "Delta Blues" music, the first recorded in the late 1920s, was expanded by Robert Johnson and Skip James, two of the most important and influential acts of "Blues" genre.
• Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli led the development of Gypsy jazz.
• Sergei Rachmaninoff composed Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in 1934.
• Charlie Christian becomes the first electric guitarist to be in a multiracial band with Benny Goodman and Lionel Hampton in 1939.
• Tango reaches its highest popularity worldwide and Carlos Gardel records several of the most famous tangos, such as "Por Una Cabeza"

The most popular music of each year was as follows:

• 1930: "Body and Soul" (music by Johnny Green, lyrics by Edward Heyman, Robert Sour and Frank Eyton)
• 1931: "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries" (music by Ray Henderson, lyrics by Lew Brown)
• 1932: "Night and Day" (Cole Porter)
• 1933: "It's Only a Paper Moon" (music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Yip Harburg and Billy Rose)
• 1934: "Blue Moon" (written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart)
• 1935: "Begin the Beguine" (Cole Porter)
• 1936: "I'm an Old Cowhand" (written by Johnny Mercer, sung by Bing Crosby)
• 1937: "A Foggy Day" (composed by George Gershwin, with lyrics by Ira Gershwin)
• 1938: "Chiquita Banana"
• 1939: "All the Things You Are" (composed by Jerome Kern with lyrics written by Oscar Hammerstein II)

Fashion

The fashion of the 1930s was shaped by two major world events that bookended the decade: the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the onset of World War II in 1939. Despite the severe economic hardship of the Great Depression, the era was paradoxically characterized by glamorous, elegant clothing: The Museum at FIT described the decade's fashions as a "startling paradox", noting that elegant and progressive qualities emerged "during one of the most tumultuous periods of modern Western history." In womenswear, the decade marked a decisive departure from the boxy, androgynous silhouette of the previous decade, with hemlines falling and waistlines returning to their natural position, creating a sleek, feminine silhouette that emphasized the curves of the body.

The dominant technical innovation of the era was the bias cut, championed by French couturière Madeleine Vionnet, which involved cutting fabric at a 45-degree angle against the weave, allowing it to drape smoothly over the body's natural shape—a technique that defined the decade's signature evening look of sleek, low-backed satin gowns. The early years of the decade were also shaped by a neoclassical style, with white and ivory columnar evening dresses featuring Greek-inspired draping, while surrealism exerted a parallel influence, most fully embodied in the provocative designs of Elsa Schiaparelli, who collaborated with Salvador Dalí on pieces such as a silk dress printed with a lobster motif and hats shaped like shoes and lamb cutlets.

The Hollywood film industry emerged during the decade as a major force in shaping and disseminating fashion trends, challenging the hitherto dominant influence of Parisian haute couture; as couturier Lucien Lelong remarked in 1935, "We, the couturiers, can no longer live without the cinema any more than the cinema can live without us." Costume designers such as Adrian, Travis Banton and Edith Head dressed Hollywood stars whose styles were widely imitated; a defining example was the organdie gown Adrian designed for Joan Crawford in Letty Lynton (1932), which generated thousands of copies at all price ranges. Alongside Hollywood stars such as Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn, the key fashion trendsetters of the decade included the Duke and Duchess of Windsor—Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson—and socialites such as Daisy Fellowes and Mona von Bismarck.

The decade also brought significant material innovations to clothing: nylon, introduced in 1939, transformed the hosiery industry, while man-made fibers such as rayon became widespread in everyday dressmaking. A growing fashion for sunbathing, outdoor leisure and resort travel—to destinations along the Mediterranean, the Bahamas and the coast of Florida—generated new categories of clothing for women, including beach pajamas, halter tops and backless swimwear, while white dinner jackets became standard resort wear for men.

