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Born in 1934? Here's the world you arrived into

In 1934, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" topped the charts, It Happened One Night packed theaters, a stamp cost 3¢, the average home went for about $3,700.

What things cost in 1934

A $0.19 gallon of gas in 1934 has the buying power of roughly $4.75 today, while the 3-cent stamp equals about 75 cents. The 20-cent movie ticket converts to around $5.00, and for many families that double feature was the week's one splurge.

The biggest moments of 1934

• The Dionne quintuplets were born in Canada and became instant worldwide celebrities.
• Great dust storms swept the drought-stricken Plains as the Dust Bowl years took hold.
• The gleaming streamlined Zephyr train raced from Denver to Chicago in a record dawn-to-dusk run.

• The very first Masters Tournament, then called the Augusta National Invitation, was played in Georgia, with Horton Smith taking the title.
• Britain launched the great ocean liner Queen Mary at Clydebank, with 200,000 spectators watching her slide into the water.
• St. Louis's rowdy 'Gashouse Gang' Cardinals, led by pitching brothers Dizzy and Paul Dean, won a seven-game World Series.

Toys, TV & trends of 1934

• Ideal's Shirley Temple dolls became the most wished-for toy in the country.
• The Flash Gordon comic strip blasted off in January, and boys treasured their Buck Rogers ray guns.
• The first All-American Soap Box Derby championship was held in Ohio, with kids racing homemade gravity cars.

• The Li'l Abner comic strip debuted in August, and Al Capp's Dogpatch characters became a national in-joke.
• Lux Radio Theatre began adapting hit plays and films for the airwaves, becoming one of radio's most prestigious hours.
• Buttery Ritz crackers appeared in grocery stores, an affordable little touch of luxury priced for Depression budgets.

The music scene

The record business finally found its way back in 1934 when the new American Decca label slashed prices to 35 cents a disc and signed Bing Crosby as its flagship star, betting that even Depression families could spare a quarter and a dime for music. The bet paid off and helped revive the whole industry. And on a November amateur night at Harlem's Apollo Theater, a nervous 17-year-old named Ella Fitzgerald planned to dance, changed her mind at the last second, sang instead, and won first prize.

At the movies

In July the studios began strictly enforcing the Production Code under Joseph Breen, and Hollywood movies changed overnight: gentler, cleaner, and built on wit and innuendo instead of frankness, which shaped the screwball comedy style audiences came to love. Frank Capra's little road picture that no star wanted to make went on to sweep all five top Academy Awards, a feat not repeated for over 40 years. Meanwhile six-year-old Shirley Temple burst into stardom and received a special miniature Oscar for bringing more happiness to more people than perhaps anyone in 1934.

Cartoons kids loved

• Donald Duck made his debut in the Silly Symphony The Wise Little Hen
• Disney's The Tortoise and the Hare won the Oscar for best cartoon
• Popeye quickly became one of the most popular cartoon characters in theaters

Behind the scenes, 1934 was the year Walt Disney gathered his animators one evening, acted out an old fairy tale scene by scene for hours, and announced he was going to make a feature-length animated film. Hollywood promptly nicknamed the project 'Disney's Folly,' certain no audience would sit through 80 minutes of drawings. Disney spent the next three years, and every dollar he could borrow, proving them wrong.

The world in 1934

• World population: about 2.1 billion
• U.S. President: Franklin D. Roosevelt
• The Dust Bowl drought devastated farms across the American Great Plains.

• Mao Zedong's Communist forces began the Long March, a grueling 6,000-mile retreat across China that became legend.
• Marie Curie, the only person then to have won Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, died in France at age 66.
• The MacRobertson Air Race from England to Australia thrilled the world, with the winning red Comet racer covering the route in under three days.

1934 birthday questions

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