1934 History, Facts, and Trivia

Quick Facts from 1934

World-Changing Event: The Dust Bowl reached catastrophic intensity across the Great Plains in 1934, with black blizzards burying farms, livestock, and entire towns under walls of topsoil that had taken centuries to accumulate. Hundreds of thousands of families abandoned their land and headed west.
Top Songs: The Good Ship Lollipop by Shirley Temple and You’re the Top by Cole Porter
Must-See Movies: It Happened One Night, The Thin Man, Bright Eyes, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Babes in Toyland, and Cleopatra
The Most Famous Person in America: Will Rogers
Notable Books: Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie and Goodbye, Mr. Chips by James Hilton
Wilson baseball: 33 cents
The Funny Duo: Laurel and Hardy
Chinese Zodiac: Year of the Dog, associated with loyalty, honesty, and a strong sense of justice — three qualities in short supply in most of the world’s capitals in 1934
The Conversation: Why is the government taking our gold? And did you hear they finally got Dillinger?

Top Ten Baby Names of 1934

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

U.S. Life Expectancy in 1934

Males: 59.3 years; Females: 63.3 years

Unemployment stood at 21.7% in 1934 — the worst year of the Great Depression by most economic measures. Over 15 million Americans were out of work.

The Stars

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

The Quotes

“Did I do that?” — The Three Stooges, Punch Drunks (1934), later repurposed by Steve Urkel on Family Matters

Time Magazine’s Man of the Year

Franklin D. Roosevelt, recognized for his bold New Deal programs that were reshaping the American economic and political landscape in the depths of the Depression

Miss America

No Miss America was crowned in 1934. The pageant was suspended that year due to financial difficulties and controversy surrounding the competition.

We Lost in 1934

Marie Curie — the physicist and chemist who won Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and the only person to win in two different scientific disciplines- died July 4, 1934, at age 66, from aplastic anemia caused by decades of exposure to radiation from her research. She had carried radioactive isotopes in her pockets and stored them in her desk drawer. Her laboratory notebooks remain too radioactive to handle safely without protective equipment today.

John Dillinger — America’s most wanted man and the FBI’s first official “Public Enemy Number One,” was shot and killed by federal agents outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago on July 22, 1934, after being identified by a woman in red who had tipped off the FBI. He was 31.

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow — the Depression-era outlaws who robbed banks across the Southwest and became folk antiheroes to a country furious at the financial system- were ambushed and killed by a posse of law officers on May 23, 1934, in Bienville Parish, Louisiana. Their car was struck by approximately 130 bullets. Both were 23 years old.

Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson — two more of the era’s most notorious criminals — were also killed by law enforcement in 1934. The FBI had an extraordinary year.

Born in 1934

Sophia Loren — September 20, 1934.
Brigitte Bardot — September 28, 1934.
Carl Sagan — November 9, 1934.
Leonard Cohen — September 21, 1934.
Robert Moog, born May 23, 1934, went on to invent the Moog synthesizer.

America in 1934 — The Context

Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the second year of his first term, pushing the New Deal through a willing Congress while the country struggled through its worst economic crisis. Banks had been stabilized. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insured deposits. But unemployment was still above 20%, and the drought devastating the Plains was adding an ecological catastrophe to the economic one.

The country was also watching events in Europe with increasing unease. Hitler had become Führer. Mussolini’s Italy was expanding. The Soviet Union was in the grip of Stalin’s purges. The world of 1934 was accumulating the conditions for the next catastrophe with considerable efficiency.

At home, the gangster era was at its peak and then came to a sudden end. Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Baby Face Nelson were all killed in 1934. The FBI, which had lacked the authority to carry firearms or make arrests before that year, emerged from 1934 as a genuine national law enforcement force.

The Dust Bowl

The Dust Bowl, the ecological disaster resulting from years of drought combined with the destruction of native prairie grasses by overfarming, reached its peak intensity in 1934. On April 14, 1934, the worst single dust storm of the decade rolled across the Plains, burying farms and towns from Texas to Nebraska under feet of displaced topsoil. Black blizzards reduced visibility to zero, killed livestock, and stripped the land of any remaining agricultural value.

