CHAPTER 8

Rainbow City

Following its spectacular opening in the spring of 1933, the public flooded the Chicago Fair’s grounds and exhibits on a daily basis. Before it was over—Depression or no Depression—a then-record 48.5 million visitors passed through the turnstiles. And there would be no small irony in the fact that in the midst of the greatest economic depression in modern history, the 1933 Chicago Fair was the first World’s Fair in history to turn a profit.1 Similar to the earlier 1893 Columbian Exposition and World’s Fair, the 1933 World’s Fair featured a centrally located lagoon flanked by various “halls” representing the latest advances in various industries (electricity, transport, communication, etc.). Arching over all was the giant “Sky Ride” suspended between two steel towers 625 feet high.

A conscious effort was made to differentiate this new fair from the 1893 exhibition by not only scrupulously avoiding the application of Beaux-Arts architecture, but also to use color (both bright, durable paint and colored neon lighting) to contrast the monochromatic “whiteness” of the earlier fair with a rainbow of colors. Experts in psychology, art, and engineering collaborated with Broadway set designers such as Joseph Urban to magnificently realize this vision. Urban was an immigrant artist from Vienna who had been discovered by the legendary Broadway producer, Florenz Ziegfeld, after initially coming to the United States as art director for the Boston Opera. For twenty years, Urban had used his unrivaled skills as a set designer to bring Ziegfeld’s famous “Follies” to life. Unlike painters such as Gustav Klimt, who had influenced his early work,2 Urban used his remarkable talent to create work that was temporary in nature. This, of course, fit in well with the overall concept of the 1933 Fair. For Urban, color and light, when employed in an intelligent and creative manner, could in themselves constitute architecture. Thus electricity, spray paint, and the new neon technology were as vital as construction materials in creating an overall effect.

It certainly was a real coup for the fair’s organizers to bring Urban on as an advisor. He was in great demand, not only designing sets but also clubs, schools, office buildings, and hotels. In the late 1920s, in fact, he was hired as chief designer at the posh new Mar-a-Lago resort in West Palm Beach, Florida. In 1985 it was purchased by real estate developer Donald Trump, and has remained in his family to the present day.

Urban’s genius was perhaps best on display at the Hall of Science. As Cheryl Ganz explained in her book on the fair, Urban “used two shades of orange, two shades of blue, white, and touch of red to create the building’s arresting appearance.”3 For the evenings, Urban recommended using lamps filtered through colored glass, and the installation of thousands of feet of neon gas tubing. The building itself was then set off by “floodlights and motion searchlights” that “lit the building on all sides.”4 The effect was spectacular, and was repeated throughout the fairgrounds. Color photography was then still in its infancy in 1933 (George Eastman’s Kodachrome film wasn’t introduced until 1935), and hand-drawn color illustrations or clumsily hand-colored photos simply don’t convey the overall effect of Urban’s contribution. In the twenty-first century, with enhanced colorizing technology available, more photographs originally taken with black-and-white film are being given vivid new life. Some photos of the fair fall into this category. Hopefully in the future our understanding of, and appreciation for, Urban’s work will be enhanced as well. Tragically, Urban was in very poor health when the fair opened, and he never saw his final creation in all its glory. He died soon after the fair’s opening. In the Chicago Tribune, art critic Charles Collins eulogized this rare genius:

The late Joseph Urban, who died while millions of people were admiring his latest masterpiece . . . was an artist whose work was too closely related to life to be imprisoned within the art museums.

His style of decoration, Viennese of origin and formed at a time when modernism was not divorced from sanity, was for the masses in the mood of happy carnival. His influence was so far flung that I believe he deserves consideration as one of the greatest American artists of the period.

