This was my pick after I had started the thread. But I waited for somebody else to mention him first.
Herbert Hoover
King Kong
1933. What can I say? I was raised on that film.
Well don’t keep us in suspense.
Another FDR.
Then Hoover.
Third would be Shirley Temple. (C’mon, people–I can’t be the only one who watches old movies!)
Amelia Earhart.
I just don’t see Hitler as shaping the 1930s, outside of Germany and generalized war fears. (The war did not start until September 1939). I’d put him way behind many of the others mentioned, but it’d be a tossup between him and FDR for the 40s. Huh.
Trots, of course.
Lucky Luciano.
Cab Calloway
Amelia Earhart.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Another one for Hitler. FDR makes a lot more sense, but Hitler came to my mind first.
Hoover for me.
I just wanted to make it clear that I was quoting (and agreeing with) the Dillinger part of Amateur Barbarian’s post. Hitler is a 1940’s dude for me.
Dillinger, along with the gangsters and hoodlums that were all characters on The Untouchables (Robert Stack TV series), is how my first thoughts of that period start.
Well, the thread was what figure comes to mind, not which is the most influential or logical.
For me, the impact of Hitler on my family was so great that the run up to his power and the subsequent war always comes first to mnd for the 30s and 40s. It wasn’t just the war. The Neurenberg laws were in 1935, Kristalnacht was 1938 and my parents’ hometown in Poland was occupied and turned into a ghetto in 1939.
Thread title…What ONE name comes immediately to mind when you hear “1930’s”?
Roosevelt.
Period.
As a Canadian, the first name that popped in to my mind was R. B. Bennett, Prime Minister of Canada from 1930-1935. During the Depression, when people couldn’t afford gas for their cars, they used horses to pull them and derisively called them Bennett Buggies. His pro-business, anti-welfare policies did not make him popular among the masses of poor and unemployed.
I thought of Capone first. I just saw him mentioned on a program this morning though. So probably why.
I can live with that, and wouldn’t dispute that Dolphie’s ascendance stretched across the '30s.
Dillinger came to mind for me because of a longtime fascination with the Depression gangsters (who as an adult I finally realized were murderous thugs, no more to be admired than Captain Swastika). I am still in the camp that thinks John D. survived the Biograph shooting and lived out a normal life under an assumed name. 