An estimated 3.5 million people had left the Great Plains by 1940 — the largest internal migration in American history. John Steinbeck documented what happened to them in The Grapes of Wrath in 1939. The photos Dorothea Lange took for the Farm Security Administration gave the Dust Bowl its visual identity for the rest of history.

The Gold Confiscation

On January 30, 1934, President Roosevelt signed the Gold Reserve Act, requiring all American citizens to turn over their gold coins, bullion, and certificates to the Federal Reserve at the official rate of $20.67 per ounce. After the government had collected most of the country’s privately held gold, the price was reset to $35 per ounce — a 69% increase that effectively transferred significant wealth from private citizens to the federal government. The $500, $1,000, $10,000, and $100,000 bills were printed until 1934 and remained legal tender, though few Americans ever saw them outside of bank-to-bank transfers.

John Dillinger

John Dillinger escaped from jail in Crown Point, Indiana, on March 3, 1934, using a fake pistol he had whittled from wood and blackened with shoe polish. He used it to bluff his way past 33 guards and walk out with one of the warden’s cars. He bragged about it afterward: “Ha, ha, ha! And I did all this with a wooden gun!” The FBI, which had just been given the authority to carry firearms and make arrests, made capturing Dillinger its primary objective. They succeeded on July 22, when he was shot while leaving the Biograph Theater in Chicago.

The FBI in 1934

Before 1934, FBI agents had neither the authority to carry firearms nor to make official arrests. Congress granted both authorities in 1934 as part of the federal government’s response to the gangster era. The agency, under J. Edgar Hoover, then proceeded to kill or capture virtually every major public criminal on its list within the year. Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Baby Face Nelson were all dead by the end of 1934. Hoover’s public relations operation ensured that the FBI received full credit for each.

Pop Culture Facts and History

It Happened One Night, directed by Frank Capra and starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, was the dominant film of 1934. It became the first film to win all five major Academy Awards — Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay — at the 7th Academy Awards ceremony in February 1935. The sweep was not repeated until One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1976. Clark Gable removed his shirt in one scene to reveal he was not wearing an undershirt. Undershirt sales reportedly dropped significantly in the months that followed.

The Thin Man, based on Dashiell Hammett’s novel and starring William Powell and Myrna Loy as the witty, cocktail-drinking married detective couple Nick and Nora Charles, was released in 1934 and became one of the decade’s most popular films, launching five sequels. It established a template for sophisticated screwball comedy that influenced American film and television for generations.

Donald Duck made his first appearance in the Silly Symphonies cartoon The Wise Little Hen on June 9, 1934. He was not wearing pants. He was among the first in a long tradition of clothed cartoon characters who inexplicably declined to finish their outfits.

The Apollo Theater held its first Amateur Night on November 21, 1934. Ella Fitzgerald was in the audience that evening, having entered intending to dance. She changed her mind at the last minute and decided to sing instead. She performed two songs, won first place, and received $25. She was 17 years old.

Carl Hubbell of the New York Giants struck out Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons, and Joe Cronin in succession at the 1934 MLB All-Star Game at the Polo Grounds on July 10 — five of the greatest hitters in baseball history, back to back, using his devastating screwball. It remains one of the most celebrated individual pitching performances in All-Star Game history.

Babe Ruth paid a fan $20 for the return of the baseball he hit for his 700th career home run in July 1934. He had 714 by the time he retired, a record that stood until Hank Aaron broke it forty years later.

Flash Gordon debuted as a comic strip on January 7, 1934, created by Alex Raymond for King Features Syndicate. It immediately became one of the most popular adventure strips in the country, eventually spawning film serials, radio programs, and television series.

The first Three Stooges short, Woman Haters, was released in 1934. The Stooges went on to make 190 short films over the next 24 years, more than any other comedy team in film history. The line “Did I do that?” appeared in their 1934 short Punch Drunks and was later appropriated by the writers of Family Matters for Steve Urkel.

DC Comics was founded in 1934 as National Allied Publications. Superman did not yet exist — he arrived in 1938 — but the company that would publish him was established in 1934.

The first high school driver’s education course was offered at a high school in State College, Pennsylvania, in 1934. The idea that teenagers needed formal instruction before operating motor vehicles gradually caught on.