His sketches of course, will find their way into the archives, but, being merely notes for the execution of large scale designs, they will be viewed with rapture only by technicians.5

Color was also employed by Joseph Urban for psychological, as well aesthetic, purposes. A common experience for all of the fair’s visitors entering at the busy north entrance adjacent to the planetarium was the central pedestrian artery known as the “Avenue of Flags.” This promenade ran straight from the north entrance to the north court of the Hall of Science, between Soldier Field and the north lagoon. Brightly colored banners were employed to send various messages to fairgoers strolling the grounds. On any given day the flags were all of one color—vibrant red or yellow or green, for instance—and were used to suggest a mood or feeling for the day, something hot for bright red, and so on. It was a remarkable attempt to use color as a form of social engineering, one that was subtle enough not to offend, but rather to suggest and uplift. The uniformity of the giant banners one after another was intended to have a soothing or stimulating effect on fairgoers depending on what the organizers were aiming to achieve. Looking at both black-and-white photographs and early colorized photographs of the Avenue, one can grasp something of the effect Urban was hoping to see realized.

chpt_fig_001

chpt_fig_021

The “Avenue of Flags,” social engineering through the application of color. Courtesy of University of Illinois Chicago Special Collections.

By 1930, Chicago’s Municipal Airport was the busiest not only in the United States, but in the entire world. The Windy City had fully embraced the concept of aviation in all of its forms (including a robust embrace of commercial air travel), and the 1933 Fair featured this very prominently. Suspended from the interior dome of the Travel and Transport Building was the non plus ultra in heavier-than-air commercial aviation of that time, a new Boeing 247. The prestigious Gordon Bennett Balloon and Air Races were held in Chicago that summer, with cash prizes for distance (balloons) and speed (airplanes). World War I German air ace Ernst Udet was a leading attraction, though the speed record was broken by Texan Jimmy Wedell at 305 miles per hour. The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company too contributed to the spirit of aviation, evident at the fair by regularly flying its fleet of “blimps” above the grounds. These blimps were similar to the original flying airships designed by Alberto Santos-Dumont in fin de siècle Paris—an inflated, fat, cigar-shaped balloon, powered by a motor. Zeppelins they were not. But they still were exciting for the crowds to see overhead. And of course, the grand “Sky Ride” was meant to simulate the sensation of flight.

The genesis for the Sky Ride was the desire to go George Ferris one better, and top his earlier, kindred, attraction: the Wheel. That desire to climb higher, to indeed be above all one surveys—our heritage from Icarus—was understood by those in charge of the 1933 Chicago Fair.

The basic concept for the Sky Ride was designed by the bridge construction firm, Robinson & Steinman, with significant contributions from the Otis Elevator Company and Goodyear-Zeppelin. Two towers, 625 feet high, were erected on either side of the lagoon below. Suspended from cables attached to the towers, passengers rode in sleek, if not necessarily fast (only six miles-per-hour), enclosed cars two hundred feet above the fairgrounds. The view represented a genuine thrill. One needs to keep in mind that most people in the 1930s had never flown before. Therefore, traveling suspended in the air at that height was the closest most of the fairgoers had been to the experience that most of us today take for granted. America’s “public enemy number one,” John Dillinger, reputedly was a repeat customer; melting into the relative anonymity afforded by the large crowds, purchasing a ticket, ascending in the lift to the top of the giant tower, leaving worldly cares behind, catching a glimpse of his native Indiana to the south beyond the dunes.

Another feature of the fair was the attempt to include the city’s many ethnic groups in the celebration of the city and the century. Of course, Chicago’s oldest ethnic group were African Americans. The city’s black community was keenly aware of Jean-Baptiste du Sable’s role as founding father of the settlement that became Chicago. However, the Fair Committee had to be grudgingly brought around to the idea of explicitly recognizing du Sable’s legacy, and placing it in its proper historical context rather than trivializing it. The main mover in this effort, dating back to 1928, was Chicago native Annie Oliver. Ultimately her efforts were successful, and interested fairgoers were able to tour a mock-up of the first settlers’ cabin and read historical literature on his place in Chicago’s history. In addition, African Americans could take pride in the performance of composer Florence Price’s Symphony no. 1 in E Minor. Price’s story is surely one of the highlights of a great fair.

Like many of Chicago’s black residents, Florence Price was originally from the south. She was part of the Great Migration of the 1910s to 1930s, one of the greatest internal migrations in American history. Her genteel background in musical composition originated in her native Fort Smith, Arkansas, but for both personal and professional reasons Chicago became her home. However, as a composer who was both black and a woman, it was very difficult to get her work taken seriously in the male-dominated world of classical music. Her break came with the attention given her work as a result of being awarded the Wanamaker Prize in 1932 for the Symphony no. 1 in E Minor. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by the German violist, Frederick Stock, chose to feature Price’s symphony at a special concert being given in conjunction with the World’s Fair.

