A little summer on Christmas Eve. A trip to Maine is not complete with a stop at Round Top.
My family has been visiting Friendship, Mine for over a hundred years. Round Top is a local ice cream manufacturer. Ten or twenty years ago they remodeled and enlarged their home-base store into a proper, sit-down ice cream parlor (it had been a small, barn-like structure for long, long before I was born) and this summer I noticed all of the old calendars they had framed on the walls. Almost every month from 1936 are represented.
I may not post another entry before the New Year. After January 1 I think I will be redirecting the focus of this blog - the emphasis will still be on Cleveland, but will turn to the 1950s.
In a nation built on catchy sports-oriented nicknames -- Dizzy, Mickey, Refrigerator, the King, Fuzzy, the Green Monster, the House That Ruth Built, the Fumble, The Drive, A-Rod, Meadowlark, the Great One, the Ain'ts, the Evil Empire, The Big Sombrero, Pronk -- there can only be one:
They called it this because the name BIG CITY FACILITY DESIGNED FOR CONGREGATION seemed too festive. This stadium was built in 1931, which featured the first use of aluminum in a large, multipurpose stadium facility, spearheaded by city manager William R. Hopkins and others (include the Van Sweringen's and the Indians ownership) for the usual reasons; to attract big crowds downtown to spur development and commerce, especially their own.
Cleveland Municipal Stadium was neither a WPA project, nor was it created in an effort to secure the 1932 Olympics, though these are both popular rumors. I was once told and perpetuated the idea that it was built for the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin. That's a sexier legend, but no less false.
The Indians played here in 1932 and 1933, but fans were not happy with the gigantic outfield (which reduces the chance of home runs, of course - see: 1954 World Series) and as the Depression depressed ticket sales, the team moved back to League Park in 1934.
By 1936 the Cleveland ball team began playing Sunday and holiday games here, to take advantage of the potential 74,000 seats (there were 81,000 seats during football season) making it their home for evening games in 1939 because League Park had no lights, and the permanent home of the Indians in 1940.
In 1936 Cleveland Municipal Stadium was home to the Cleveland Rams. On September 24, 1935 the Seventh Eucharistic Congress was held there attracting 75,000 to a midnight mass and an estimated 125,000 Catholics to the service next morning.
Cleveland Municipal Stadium was torn down in 1995, and no one noticed.
Sources:
Wikipedia
Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
Ballparks.com
The Ohio Criminal Syndicalism statute made it a crime to advocate "the duty, necessity, or propriety of crime, sabotage, violence, or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform" and to "voluntarily assemble with any society, group, or assemblage of persons formed to teach or advocate the doctrines of criminal syndicalism."
(syndicalism: n. A radical political movement that advocates bringing industry and government under the control of federations of labor unions by the use of direct action, such as general strikes and sabotage.)
The Ohio Criminal Syndicalism Statute was enacted in 1919. In 1927, this Court sustained the constitutionality of California's Criminal Syndicalism Act, the text of which is quite similar to that of the laws of Ohio. Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927). The Court upheld the statute on the ground that, without more, "advocating" violent means to effect political and economic change involves such danger to the security of the State that the State may outlaw it. - UMCK website, Brandenburg v. Ohio
Following the Great War, an anti-communist movement called the First Red Scare began to spread across America. As a result of the 1917 Soviet Revolution, Russia pulled out of WWI which many allies saw as a betrayal. Also, as the Russian Revolution was a violent overthrow of a government, and the ideology of communism called for expansion, it was feared by the establishment that the working underclass may be inspired to revolt anywhere.
These fears were also fueled by the thousands of immigrants coming to America every day, especially from the Southern and Eastern European states.
The Ohio Criminal Syndicalism Act sought to penalize that which is merely advocacy - which is to say, free speech.
Between 1951 and 1954, the Ohio Un-American Activities Committee, headed by House member Samuel Devine, questioned forty Ohioans, asking each person, "Right now, are you an active member of the Communist Party?" Every person refused to answer, citing the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution, which protects Americans against self-incrimination. Most of the accused were college students or people during the 1930s who advocated socialist or communist programs to end the Great Depression. Various grand juries eventually indicted the forty people, with fifteen of these accused being convicted for supporting communism.
In 1952, the Ohio Un-American Activities Committee contended that 1,300 Ohioans were members of the Communist Party. Approximately seven hundred of these people supposedly resided near Cleveland and worked in various industrial occupations, while four hundred more resided in other northern Ohio cities. Only two hundred communists supposedly resided in central and southern parts of the state. - Ohio History Central
It should come as no surprise to the more cynical among us that the Ohio Criminal Syndicalism Act was not struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court until 1969 - in the defense of a Clarence Brandenburg, the leader of a Hamilton County-based chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.
Sources:
University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law
Ohio History Central
Wikipedia
Go on, it's storming outside. Watch the whole thing.
The Cedar-Lee Theatre (located at the corner of...) opened on Christmas Day, 1925 with a screening of The King of Main Street. It was originally a single, 1,100 seat house.
Just this past December 1 they celebrated their 85th anniversary with a showing of The Gold Rush. Tickets were twenty-five cents. I love that.
In spite of contemporary accounts suggesting the movies were an excellent value and source for escape during the Great Depression, theaters did indeed have to take special action to ensure the audiences kept arriving. One popular attraction was Bank Night, where a lottery was held for a cash prize. In 1936, thirty Cleveland area theaters challenged and defeated an existing police ruling that this was an illegal practice.
There was also Crystal Night and China Night, an event dramatized in the little seen My Summer Story, that little-seen sequel to A Christmas Story.
They used the lobby of the Palace for the lobby scene, but this scene was shot in the Ohio.
Hey, while we're at it ... here is a scene from that forlorn mess, shot in large part in Cleveland during the sweltering summer of 1993 and released never:
Skip the opening bit, what you want starts at 2:06 - the World Exposition. No, no, not that Exposition. In spite of what most Clevelanders believe, the tales of Ralphie Parker take place in Indiana, not Cleveland. And this World Exposition supposedly took place in Chicago. There was, of course, a 1934 Chicago World's Fair, but calling it an exposition in this movie leaves me wondering if they were trying to cut some kind of difference. When do these movies take place, anyway? There is nothing in A Christmas Story to suggest Depression-era hardship. The sequel does in a ham-fisted way (okay, you can watch this whole clip if you want to feel that.)
However. I like to think they did capture some of what it felt like to be squeezed in a "Streets of the World" exhibit, complete with live camel.
And oh, did I mention I'm in the camel scene? You won't see me. I am the young man with thinning hair in the loud shirt, visible from 4:50 to 4:56. No, really, you can't see me.
Wait. What was I talking about?
Sources:
YouTube
imdb.com
cleveland.com
Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
