1933 History, Facts, and Trivia

Quick Facts from 1933

• World-Changing Event: Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, and consolidated absolute power within months — eliminating the Weimar Republic, suspending civil liberties, establishing one-party rule, and beginning the persecution of Jews and political opponents that led to the Holocaust and World War II
• Pop Culture-Changing Moment: FDR delivered his first Fireside Chat on March 12, 1933, speaking to the nation by radio in a calm, conversational tone that had never been used by an American president. The country, in the depths of the Depression, listened in enormous numbers and felt, for the first time in years, that someone in charge knew what they were doing.
• Top Songs: The Gold Diggers’ Song (We’re in the Money), Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?, and Stormy Weather by Ethel Waters
• Must-See Movies: King Kong, Duck Soup, The Invisible Man, 42nd Street, Little Women, She Done Him Wrong, and Mystery of the Wax Museum
• The Most Famous Person in America: Franklin D. Roosevelt, who replaced Herbert Hoover in March 1933, with a mandate to save the country from the worst economic crisis in its history
• Notable Books: God’s Little Acre by Erskine Caldwell
• Lightbulb: 18 cents; movie ticket: 35 cents; banana split: 15 cents; Philco radio model 14L: $85.00; average new home: $5,750
• U.S. Life Expectancy: Males 61.7 years; Females 65.1 years
• The Funny Duo: Laurel and Hardy; The Funny Risqué Lady: Mae West; The Funny Guy: W.C. Fields
• Chinese Zodiac: Year of the Rooster, associated with confidence, diligence, and a refusal to back down — all of which FDR had in notable supply
• The Conversation: Did you hear Roosevelt on the radio? And have you seen King Kong yet?

Top Ten Baby Names of 1933

Girls: Mary, Betty, Barbara, Dorothy, Joan Boys: Robert, James, John, William, Richard

The Stars

Josephine Baker, Joan Blondell, Claudette Colbert, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Marion Davies, Dolores Del Rio, Marlene Dietrich, Kay Francis, Jean Harlow, Katharine Hepburn, Hedy Lamarr, Myrna Loy, Ginger Rogers, Barbara Stanwyck, Thelma Todd, Raquel Torres, Mae West, Fay Wray

Time Magazine’s Man of the Year

Hugh Samuel Johnson, the head of the National Recovery Administration, the New Deal agency tasked with setting industrial codes and reviving the economy, was recognized for his relentless energy in executing FDR’s economic program

Miss America

Marian Bergeron, West Haven, Connecticut

We Lost in 1933

Calvin Coolidge, the 30th President of the United States, the last president to serve before the Depression, died January 5, 1933, at his home in Northampton, Massachusetts, at age 60, of coronary thrombosis. He had been president from 1923 to 1929. His years in office coincided with the prosperity of the Roaring Twenties; his departure from office was followed within months by the Crash. He is not widely credited with anticipating the two were connected.

Ring Lardner, the sportswriter and humorist whose work had made him one of the most respected literary figures in American journalism, died September 25, 1933, at age 48.

Born in 1933

Carol Burnett — April 26, 1933, in San Antonio, Texas. She became one of the most celebrated comedy performers in the history of American television.

Willie Nelson — April 29, 1933, in Abbott, Texas. He became a defining figure in American country music, outlaw country, and cultural durability.

James Brown — May 3, 1933, in Barnwell, South Carolina. The Godfather of Soul.

Johnny Unitas — May 7, 1933, in Pittsburgh. He became one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history.

America in 1933 — The Context

Unemployment stood at 25.2% when Roosevelt was inaugurated on March 4, 1933 — the last March 4th inauguration in American history, as the 20th Amendment moved the date to January 20 for all future presidencies. Over 15 million Americans were out of work. Roughly 5,000 banks had failed since 1929. Industrial production had fallen nearly 50% from its 1929 peak. Shantytown settlements called “Hoovervilles” — named, with considerable bitterness, after the outgoing president — ringed every major city.

Roosevelt’s response was the first 100 days: a legislative blitz that produced 15 major bills, establishing the framework for the New Deal. The FDIC insured bank deposits. The CCC put 250,000 unemployed men to work in the national parks and forests. The AAA addressed the agricultural collapse. The NRA attempted to regulate industrial production. Not everything worked. Everything was tried. The contrast with Hoover’s restraint was total and deliberate.