It’s important to keep in mind the racial and historical context of this moment. In 1933, all adult Chicagoans could recall the terrible race riots of 1919 that left nearly forty of their fellow citizens—black and white—dead. It had started when a black youth had swum near a segregated white beach on the lakeshore. Outraged whites then threw rocks at him, and he drowned. The explosion of rage among Chicago’s black community over this senseless act of violence and bigotry was unprecedented up to that time in American history. For decades, race riots that featured white-on-black violence (often abetted by police forces) had been a recurring theme in urban areas. But this time, it was met with an equal measure of black-on-white violence.6 To call what happened in the summer of 1919 “Chicago’s civil war” would not be an exaggeration. The National Guard had to be called in to restore order. To a certain degree, the reaction by the black community can be explained within the context of the Great Migration. Many of the rioters were recent migrants. They had had their fill of white terrorism, often coming north to escape it. So, they had taken a stand. This traumatic event had seared itself into the memories of many who attended the fair in 1933. Race relations in Chicago were not good.

Frederick Stock was a German who had been persuaded to come to Chicago to build a symphony orchestra worthy of the lakeside metropolis. Today, in the early twenty-first century, the CSO under its Italian director, Ricardo Muti, is considered one of the finest symphony orchestras in the United States—if not the world. But it was Stock who put it on the map in the first place, taking risks by featuring works by what were then considered fringe, modernist composers such as Mahler and Prokofiev. Therefore, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that he would place Price’s work at the center of the CSO’s performance on June 15, 1933, in the famous auditorium built by architect Louis Sullivan. He recognized talent when he heard it, and he was willing to take risks.

The Symphony no. 1 in E Minor is a powerful, expressive piece of music—at times playful, sometimes haunting. At just over thirty-eight minutes, it explores a number of themes in the African American experience: sorrow, joy, liberation, struggle. The “Juba Dance” component of the symphony evokes America and the African American experience, anticipating later, more well-known, works by Aaron Copland, for instance. The concert proved to be an unqualified success. After the performance, the next edition of the African American weekly, the Chicago Defender, gushed:

First there was a feeling of awe as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra . . . swung into the beautiful, harmonious strains of a composition by a Race woman. And when, after the number was completed, the large auditorium, filled to the brim with music lovers of all races, rang out in applause for the composer and the orchestral rendition, it seemed that the evening could hold no greater thrills.7

For Florence Price, the concert was the highlight of her career. It did not open the doors that one might have expected, however. America was still very much a racist (and sexist) society in the 1930s. Price died in 1953, largely a forgotten figure. Not until the twenty-first century has her work finally begun to receive the acclaim it deserves. But for one night at the World’s Fair in 1933, the city was hers.

chpt_fig_001

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra enjoyed a wide audience for its performances of classical music at the fair. Americans love music. Popular music of that time—the Prohibition era—has a lot to say about who music-loving Americans were. Recording certainly had improved by 1933, and the advent of radio in the 1920s provided a medium for artists to reach a wider, national audience. Jazz had reached the northern urban areas largely as a result of the Great Migration. Chicago’s South Side and Harlem in New York were transmitters of this exciting new music. By 1933, jazz had begun to morph into a musical form known as “swing,” and it was swing that defined the age. Some of what would later be called the “big bands” featured vocalists, others did not. What all of them had in common, however, was that one could—no, wanted to—dance to their music. Listening to this music over eighty years after it was recorded, one is startled by how fun, catchy—and, at times, rocking—it is. Listen to the horn section on Louis Armstrong’s recording of “Dinah,” and it is immediately evident that rock ‘n’ roll with its electrified instruments and amplifiers has nothing on it. As it evolved, swing became more subdued, respectable even. But that’s not how it was in 1933.