Typical fashions in the 1930s

Architecture

• The world's tallest building (for the next 35 years) was constructed, opening as the Empire State Building on May 3, 1931, in New York City.
• The Golden Gate Bridge was constructed, opening on May 27, 1937, in San Francisco, USA.
• Kavanagh Building is completed in 1936, becoming the tallest skyscraper in Latin America until 1947.

Visual arts

Social realism became an important art movement during the Great Depression in the United States in the 1930s. Social realism generally portrayed imagery with socio-political meaning. Other related American artistic movements of the 1930s were American scene painting and Regionalism which were generally depictions of rural America, and historical images drawn from American history. Precisionism with its depictions of industrial America was also a popular art movement during the 1930s in the USA. During the Great Depression the art of photography played an important role in the Social Realist movement. The work of Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Margaret Bourke-White, Lewis Hine, Edward Steichen, Gordon Parks, Arthur Rothstein, Marion Post Wolcott, Doris Ulmann, Berenice Abbott, Aaron Siskind, Russell Lee, Ben Shahn (as a photographer) among several others were particularly influential.

The Works Progress Administration part of the Roosevelt Administration's New Deal sponsored the Federal Art Project, the Public Works of Art Project, and the Section of Painting and Sculpture which employed many American artists and helped them to make a living during the Great Depression.

Mexican muralism was a Mexican art movement that took place primarily in the 1930s. The movement stands out historically because of its political undertones, the majority of which of a Marxist nature, or related to a social and political situation of post-revolutionary Mexico. Also in Latin America Symbolism and Magic Realism were important movements.

In Europe during the 1930s and the Great Depression, Surrealism, late Cubism, the Bauhaus, De Stijl, Dada, German Expressionism, Symbolist and modernist painting in various guises characterized the art scene in Paris and elsewhere.

• The 1932 Winter Olympics were hosted by the village of Lake Placid, New York, United States.
• The 1932 Summer Olympics were hosted by the city of Los Angeles, California, United States.
• The 1934 FIFA World Cup was hosted and won by Italy.
• The 1936 Winter Olympics were hosted by the market town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria, Germany.
• The 1936 Summer Olympics were hosted by the city of Berlin, Germany. These were the last Summer or Winter Olympic Games held until 1948.
• The 1938 FIFA World Cup was hosted by France and won by Italy. This was the last FIFA World Cup held until 1950.

People

Scientists and engineers

• Albert Einstein
• Enrico Fermi
• James Chadwick
• Carl David Anderson
• Clyde W. Tombaugh
• Wallace Carothers
• Otto Hahn
• Irene Joliot-Curie
• Frederic Joliot
• Inge Lehmann
• Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
• Max Bergmann
• Leonidas Zervas
• Henrik Dam
• Kurt Gödel
• Alan Turing
• Leonid Kantorovich
• Sergei Sobolev
• Richard Drew
• Frank Whittle
• Igor Sikorsky
• Alan Blumlein
• Nigel Gresley
• Ferdinand Porsche
• Hans Nibel
• Hans Ledwinka
• Vittorio Jano
• Wifredo Ricart
• Ernst Ruska
• Konrad Zuse
• Edwin Armstrong
• Akira Nakashima