Hitler and the Nazi Seizure of Power

Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, by President Paul von Hindenburg, who believed Hitler could be controlled and used as a political instrument. He could not. Within weeks, the Reichstag — the German parliament building — was set on fire on February 27, 1933. A Dutch communist named Marinus van der Lubbe was arrested at the scene. Whether the Nazis arranged the fire or merely exploited it remains disputed; what is certain is that they used it immediately to justify emergency decrees suspending civil liberties. Within months, all political parties except the Nazis had been dissolved or disbanded.

The first concentration camp — Dachau — opened on March 22, 1933. Nazi students conducted public book burnings across Germany on May 10, 1933, destroying tens of thousands of books by Jewish, communist, and other “un-German” authors. Among the works burned: Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Ernest Hemingway, Helen Keller, Bertolt Brecht, and Heinrich Heine. Heine had written in 1820: “Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people also.” The German Student Union burned his books in 1933.

Albert Einstein was in California when Hitler was appointed Chancellor. He did not return to Germany. His personal property was confiscated. His citizenship was revoked. He eventually settled permanently in Princeton, New Jersey, and never returned to Germany.

FDR and the New Deal

Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated on March 4, 1933, delivering one of the most famous inaugural addresses in American history with the phrase: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” He then acted with a speed and decisiveness that Washington had not seen in years.

On March 5, Roosevelt declared a national “bank holiday,” closing all U.S. banks for four days while examiners assessed which were solvent enough to reopen. The fireside chat he delivered on March 12, explaining the banking system and the holiday to the public in clear, calm, conversational language, reassured the country so much that, when banks reopened, deposits exceeded withdrawals. The panic was over.

The first 100 days produced: the Emergency Banking Act, the Economy Act, the Beer and Wine Revenue Act (effectively ending Prohibition eight months before the 21st Amendment), the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Federal Emergency Relief Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Securities Act, the Home Owners’ Loan Act, the Banking Act (creating the FDIC), the Farm Credit Act, the Emergency Railroad Transportation Act, and the National Industrial Recovery Act. Fifteen major laws in 100 days. The pace of legislative output has never been equaled.

The End of Prohibition

The 21st Amendment to the Constitution, repealing the 18th, which had established Prohibition, was ratified on December 5, 1933, making it the only constitutional amendment ever to repeal another. Beer had already been legally available since April 7, when Roosevelt signed legislation permitting the sale of beer with up to 3.2% alcohol content. The full repeal in December allowed spirits to flow freely for the first time since January 1920.

During Prohibition, the federal government had added deadly methanol (wood alcohol) to industrial alcohol supplies to prevent people from drinking them. The poisoning policy continued throughout Prohibition. By 1933, an estimated 10,000 people had died from drinking government-denatured alcohol. The policy had been deliberately designed to discourage drinking through lethal means. It was not widely publicized.

The Walgreens pharmacy chain had grown from 20 retail locations to nearly 500 during Prohibition, largely by filling prescriptions for medicinal whiskey — the one form of alcohol legally available throughout the era.

The Business Plot

General Smedley Butler, the most decorated Marine in American history and a recipient of two Medals of Honor, testified before the House of Representatives in November 1933 that a group of wealthy industrialists and Wall Street financiers had approached him to lead a coup against President Roosevelt and install a fascist government modeled on those in Italy and Germany. Butler had been approached, he said, by representatives of several wealthy businessmen,  including figures connected to DuPont and J.P. Morgan,  who wanted him to lead a 500,000-man private army to Washington.

Butler went public rather than proceeding. The House Un-American Activities Committee conducted a brief investigation that confirmed the plot was credible. The New York Times called it a “gigantic hoax.” Most of the named participants denied involvement. No one was charged. The McCormack-Dickstein Committee’s report, formally acknowledging the plot’s existence, was largely ignored by the press. The Business Plot remains one of the most fully documented near-coups in American history.

Pop Culture Facts and History

King Kong was released on March 2, 1933, directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack. The film — a giant ape captured on a mysterious island, brought to New York, and ultimately killed while climbing the Empire State Building — was the most expensive film made to that point and the first modern blockbuster. Its stop-motion animation, by Willis O’Brien, was decades ahead of contemporary techniques. The decision by RKO Pictures to finance it was reportedly influenced by a 1930 hoax documentary, Ingagi, about human-gorilla interaction, which had been commercially successful. King Kong produced one of the most recognized images in cinema history — a giant ape swatting biplanes from the top of the Empire State Building — and has been remade multiple times since.