Lyrics also expressed the Zeitgeist of the era. Yes, Al Jolson had crooned “Brother Can You Spare a Dime” in 1932. But the earnest, populist tunes of Woody Guthrie, for instance, hadn’t yet made an impact. Again, the Depression was very real—in fact, the winter of 1932–1933, when construction of the fairgrounds was being completed, was as bleak as it got—but Americans then still seemed to prefer more playful music. There was a fun, slap-and-tickle element to songs, such as in Phil Harris and Leah Ray’s “How’s About It?” or “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” from the popular musical film, 42nd Street. And sexual innuendo was common. The latter song is one long wink to a honeymooning couple who’s going to be spending the trip in their private compartment on a sleeper. In “Harlem Camp Meeting,” uber-cool Cab Calloway urged the “cats” to “Swing them sisters!” In another number from 42nd Street, dapper Dick Powell sang of

Little nifties from the Fifties

So innocent and sweet

Sexy ladies from the Eighties

Who are indiscrete

Americans in 1933 knew how to have a good time. Our twenty-first-century understanding of them is so colored by the lens of the New Deal that we often miss this. The inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt as president of the United States in March 1933 heralded a new age in government. His “New Deal” for the American people was a bold rejection of what were perceived as the failed laissez-faire policies of previous administrations. FDR inspired many young people to believe in government, to become part of the solution, not just bystanders to history. There is no doubt that he was one of the greatest presidents in American history. He came of age politically during the Progressive era of the 1900s–1910s. The Prohibition era (though not Prohibition itself) was one long rejection of this earlier reformist, crusading period. Now, middle-aged, the youthful progressives of yesteryear had taken over Washington and were poised to implement their version of what American society should be. By and large they were earnest, empathetic, well-meaning, serious people. They were also often boring, self-righteous prigs. For his part, FDR knew how to have a good time (even after being stricken with the scourge of polio), but he was surrounded by people who did not, and who did not particularly care for others having a good time either. It’s worth recalling that Prohibition itself had been championed by the progressives when it was up for ratification fifteen years earlier.

Thus, the new era that was dawning with FDR’s presidency was going to move society in a new direction culturally, not just politically. Along with FDR becoming president, the repeal of Prohibition in the fall of 1933 would signal cultural change. With repeal, respect for the law would be enhanced, for one thing. The final signal of the cultural change that was about to occur was the beginning, in 1934, of the strict enforcement of Hollywood’s infamous Hays Code governing film content. But until then, the envelope would continue to be pushed.

At the fair that spring, visitors were drawn to the Midway just as they had been in 1893. The location was different—this time on the lakefront itself—but the ethos was not. The attractions of the demimonde mixed with the county fair to create a similar milieu as in 1893. Snake charmers and hootchy-kootchy dancers vied with rides, game booths, restaurants, and beer gardens for the fairgoers’ dollars. Straightlaced Lenox Lohr might not have been a denizen of the dives, but he understood full well the financial implications of the Midway concessions. The Fair Committee’s share of the profits could spell the difference between a fair that paid for itself, and one that went into the red. Thus, a certain permissiveness reigned in its environs that would never have been allowed in the fairgrounds proper.

Nowhere was this more evident than in the Streets of Paris concession. Part exhibit, part cabaret, the “Streets” welcomed visitors with a stylized steamship façade meant to simulate a journey to distant lands. There was very little that was French about the concession, except perhaps the insinuation of a certain risqué allure. The undisputed star of the Streets of Paris was fan dancer Sally Rand. An out-of-work actress and dancer, Rand and her agent, Ed Callahan, conceived a plan to relaunch her flagging career by combining nudity, or near nudity, minimum props, and dance.8 It was essentially performance art—or, rather, exhibitionism as performance art.

The curvy twenty-nine-year-old schemed with Callahan to get the public’s attention right from the beginning of the fair. On opening night, May 27, 1933, she donned a cape and a long blonde wig (and nothing else), and mounted a rented white horse (with sidesaddle) to crash a posh party being given in the Midway’s Cafe de la Paix. Her unexpected entrance had the desired effect. As historian Cheryl Ganz uproariously related:

Beyond the gala’s soft, warm ring of light, a virtually nude Lady Godiva disembarked unnoticed. She entered the gate and rode boldly through the Streets of Paris and onto the mini stage. Astounded, Chicago’s merrymaking high society simply gaped, and then, seeing her as a novel addition to the planned entertainment, they burst into applause. The police arrested Rand for obscenity, but the horse remained to be photographed with the enthusiastic spectators.9

chpt_fig_022

Sally Rand caught on camera splashing in Lake Michigan by a photographer from the Chicago Herald and Examiner (July 19, 1933). Courtesy of University of Illinois Chicago Special Collections.

