In 1933, America was in the midst of the Great Depression. The depth of despair created in the American people earned the panic a singular place in the history of the nation's economic turmoil. Football, a uniquely American game, weathered these hard times, adapted, and made some of the pain a little easier to endure. In 1933, author Mark C. Bodanza examines the important role football played in the midst of the nation's historic crisis. Bodanza recounts this dramatic year both on and off the field of the professional and college gridirons and analyzes it in the context of the times. He tells the story of a momentous season shared by the high schools of Fitchburg and Leominster, Massachusetts, a rivalry dating back to 1894. In the prior thirty-nine seasons, the teams had played each other forty-nine times. But, 1933 was different; the game had never had such significance. More than ever, Depression-wary Americans needed a reprieve from their cares and concerns. Football provided a welcome relief. Including period photos, 1933 narrates how the sport of football-which has created some of the nation's most magical moments in sports-was impacted by the Great Depression in a variety of ways, some with lasting consequences.

1933

Football at the Depth of the Great DepressionBy Mark C. Bodanza

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Mark C. Bodanza
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-4523-4

Contents

Preface................................................................xiAcknowledgments........................................................xviiIntroduction...........................................................xxi1. A Nation's Hope.....................................................12. Barrier of Shame....................................................63. The Game Reshaped...................................................124. Professional Football's First Championship Game.....................235. Convincing Starts...................................................316. College Football and the Great Depression...........................747. Gangsters and Folk Heroes...........................................848. Fitchburg's Football Season.........................................949. Leominster's Season.................................................10710. Thanksgiving 1933..................................................12211. Humble Leaders.....................................................133Afterword..............................................................141Table of Games.........................................................145Bibliography...........................................................149Index..................................................................153

Chapter One

A Nation's Hope

Morning sun and mild temperatures bathed Doyle Field as the Leominster and Fitchburg football squads prepared for their traditional holiday game. In 1933, Thanksgiving came as late in November as possible. November 30 was the last Thursday of the month. Each team wore silk football pants; Fitchburg donned red, and Leominster blue. The fabric shimmered. Ten thousand fans waited in anticipation; partisans crowding the grandstands. Leominster's blue and white dominated the north side, and a throng of red-and-gray-cloaked Fitchburg fans occupied the opposite seats. Earthen embankments that sloped toward each end zone accommodated another three thousand fans for whom there were no seats.

It was the fortieth year of the rivalry between the two central Massachusetts schools. No one could remember a more important game. The match was billed as a pinnacle of the rivalry, a game of games. 1933 was proving a momentous year both on and off the football field.

The nation was in the midst of an economic collapse, ultimately called the Great Depression. The depth of despair felt earned the panic a singular place in the history of American financial turmoil. The Great Depression was preceded by an age of contradictions. The twenties were years of innocence, unbridled optimism, and technological advance. That decade saw the mass production of the automobile, transatlantic telephone service, and a rapid electrification of the country's landscape. It was also a time of excess and wild speculation, filled with bootleggers intent on quenching the thirst of a nation bristling against Prohibition.

When the stock markets crashed on October 29, 1929-"Black Tuesday"-Americans were caught off-guard. The decline was rapid and precipitous. Bank failures rose from 659 in 1929 to 2,294 in 1931. Nearly one-third of American workers were without a job by the winter of 1933. Bank holidays were declared to stem the streams of frightened depositors seeking to withdraw their savings. Hunger haunted every corner of the nation.

The crisis required leadership to protect the American psyche. Ironically, the impoverished looked to a man of privilege in the presidential elections of November 1932. The president-elect, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, faced a huge challenge. Despite the advantages of an education at Groton, Harvard, and Columbia Law School, FDR knew adversity. Stricken by polio in 1921, he required the aid of crutches or a wheelchair for the rest of his life. The press shielded his physical disability from public view.

Even before his illness, Roosevelt demonstrated determination in the face of inauspicious circumstances. His years at Groton were marked by a lack of athletic prowess, an ingredient necessary for real distinction at the school. The headmaster, Endicott Peabody, believed sport integral to maturation and football was at the top of his list. To Walter Camp, "father of American Football," Peabody wrote, "I am convinced that football is of profound importance for the moral even more than the physical development of the boys." The smallish Roosevelt, who lacked any experience in team sports, found a place on the second worst of eight football teams at the school. Perhaps Peabody was correct. FDR never forgot his boyhood days at Groton, the lessons learned both in and out of the classroom. He drew on those experiences early in his presidency.

The first one hundred days of Roosevelt's administration produced a dizzying array of legislative initiatives aimed to right the American economy and establish an equitable distribution of wealth. Government grew quickly, and new agencies emerged, known by acronyms still familiar today. Virtually lost to history is the fact that the whole program almost ended before it ever got off the ground.

On February 15, 1933, the president-elect visited Miami to address a convention of Legionnaires. Roosevelt delivered his speech seated on the top of the back seat of an open car. Roosevelt conversed with Chicago mayor Anton Cermak after the public talk concluded. Cermak, who had supported FDR's primary Democratic Party rival, Al Smith, was in Miami to court the president-elect's assistance for Chicago's ailing school district, which could not afford to pay its teachers. Just forty feet away stood Giuseppe Zangara, a thirty-two-year-old Italian bricklayer. The despondent Zangara had a disdain for the elite. Suddenly, he raised a revolver purchased in a North Miami pawnshop for eight dollars. Five shots were quickly discharged. The assassin's aim was disrupted when Mrs. Lillian Cross instinctively hit his arm with her handbag. Roosevelt was spared by a matter of inches. Cermak was not. The Chicago mayor was critically wounded and died on March 6, just two days after FDR was inaugurated as America's thirty-second president.

Zangara was unrepentant. At his trial he testified, "The capitalists killed my life. I suffer, always suffer. I make it fifty-fifty-someone else must suffer." When asked if he wanted to live, the assassin replied, "No. Put me in the electric chair." He had no remorse. His only sorrow was in failing to kill Roosevelt. One of Zangara's wishes was indulged when he was executed on March 20, 1933.

By all accounts, Roosevelt was fearless throughout the whole ordeal. Those who were with him in the hours just after the assassination attempt found him unfazed. Raymond Moley, a Columbia University political science professor who was assisting with policymaking and speechwriting, was impressed. "I have never in my life seen anything more magnificent than Roosevelt's calm that night ..." This courage would prove essential to the first few weeks of Roosevelt's administration. Circumstances were dire in the spring of 1933.

During his relatively brief inauguration speech, Roosevelt called for God's guidance on a number of occasions. Earlier that morning he established a precedent by attending a prayer service. Roosevelt told his soon-to-be Postmaster General James Farley that "I think a thought to God is the right way to...