Duck Soup, starring the Marx Brothers and directed by Leo McCarey, was released on November 17, 1933. Its anarchic attack on nationalism, war, and political pomposity was considered too irreverent by contemporary audiences and received mixed reviews. It has since been recognized as perhaps the greatest American film comedy ever made.

The drive-in movie theater was invented by Richard Hollingshead Jr. of Camden, New Jersey, who opened the world’s first on June 6, 1933. He had been experimenting in his driveway, mounting a screen between trees and using a Kodak projector on the hood of his car. He patented the concept the same year. The drive-in peaked in America in the late 1950s with approximately 4,000 locations. COVID-19 produced a brief revival nearly 90 years later.

Superman was conceived in 1933 by two teenagers from Cleveland, Ohio — Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster — who published the character in a self-produced science fiction fanzine called Science Fiction. Their initial Superman was a villain: a telepathic megalomaniac who attempted to conquer the world. They reworked the character over the following years into the costumed hero, who sold the concept to National Allied Publications (later DC Comics) in 1938. Superman became the most financially successful original fictional character in history. Siegel and Shuster received $130 for the rights.

The Lone Ranger debuted on radio station WXYZ in Detroit on January 30, 1933 — the same day Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. The character’s distinctive theme — the William Tell Overture — became one of the most recognized musical cues in American popular culture.

The first singing telegram was delivered on February 10, 1933, to actor Rudy Vallee in New York City by the Postal Telegraph Company. The telegram was sung over the phone. The concept spread widely.

42nd Street, released March 11, 1933, and directed by Lloyd Bacon, with musical sequences by Busby Berkeley, established the Depression-era Hollywood musical as a genre. Its elaborate geometric dance formations, filmed from overhead with dozens of performers, created a visual language for musicals that Berkeley would repeat and refine throughout the decade.

The Chicago World’s Fair — “A Century of Progress” — opened May 27, 1933, celebrating the city’s centennial. It featured the first streamlined trains, futuristic household appliances, and Sally Rand’s fan dance. Rand appeared in a spotlight, carrying large ostrich feather fans and little else, was arrested several times, and sold more tickets to her shows than any other attraction at the fair. The fair ran through 1934.

Golden Gate Bridge construction began on January 5, 1933, in San Francisco Bay. The bridge connected San Francisco to Marin County across one of the world’s most technically challenging stretches of open water. It was completed in April 1937 at a cost of $35 million and the loss of 11 workers’ lives.

The FDIC — Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation — was established by the Banking Act of 1933, signed on June 16. Before the FDIC, bank failures meant that depositors lost everything. The FDIC initially insured deposits up to $2,500. It remains the foundational protection for American bank depositors.

The assassination attempt on FDR occurred on February 15, 1933, in Miami, when Giuseppe Zangara fired five shots at Roosevelt’s open car at a public appearance. Roosevelt was not hit. Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who was standing near the car, was struck and died from his wound on March 6. Zangara was executed on March 20, 1933, 33 days after the shooting.

The Civilian Conservation Corps was established on March 31, 1933. Within three months, 250,000 young men were enrolled, living in military-style camps and working on national park and forest projects — planting trees, building trails, constructing facilities. By the time it ended in 1942, the CCC had enrolled 3 million young men and planted more than 3 billion trees. It also provided the first federal jobs program for African Americans, though in segregated camps.

The First MLB All-Star Game was played at Comiskey Park in Chicago on July 6, 1933, proposed by Chicago Tribune sportswriter Arch Ward as a one-time event for the World’s Fair. Babe Ruth hit a two-run home run in the third inning. The American League won 4-2. The game was so popular that it became an annual event.

The first Krispy Kreme doughnut shop opened in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1933, founded by Vernon Rudolph, who had purchased a secret dough recipe from a French chef in New Orleans. The shop initially sold only to grocery stores; Rudolph cut a hole in the wall and began selling directly to passersby who gathered outside, drawn by the smell. This is the entire Krispy Kreme origin story.

The Gallo Winery was founded by brothers Ernest and Julio Gallo in Modesto, California, in 1933, shortly after Prohibition’s repeal. Ernest had no winemaking experience; he found instructions in two pamphlets at the local library. Within decades, Gallo had grown into the largest winery in the United States.

The Chevrolet Suburban went on sale in 1933 and has been in continuous production since, the longest-running nameplate in automotive history, still being manufactured and sold when this page was written.