Parker Brothers released the board game Sorry! in 1934, adding to a catalog that already included Monopoly, which had been acquired the previous year. The company was having an exceptional run.

The trampoline was invented in 1934 by George Nissen and Larry Griswold, who built the first one in a garage in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, inspired by watching trapeze artists bounce off the safety nets at the circus. Nissen named it after the Spanish word for diving board, el trampolín. It was initially used for tumbling training and acrobatics.

The word “dord” appeared in the 1934 edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary as a noun meaning “density” in physics and chemistry. It was not a real word. It had been created through a transcription error when an editor’s note about the abbreviation “D or d” for density was mistakenly entered as a separate headword. The error was not discovered for five years. It was removed in 1939. “Dord” is the most famous ghost word in American lexicography.

In 1934, words appearing in print for the first time included “18-wheeler,” “burrito,” “chef’s salad,” “ESP,” “hair stylist,” “mobile home,” “newscast,” “red carpet,” “shopping cart,” and “urban sprawl.” The language was working hard to keep up.

The Loch Ness Monster photograph was taken by London surgeon Robert Kenneth Wilson on April 19, 1934, on the shores of Loch Ness in Scotland. Published in the Daily Mail, it became the most famous image associated with the creature and was reproduced worldwide for decades as potential evidence of a large unknown animal. In 1994, one of the men involved in taking the photo admitted it was a hoax — a toy submarine with a sculpted head attached. The photograph had survived as “evidence” for 60 years.

From 1925 to 1934, the Eiffel Tower served as a giant illuminated billboard for Citroën. The lighting used the tower’s full height and was visible from miles away. The advertising arrangement ended in 1934 when the tower’s management decided the association was undignified.

The FBI had neither the authority to carry firearms nor to make arrests until 1934. For its first 26 years, the Bureau operated essentially as an investigative agency that had to rely on local police to apprehend anyone.

Gerald Ford, then a University of Michigan football player, threatened not to play in a 1934 game against Georgia Tech because the opposing team refused to share the field with Willis Ward, Ford’s Black teammate. Ward himself persuaded Ford to play. Michigan won. Ford went on to become the 38th President of the United States, and the story of his loyalty to Ward remained one of the better-known episodes of his character.

The first Amateur Night at the Apollo in November 1934 established a tradition that launched more significant careers in American music than almost any other single institution. Ella Fitzgerald was first. The list that followed included James Brown, Luther Vandross, and Lauryn Hill.

The Eiffel Tower Citroën billboard was the largest illuminated sign in the world during its nine-year run. Six million bulbs spelled out the car manufacturer’s name up the full height of the tower. Paris eventually decided this was not the image it wanted to project.

Nikola Tesla announced in 1934 that he was developing a “directed energy weapon” — a particle beam capable of destroying an army at 200 miles — which he called a “peace ray.” He claimed it could render war obsolete by making any invasion impossible. No working prototype was ever demonstrated. After Tesla’s death in 1943, the FBI seized all of his papers and declared them classified. They were eventually transferred to the Alien Property Custodian and later returned to Yugoslav authorities.

The United States established its lease on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, under a 1934 treaty revision that set the annual rent at $4,085. Fidel Castro, who considered the lease illegitimate after the 1959 revolution, refused to cash the U.S. rent checks as a matter of principle. He cashed one by accident. Every other check since 1959 went uncashed.

On January 29, 1934, the Los Angeles Times published a front-page article about a geophysical engineer who claimed to have located the underground city of the Lizard People beneath the streets of downtown Los Angeles, complete with buried gold. The engineer had been drilling based on Hopi legends. He found nothing. The story was covered without apparent irony on the front page of one of the country’s major newspapers.

When Disney began development of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1934, early candidate names for the dwarfs included Jumpy, Deafy, Puffy, Burpy, Stuffy, Lazy, and Wheezy. The final seven — Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, Dopey, and Doc — were settled on over a period of three years. The film was released in 1937.

The largest pearl ever found — the Pearl of Lao Tzu, also known as the Pearl of Allah — was discovered in 1934 off the coast of Palawan in the Philippines, weighing 14 pounds and measuring 9.4 inches at its widest point. It had no gem value but was extraordinary as a natural object.