Actors/entertainers

• Fred Allen
• Jean Arthur
• Fred Astaire
• Mary Astor
• Gene Autry
• Tallulah Bankhead
• Warner Baxter
• Wallace Beery
• Constance Bennett
• Joan Bennett
• Jack Benny
• Charles Bickford
• Joan Blondell
• Humphrey Bogart
• Charles Boyer
• Mary Brian
• Louise Brooks
• Fanny Brice
• James Cagney
• Eddie Cantor
• Frank Capra
• John Carradine
• Madeleine Carroll
• Charlie Chaplin
• Claudette Colbert
• Ronald Colman
• Katharine Cornell
• Gary Cooper
• Joan Crawford
• Bing Crosby
• Bette Davis
• Marlene Dietrich
• Walt Disney
• Robert Donat
• Irene Dunne
• Deanna Durbin
• Ann Dvorak
• Nelson Eddy
• Alice Faye
• Errol Flynn
• Henry Fonda
• Joan Fontaine
• John Ford
• Kay Francis
• Dwight Frye
• Clark Gable
• Carlos Gardel
• Eva Le Gallienne
• Greta Garbo
• Judy Garland
• Janet Gaynor
• Cary Grant
• Lillian Gish
• Jean Harlow
• Olivia de Havilland
• Helen Hayes
• Katharine Hepburn
• Bob Hope
• Miriam Hopkins
• Leslie Howard
• Boris Karloff
• Buster Keaton
• Laurel and Hardy
• Dorothy Lamour
• Charles Laughton
• Vivien Leigh
• Carole Lombard
• Myrna Loy
• Bela Lugosi
• Fredric March
• The Marx Brothers
• Jeanette MacDonald
• Fred MacMurray
• Herbert Marshall
• Ethel Merman
• Robert Montgomery
• Paul Muni
• Merle Oberon
• Laurence Olivier
• Maureen O'Sullivan
• William Powell
• Tyrone Power
• George Raft
• Luise Rainer
• Basil Rathbone
• Ronald Reagan
• Dolores del Río
• Edward G. Robinson
• Ginger Rogers
• Will Rogers
• Cesar Romero
• Mickey Rooney
• Rosalind Russell
• Randolph Scott
• Sebastian Shaw
• Norma Shearer
• James Stewart
• Lionel Stander
• Barbara Stanwyck
• Margaret Sullavan
• Robert Taylor
• Shirley Temple
• The Three Stooges
• Spencer Tracy
• Rudy Vallee
• John Wayne
• Orson Welles
• Mae West
• Ed Wynn
• Loretta Young
• Devi Dja
• Ratna Asmara
• Roekiah

Filmmakers

• Walt Disney
• Alfred Hitchcock
• Fritz Lang
• John Ford
• Cecil B. DeMille
• Frank Capra
• Jean Renoir
• Ernst Lubitsch
• William Wyler
• Howard Hawks
• Victor Fleming
• George Cukor
• Michael Curtiz
• Josef von Sternberg

Musicians

• Lale Anderson
• Harold Arlen
• Louis Armstrong
• Fred Astaire
• Count Basie
• Dalida
• Cab Calloway
• Eddie Cantor
• Nat King Cole
• Noël Coward
• Bing Crosby
• Vernon Duke
• Jimmy Durante
• Duke Ellington
• Ella Fitzgerald
• George Gershwin
• Ira Gershwin
• Benny Goodman
• Coleman Hawkins
• Billie Holiday
• Pete Johnson
• Louis Prima
• Artie Shaw
• Big Joe Turner
• Les Brown
• Lena Horne
• Al Jolson
• Jerome Kern
• Lead Belly
• The Ink Spots
• Glenn Miller
• Earl Hines
• Édith Piaf
• Cole Porter
• Ma Rainey
• Django Reinhardt
• Bill "Bojangles" Robinson
• Rodgers and Hart
• Frank Sinatra
• Bessie Smith
• Rudy Vallee
• Fats Waller
• Ethel Waters