Newsweek magazine published its first issue on February 17, 1933. Esquire magazine published its first issue in October 1933. Both would run for decades as defining American periodicals.

Ulysses by James Joyce was declared not obscene by U.S. District Judge John Woolsey on December 6, 1933 — eleven years after its publication in Paris and eleven years after the U.S. Post Office had banned its serialization. The ruling opened the door for serious literary fiction involving sexuality to be published and distributed in the United States.

The modern legend of the Loch Ness Monster was born on May 2, 1933, when the Inverness Courier published an account of a local couple who reported seeing “an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface.” The editor chose the word “monster.” London newspapers immediately sent correspondents. A circus offered a £20,000 reward for the beast’s capture. The legend has been generating tourism, photographs, and debate ever since.

In 1933, Marlene Dietrich was threatened with arrest in Paris for wearing trousers in public. It was officially illegal for women to wear pants in Paris until 2013 — at which point the law was quietly repealed without fanfare, having been largely ignored for several decades.

Kansas City had blatantly ignored Prohibition for all 13 years of its existence, from 1920 to 1933, under the governance of political boss Tom Pendergast. It was among the worst-kept secrets in the country.

The Strange

Gloomy Sunday,  composed by Hungarian pianist Rezső Seress and published in 1933, became known as the “Hungarian Suicide Song” after reports that it had been connected to over a dozen suicides. The song was banned by the BBC for decades. Seress himself died by suicide in 1968. The causal link between the song and the deaths was never established, but the legend proved more durable than the evidence.

The Business Plot, in which wealthy industrialists allegedly recruited General Butler to overthrow FDR, was documented, partially confirmed, and then largely ignored. It remains in the historical record as either the most serious near-coup in American history or an overblown story, depending on whom you ask. Most contemporaneous accounts leaned toward dismissal. Subsequent historians have leaned toward taking it seriously.

Nobel Prize Winners

Physics — Erwin Schrödinger and Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory; Schrödinger’s wave equation and Dirac’s relativistic quantum mechanics are foundational to modern physics; Dirac wanted to decline the prize to avoid publicity and was persuaded only when advised that refusing would generate even more publicity
Chemistry — not awarded in 1933
Medicine — Thomas Hunt Morgan for discoveries concerning the role played by the chromosome in heredity, establishing chromosomes as the carriers of genes, and is foundational to modern genetics
Literature — Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin, Russian-born writer living in exile in France, for the strict artistry with which he has carried on the classical Russian traditions in prose writing; the first Russian to win the
Nobel Prize in Literature
Peace — Sir Norman Angell, British journalist and author, for his book The Great Illusion, which argued that war between industrial nations was economically irrational; the book proved more accurately predictive of economics than of human behavior

Broadway in 1933

Tobacco Road opened on December 4, 1933, at the Forrest Theatre, adapted by Jack Kirkland from Erskine Caldwell’s novel about impoverished Georgia tenant farmers. It ran for 3,182 performances — the longest-running play in Broadway history at the time. It was considered deeply shocking for its depictions of poverty, degradation, and sexuality. Several cities banned it.

As Thousands Cheer opened September 30, 1933, at the Music Box Theatre, with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin. A revue structured as a newspaper with each scene representing a different headline, it was one of the most commercially successful shows of the decade.

Top Movies of 1933

1. King Kong
2. She Done Him Wrong
3. 42nd Street
4. Duck Soup
5. The Invisible Man
6. I’m No Angel
7. Bombshell
8. Mystery of the Wax Museum
9. Sons of the Desert
10. Little Women

Popular and Best-Selling Books of 1933

Ann Vickers — Sinclair Lewis
Anthony Adverse — Hervey Allen
As the Earth Turns — Gladys Hasty Carroll
The Farm — Louis Bromfield
God’s Little Acre — Erskine Caldwell
Little Man, What Now? — Hans Fallada
Magnificent Obsession — Lloyd C.
Douglas Miss Bishop — Bess Streeter Aldrich
One More River — John Galsworthy

Biggest Pop Artists of 1933

Bing Crosby, Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington, Guy Lombardo, Paul Whiteman, Rudy Vallee, Eddie Duchin, Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra, The Mills Brothers, Hal Kemp, Freddy Martin, Clyde McCoy

The Habits

Going to the movies (35 cents was worth it to escape the Depression for two hours); listening to FDR’s fireside chats; planting victory gardens; applying for work and being turned away; reading God’s Little Acre and being scandalized by it; and waiting for Prohibition to end.