The highest wind gust ever recorded in the continental United States — 231 miles per hour — was measured at the summit of Mount Washington, New Hampshire, on April 12, 1934. The record stood for 76 years before being surpassed by a weather event in 2010.

The NFL championship game on December 9, 1934 — the “Sneakers Game” — was played at the Polo Grounds in New York in nine-degree weather on a field that had frozen solid. The Giants trailed the Bears 13-3 at halftime. A locker-room attendant was dispatched to retrieve sneakers from a nearby college. The Giants put them on at halftime, gained traction the Bears couldn’t match, and scored 27 points in the final quarter to win 30-13. It was one of the most decisive halftime equipment adjustments in sports history.

The Oscars in 1934

The 6th Academy Awards were held on March 16, 1934, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, hosted by Will Rogers. The eligibility window covered films from August 1, 1932, through December 31, 1933, which is why Cavalcade won Best Picture rather than It Happened One Night — the latter was a 1934 film and won at the 7th ceremony the following February. Charles Laughton won Best Actor for The Private Life of Henry VIII, and Katharine Hepburn won her first Best Actress award for Morning Glory. It was the first of her four career Academy Awards, more acting Oscars than anyone else in history.

Nobel Prize Winners

Physics — not awarded in 1934
Chemistry — Harold Clayton Urey, for his discovery of heavy hydrogen (deuterium), which proved foundational to both nuclear energy research and the development of nuclear weapons
Medicine — George Whipple, George Minot, and William Murphy for their discovery of liver therapy against anemia, which effectively cured pernicious anemia, previously a fatal disease
Literature — Luigi Pirandello, an Italian playwright and novelist, for his bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and stage; best known for Six Characters in Search of an Author
Peace — Arthur Henderson, a British politician and former Foreign Secretary, for his work as president of the World Disarmament Conference

Broadway in 1934

Anything Goes, with music and lyrics by Cole Porter, opened November 21, 1934, at the Alvin Theatre, starring Ethel Merman and William Gaxton. It introduced Anything Goes, I Get a Kick Out of You, and You’re the Top — three songs that entered the permanent American songbook simultaneously. It ran for 420 performances and established Merman as Broadway’s greatest singing voice.

The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman opened on November 20, 1934, and was immediately controversial for its subject matter — a student’s false accusation that two teachers at a girls’ school had a romantic relationship. It ran for 691 performances and established Hellman as a major American playwright.

Top Movies of 1934

It Happened One Night
The Thin Man
Imitation of Life
Cleopatra
Bright Eyes
The Barretts of Wimpole Street
Treasure Island
The Man Who Knew Too Much
Babes in Toyland
The Black Cat

Popular and Best-Selling Books of 1934

Anthony Adverse — Hervey Allen
Goodbye, Mr. Chips — James Hilton
The Joy of Cooking — Irma Rombauer
Lamb in His Bosom — Caroline Miller
Mary Peters — Mary Ellen Chase
Murder on the Orient Express — Agatha Christie
Oil for the Lamps of China — Alice Tisdale Hobart
Private Worlds — Phyllis Bottome
Seven Gothic Tales — Isak Dinesen
Within This Present — Margaret Ayer Barnes
Work of Art — Sinclair Lewis

The Joy of Cooking was self-published by Irma Rombauer in 1931 and picked up by Bobbs-Merrill in 1936, but the 1934 edition was widely distributed and became the foundation of what grew into the bestselling American cookbook of the 20th century. Rombauer had written the original after her husband’s death to support herself. It has been in continuous print for nearly a century.

Biggest Pop Artists of 1934

Bing Crosby, Guy Lombardo, The Mills Brothers, Ethel Merman, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Paul Whiteman, Rudy Vallee, Eddy Duchin, The Boswell Sisters, Leo Reisman, Ray Noble, Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra, Grace Moore