Influential artists

Painters and sculptors

• José Clemente Orozco
• Anni Albers
• Josef Albers
• Hans Arp
• Milton Avery
• Romare Bearden
• Paula Modersohn-Becker
• Max Beckmann
• Thomas Hart Benton
• Max Bill
• Isabel Bishop
• Marcel Breuer
• Patrick Henry Bruce
• Paul Cadmus
• Marc Chagall
• John Steuart Curry
• Salvador Dalí
• Stuart Davis
• Charles Demuth
• Otto Dix
• Theo van Doesburg
• Arthur Dove
• Marcel Duchamp
• Max Ernst
• David Alfaro Siqueiros
• Philip Evergood
• Lyonel Feininger
• Joaquín Torres García
• Alberto Giacometti
• Arshile Gorky
• John D. Graham
• George Grosz
• Philip Guston
• Marsden Hartley
• Hans Hofmann
• Edward Hopper
• Johannes Itten
• Frida Kahlo
• Wassily Kandinsky
• Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
• Paul Klee
• Oskar Kokoschka
• Käthe Kollwitz
• Willem de Kooning
• Walt Kuhn
• Jacob Lawrence
• Tamara de Lempicka
• Fernand Léger
• Andrew Loomis
• Reginald Marsh
• André Masson
• Henri Matisse
• Joan Miró
• Piet Mondrian
• Gabriele Münter
• Georgia O'Keeffe
• Francis Picabia
• Pablo Picasso
• Horace Pippin
• Diego Rivera
• Ben Shahn
• Charles Sheeler
• David Smith
• Isaac Soyer
• Rafael Soyer
• Chaïm Soutine
• Rufino Tamayo
• Yves Tanguy
• Grant Wood
• N. C. Wyeth
• Andrew Wyeth

Photography

• Ansel Adams
• Margaret Bourke-White
• Walker Evans
• Lewis Hine
• Yousuf Karsh
• Dorothea Lange
• Gordon Parks
• Man Ray
• Edward Steichen
• Carl Van Vechten
• Edward Weston

Sports figures

Global

• Cliff Bastin (English footballer)
• Donald Bradman (Australian cricketer)
• Haydn Bunton, Sr (Australian Rules footballer)
• Jack Crawford (tennis)
• Jack Dyer (Australian rules football player)
• Wally Hammond (English cricketer)
• Eddie Hapgood (English footballer)
• George Headley (West Indies cricketer)
• Alex James (Scottish footballer)
• Douglas Jardine (English cricketer)
• Harold Larwood (English cricketer)
• Jack Lovelock (New Zealand runner)
• Fred Perry (English tennis player)
• Leonard Hutton, English cricketer
• Percy Williams (sprinter)
• Dhyan Chand, Indian hockey player
• Lala Amarnath, Indian cricketer
• Tazio Nuvolari, Italian racing driver

United States

• Joe Louis (boxing)
• Lou Ambers (boxing)
• Henry Armstrong (boxing)
• Max Baer (boxing)
• Cliff Battles (halfback)
• Jay Berwanger (halfback)
• James J. Braddock (boxing)
• Ellison M. ("Tarzan") Brown (marathon)
• Don Budge (tennis)
• Tony Canzoneri (boxing)
• Mickey Cochrane (baseball)
• Buster Crabbe (swimming)
• Glenn Cunningham (running)
• Dizzy Dean (baseball)
• Joe DiMaggio (baseball)
• Babe Didrikson (track)
• Leo Durocher (baseball)
• Turk Edwards (tackle)
• Jimmie Foxx (baseball)
• Lou Gehrig (baseball)
• Hank Greenberg (baseball)
• Lefty Grove (baseball)
• Dixie Howell (halfback)
• Don Hutson (end)
• Cecil Isbell (quarterback)
• Bobby Jones (golf)
• John A. Kelley (marathon)
• Nile Kinnick (halfback)
• Tommy Loughran (boxing)
• Alice Marble (tennis)
• Ralph Metcalfe (sprinter)
• Bronko Nagurski (fullback)
• Mel Ott (baseball)
• Jesse Owens (sprinter)
• Satchel Paige (baseball)
• Bobby Riggs (tennis)
• Barney Ross (boxing)
• Babe Ruth (baseball)
• Al Simmons (baseball)
• Helen Stephens (track)
• Eddie Tolan (sprinter)
• Ellsworth Vines (tennis)
• Stella Walsh (sprinter)
• Frank Wykoff (sprinter)

Criminals

Prominent criminals of the Great Depression:

• Al Capone
• Bonnie and Clyde
• John Dillinger
• Baby Face Nelson
• Pretty Boy Floyd
• Alvin Karpis
• Machine Gun Kelly
• Ma Barker