Following the fair, Rand revived her career and returned to Hollywood for roles in a number of films in the 1930s. Sex sold. Starting in the early 1920s with the rise of the Prohibition-era “flapper,” the Hollywood film industry began exploiting it in many of its films. Already by the early 1920s, nudity and sex were being—if not explicitly depicted—strongly hinted at by using creative camera angles, sets, and suggestive body language. With the rise of the “talkies” over the silent “movies” later in the Twenties, spoken dialogue could add heaps of sexual innuendo—and often did–in films such as The Blue Angel and The Sign of the Cross. In the latter, a classic of the sword-and-sandal genre by director Cecil B. DeMille, French-born actress Claudette Colbert cavorts quite clearly in the nude in a Roman bath in her role as the debauched Empress Poppaea. Then in her next line, she tells Dacia, another female character, “Dacia, you’re a butterfly with the sting of a wasp. Take off your clothes. Get in here and tell me all about it.”10 This raised some eyebrows.

Hollywood had brought in a Presbyterian minister named Will Hays to draft a decency code that all of the studios bound themselves to, following an ugly scandal after a starlet was found dead after a drunken orgy. There was much earnest handwringing, but once the code was adopted, little meaningful effort was made to actually enforce it. To a certain extent, it was a bit like Prohibition itself.

The result was a period in film history (reciprocated to a very large degree by Broadway) where the prevailing mood seemed to be (as Cole Porter put it) “anything goes.” Or at least anything as far as one was willing to push it. By 1933, under the influence of Hollywood, American society was probably “sexier” than it has ever been, before or since. This was not a sexiness that relied on explicit depictions of nudity and sex. It was more sophisticated than that. It understood that suggesting sex, or showing just a bit more than was publicly permissible—briefly—could be a tonic for one’s imagination. Another aspect that stands out is that in 1933 there was nothing sordid or furtive about sex, and sexiness. Actresses of the era exuded a charm that frankly only that era could produce. And it wasn’t just “cheesecake” that the studios were selling. Olympic swimming sensation Johnny Weissmuller, cast as Tarzan of the Apes by MGM, was one of many examples of “beefcake” depicted on screen, as well.

But in 1934, Joseph Breen gained control of the body tasked with enforcement of the code. Urged on by the Roman Catholic National Legion of Decency, Breen took his job very seriously indeed. Within months, a more puritanical climate took hold in Hollywood, and filmmakers, often grudgingly, had to change course. Twenty-first-century Americans are often shocked when they watch films from the early 1930s. The counterculture revolution of the late 1960s is often seen as the beginning of this country’s sexual revolution. It doesn’t seem possible that people living in such an an tique age could be so, well, sexy. But they were.

That year, 1933, the first great blockbuster of the “talkie” era was released in theaters across the country. King Kong was to the Prohibition era what Star Wars was to Generation X. It was the must-see movie of 1933. It had its premiere two months before the fair opened, and was a competitor for Chicagoans’ hard-earned entertainment dollars. The story centers around a love triangle between a woman, a man, and an ape of enormous size. Their adventures on the truly frightening Skull Island are later eclipsed by the final scenes atop the newly constructed, Art Deco–inspired, Empire State Building in New York. Actress Fay Wray’s performance as Ann Darrow, the object of the affections of both man and ape, steals the film. Her character is so sexualized that it’s hard not to see some connection between this film and the strict new enforcement of the Hays Code the following year. A cause and effect, if you will. And yet, Wray manages to convey an unaffected sweetness on film that saves it from being tawdry. The film has been remade on a number of occasions since, but no actress has ever come close to capturing the je ne sais quoi of Fay Wray’s Ann Darrow. Why not? Only a woman of that era could combine these qualities to quite the same effect.

The film also featured aviation as the savior of civilization (New York City). In the final sequence, Kong, having abducted Ann Darrow, then climbs to the top of the Empire State Building to elude his enemies—but then, out of the blue, a squadron of fighter planes appears, looking both vulnerable and deadly at the same time. Kong can destroy one that gets too close to the building’s spire, but the others pour bullets into the over-matched ape from a safe distance. Kong falls to his death. The aviators head back to base.