Sports Champions of 1934

World Series: St. Louis Cardinals, the “Gashouse Gang,” defeated the Detroit Tigers 4-3; Dizzy Dean and his brother Paul Dean each won two games in the Series; Dizzy had predicted before the season that he and Paul would win 45 games between them. They won 49.
NFL Champions: New York Giants defeated the Chicago Bears 30-13 in the “Sneakers Game,” overcoming a 13-3 halftime deficit by switching to basketball sneakers on a frozen field
Stanley Cup: Chicago Blackhawks — defeated the Detroit Red Wings 3-1
U.S. Open Golf: Olin Dutra — won despite playing the final 36 holes while suffering from a severe stomach ailment, eight strokes behind entering the final day; he is still the only player to win the U.S. Open while visibly ill throughout
U.S. Open Tennis: Men/Women: Fred Perry / Helen Jacobs
Wimbledon: Men/Women: Fred Perry / Dorothy Round
NCAA Football Champions: Minnesota finished undefeated and won the national championship under coach Bernie Bierman
Kentucky Derby: Cavalcade
FIFA World Cup: Italy — won the tournament on home soil, hosted under Mussolini’s supervision, defeating Czechoslovakia 2-1 in the final in Rome
Boston Marathon: Dave Komonen, 2:32:53

Sports Highlight: Carl Hubbell’s All-Star Game performance on July 10, 1934, in which he struck out Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons, and Joe Cronin consecutively using his screwball, was one of the most celebrated individual achievements in All-Star Game history. Fred Perry won both the U.S. Open and Wimbledon in 1934, beginning a period of dominance in which he won eight Grand Slam titles in four years, a record of sustained excellence in men’s tennis that stood for decades.

FAQ — 1934 History, Facts and Trivia

Q: What was the Dust Bowl?
A: A years-long ecological catastrophe on the American and Canadian Great Plains, caused by severe drought combined with the destruction of native prairie grasses through overfarming. It peaked in intensity in 1934, with massive dust storms burying farms and driving an estimated 3.5 million people from their land by 1940.

Q: Why did the U.S. government confiscate gold in 1934?
A: President Roosevelt signed the Gold Reserve Act on January 30, 1934, requiring citizens to turn over their gold at $20.67 per ounce. After collecting it, the government reset the price to $35 per ounce. The move was intended to stabilize the economy and expand the money supply, but it effectively devalued the dollar and transferred wealth from private citizens to the federal government.

Q: How did John Dillinger escape from jail in 1934?
A: He whittled a fake pistol from wood, blackened it with shoe polish, and used it to bluff his way past 33 guards at the Crown Point, Indiana jail on March 3, 1934. He then stole a car and drove across state lines, adding federal charges to his existing crimes. The FBI shot him outside a Chicago movie theater on July 22, 1934.

Q: What film swept all five major Academy Awards in 1934?
A: It Happened One Night, directed by Frank Capra, starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. It won at the 7th Academy Awards in February 1935 — the 6th Academy Awards ceremony, held in March 1934, covered films from 1932-33 and awarded Best Picture to Cavalcade.

Q: What was Ella Fitzgerald’s first public performance?
A: Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater on November 21, 1934, was the very first Amateur Night the venue held. She had entered planning to dance, changed her mind, and sang instead. She won first place and $25.

Q: What was the “Sneakers Game”?
A: The 1934 NFL Championship game between the New York Giants and the Chicago Bears, played on a frozen field at the Polo Grounds on December 9, 1934. The Giants trailed 13-3 at halftime, then switched to basketball sneakers for traction on the ice. They scored 27 unanswered points in the final quarter and won 30-13.

Q: What was Donald Duck’s first appearance?
A: The Silly Symphonies cartoon, The Wise Little Hen, was released on June 9, 1934. He was not wearing pants. He has continued this practice ever since.

Q: What happened to the Loch Ness Monster photo from 1934?
A: The famous photograph taken by Dr. Robert Kenneth Wilson in April 1934 and published in the Daily Mail was considered potential evidence of a large unknown creature for 60 years. In 1994, one of the men involved admitted it was a staged hoax using a toy submarine with a sculpted head. The photo had been the most reproduced image associated with the Loch Ness Monster since its publication.

More 1934 Facts & History Resources:

Most Popular Baby Names (BabyCenter.com)
Popular and Notable Books (popculture.us)
Broadway Shows that Opened in 1934
1934 Calendar, courtesy of Time and Date.com
Fact Monster
The Great Depression Britannica
1930s, Infoplease.com World History
1934 in Movies (according to IMDB)
Retrowaste Vintage Culture
1930s Slang
Wikipedia 1934
Timeline of events preceding World War II