The Great Depression

Herbert Hoover preferred fishing to politics. A gentle--many would say ineffective--man, Hoover's Presidency was plagued by an economic crisis during the late '20s and early '30s that would come to be known as the Great Depression. In the opener of this four-part series, hosted and narrated by Mario Cuomo, viewers will trace the early years of the Great Depression, sparked by the stock market crash on Black Tuesday (October 29, 1929). Archival footage of the soup lines, the exodus out of the Dust Bowl toward the promise of jobs created by FDR's New Deal, and such sideline phenomena as marathon dancing, is interwoven with interviews of Kitty Carlisle, economist Kenneth Galbraith, and many men and women who lived through a terrible period when the notion of "getting ahead" was eclipsed by the day-to-day survivalist mentality of simply getting by. A courageous, often heart-breaking history, well-told. Recommended. Aud: J, H, C, P. (R. Pitman)