King Kong and the inauguration of FDR were the only two public spectacles that were on the same plane with the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933. In retrospect, the film is full of racist and imperialistic overtones—but so was the age that produced it. It is also a very sexy film. So was the age that produced it.

chpt_fig_001

July 1933 was set to be one of the most consequential months of the entire World’s Fair. Fascist Italy’s intrepid air minister, Italo Balbo, was scheduled to arrive at the fair in the middle of the month with his armada of world-famous seaplanes. Generating excitement for visits such as this were part of what made the fair an ongoing event rather than a one-off proposition for

chpt_fig_023

Fay Wray in King Kong (1933) exemplified the style, body language, attitude, and unaffected sex appeal of the era. Alamy Images.

chpt_fig_024

Alamy Images.

Chicagoans. This is exactly what Rufus Dawes wanted. The fair needed to constantly be in the press, or else it risked becoming a passing fad before its allotted time was officially up. Balbo was a draw. There was no doubt about it. His journey would involve risk—and could also be milked for all the suspense it could generate in the press as well. For its part, Italy had made a serious investment in its contributions to the fair—a modernistic aviation-themed pavilion, and an installation in the Hall of Science. In these belt-tightening times, not all countries were willing or able to go all out in this manner. Italy wanted to make a statement.

To a certain degree, it seems that Benito Mussolini simply couldn’t resist the opportunity the fair presented to boast. There were aspects of Italian society that, under his rule, had made strides. Aviation was the obvious example, but with its own attractive pavilion at the fair, Fascist Italy could more thoroughly develop a flattering, self-promoting narrative. The hope was that this in turn would favorably shape public opinion in the United States, an important country in Mussolini’s estimation.* Italian designers certainly brought an original flair to the modernist/Art Deco theme of the fair. The aviation-themed Italian Pavilion invited visitors into a structure that was elegant, modern, and active.

Perhaps this could have described Balbo himself. He enjoyed immense popularity in the early 1930s, unlike his master. Surrounded by sycophants in his office in the ornate Palazzo Venezia, Mussolini felt secure in his own image of himself. Foreign papers, however, often had the effect of puncturing his narcissistic bubble. Italo Balbo was a useful tool when his successes were co-opted as Fascist Italy’s successes, but his adoring press coverage in foreign papers was not something likely to please Benito Mussolini. As a result of Mussolini’s megalomania, Balbo’s upcoming expedition would require not only great leadership skills on his part, but also just the right amount of deference to his boss back in Rome. At the fair, few if any people would have understood this. Italy’s marketing of itself was very slick. The thought that Benito Mussolini could possibly be so childish as to be jealous of a selfless and loyal patriot of his country would have seemed beneath the behavior of a statesman in the eyes of most Americans. But Mussolini was not a statesman. He was a clown and a bully.

chpt_fig_025

The aviation-themed Italian Pavilion at the 1933–1934 World’s Fair. Courtesy of University of Illinois Chicago Special Collections.

chpt_fig_001

As Chicago switched full on into deep summer, the fair’s critical and commercial success seemed assured. Lenox Lohr and Rufus Dawes weren’t going to leave things to chance, but they could rightly feel confident that the machine had been set in motion, and a bright future lay ahead for their creation. Each evening at dusk, in a repetition of the May 27 grand opening, light from the star Arcturus was harnessed to switch on the fair’s multicolored lights. Fairgoers had quickly embraced the nightly light show in the fountain located between the two lagoons, with the Sky Ride’s cables electrified and glowing above—another of Joseph Urban’s many contributions to the fair he never was able to personally attend. Forty searchlights in five different colors lit up the night sky while a water show spurted from the fountain, with iridescent, multicolored cascades mesmerizing onlookers. It was truly the Rainbow City: fantasy, technology, and creativity combining to present a positive image of the world and the future. Given the grim realities that we correctly associate with the Great Depression, it’s hard to believe that it really happened. But it really happened.

Footnotes

* A handsome, full-color brochure was published in English for American visitors to the Pavilion to peruse. It included passages such as the following (with nary a hint of irony): “Foreign visitors to Italy over the past few years can vouch that the general renewal of the country was brought about and is still taking place in an atmosphere of order, discipline, and work without impairing the traditional calmness and gaiety of Italian life.”

If you find an error or have any questions, please email us at admin@erenow.org. Thank you!