Sports Champions of 1933

World Series: New York Giants defeated the Washington Senators 4-1; Carl Hubbell was brilliant; Mel Ott hit a home run in the deciding game
NFL Champions: Chicago Bears defeated the New York Giants 23-21 in the first official NFL championship game, a contest established that year when the league split into two divisions
Stanley Cup: New York Rangers defeated the Toronto Maple Leafs 3-1 in the championship series
U.S. Open Golf: Johnny Goodman,  the last amateur to win the U.S. Open; he defeated Ralph Guldahl by a single stroke
U.S. Open Tennis: Men/Women: Fred Perry / Helen H. Jacobs
Wimbledon: Men/Women: Jack Crawford / Helen Moody
NCAA Football Champions: Michigan
Kentucky Derby: Brokers Tip — won in a photo finish after a bizarre race in which jockey Don Meade and rival Herb Fisher grabbed each other and traded whip blows down the stretch; both riders were suspended.
Boston Marathon: Leslie S. Pawson, 2:31:01

Sports Highlight: The first Major League Baseball All-Star Game was played July 6, 1933, at Comiskey Park, with Babe Ruth hitting the first home run in All-Star Game history.
The first official NFL championship game was played on December 17, 1933, with the Chicago Bears defeating the New York Giants 23-21. Both events were inaugural; both became annual institutions. Johnny Goodman’s U.S. Open win was the last by an amateur in the tournament’s history.

FAQs: 1933 History, Facts, and Trivia

Q: How did Hitler come to power in 1933?
A: He was appointed Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, by President Hindenburg, who believed he could be controlled. The Reichstag fire on February 27 provided the pretext for suspending civil liberties. By summer, all other political parties had been dissolved or banned. Dachau, the first concentration camp, opened on March 22. The transformation from a democratic republic to a one-party dictatorship took approximately six months.

Q: What was the New Deal?
A: A series of relief, recovery, and reform programs enacted by President Roosevelt beginning in 1933, designed to address the Great Depression. The first 100 days produced 15 major laws, including the creation of the FDIC, the CCC, the TVA, and the NRA, while also ending Prohibition and beginning to stabilize the banking system.

Q: What was the Business Plot?
A: In 1933, General Smedley Butler, the most decorated Marine in American history, testified before Congress that wealthy industrialists had approached him to lead a private army to overthrow FDR and install a fascist government. The committee partially confirmed the plot was credible. No one was charged. The New York Times called it a hoax. Historians have found the documentation more credible than the contemporary press did.

Q: What happened when prohibition ended?
A: The 21st Amendment was ratified on December 5, 1933, making it the only constitutional amendment ever to repeal another. Beer had been legal since April, when Roosevelt authorized 3.2% beer. The death toll from the government’s own policy of poisoning industrial alcohol — used throughout Prohibition to discourage illicit drinking — was estimated at over 10,000.

Q: Why is King Kong historically significant?
A: Released March 2, 1933, it was the first modern blockbuster — the most technically ambitious and expensive American film made to that point, combining stop-motion animation, matte paintings, and rear projection techniques in ways never done before. It launched the career of special-effects artist Willis O’Brien and established a template for spectacular genre filmmaking.

Q: When was Superman created?
A: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster of Cleveland conceived the character in 1933, initially as a villain. They reworked him over the following years, sold the concept to DC Comics in 1938 for $130, and watched it become the most commercially successful original fictional character in history. The compensation arrangement was the subject of decades of legal dispute.

Q: What was the first MLB All-Star Game?
A: Played July 6, 1933, at Comiskey Park in Chicago, proposed as a one-time event for the World’s Fair by Tribune sportswriter Arch Ward. Babe Ruth hit the first All-Star home run. The American League won 4-2. The game was so popular that it became a permanent annual event.

More 1933 Facts & History Resources:

Most Popular Baby Names (BabyCenter.com)
Popular and Notable Books (popculture.us)
Broadway Shows that Opened in 1933
1933 Calendar, courtesy of Time and Date.com
Fact Monster
The Great Depression FDR Library
1930s, Infoplease.com World History
1933 in Movies (according to IMDB)
Retrowaste Vintage Culture
1930s Slang
Wikipedia 1933
Timeline of the Holocaust