Gotta love it

May 19, 1932 - Hot and windy today.  Finished straightening out my things today.  Made six hot pad holders.  We had some new radishes and onions from the garden for dinner today.
May 20, 1932 - Went down town this p.m. and talked to Irene W. for over an hour.  Got some groceries.  Ray, Annie, Ola and kids were in tonite.  I'm so glad they came.  I was getting lonesome.  These last 3 days have seemed like 3 weeks.  I'll be glad when Mom comes home.
May 21, 1932 - Cleaned upstairs and downstairs today.  Uncle Hans, Aunt Lena and Aunt Mary K. were here this p.m.  They were going to Emerson tonite and to Rochester tomorrow.  Went to the show at Norfolk with Arnold tonite.  Saw Joan Blondell in "The Crowd Roars" and the 4 Marx Brothers in "Animal Crackers."  Mom came home tonite and we talked until 4 a.m.  Opal Schneider Mann's birthday.

How neat is it that Grandma and Grandma Anna stayed up until 4 a.m. talking!?  I wonder what all they had to discuss for that long.

Here is some interesting stuff; more interesting than I thought I would find simply looking for a movie poster and plot summary for "The Crowd Roars" (from wikipedia):

     The Crowd Roars is a 1932 film directed by Howard Hawks starring James Cagney and featuring Joan Blondell, Ann Dvorak, Eric Linden, Guy Kibbee, and Frank McHugh.

     The driver in the film's auto racing sequences was Harry Hartz, a successful board track and Indianapolis 500 race professional.  It was remade in 1939 as Indianapolis Speedway, with Pat O'Brien in Cagney's role, Ann Sheridan in Blondell's role, and McHugh playing the same role he played in the original.

     Motor racing champion Joe Greer (James Cagney) returns home to compete in an exhibition race featuring his younger brother Eddie, who has aspirations of becoming a champion. Joe's misogynistic obsession with "protecting" Eddie from "women" causes Joe to interfere with Eddie's relationship with Anne (Joan Blondell), leading to estrangement between Joe and Eddie, and between Joe and his longtime girlfriend Lee (Ann Dvorak), who is made to feel "not good enough" to be around Eddie.

     During the race, a third driver, Spud Connors, wrecks and is burned alive. Driving lap after lap through the flames and the smell of burning flesh (and maybe past the burning body) while blaming himself for the accident, Joe loses his will to race. Eddie goes on to win. Afterward, Joe's career plummets as Eddie's rises. The power of love eventually triumphs and Joe's career and his relationships with Lee and Eddie are rehabilitated.

     Sentimentalism is downplayed in this "pre-Code" film. The lingering stench of Spud's burning body is implied strongly by the horrified expression on each driver's face as he passes through the smoke and tongue of burning gasoline that marks the wreck site, sometimes pushing his scarf against his nose.

The main thing that caught my attention in this article was "pre-Code", a term I had not heard before.  Here is what I found out about that:

     Films made in the Pre-Code era frequently presented people in sexually suggestive or provocative situations, and did not hesitate to display women in scanty attire. In this publicity photo, Dorothy Mackaill plays a secretary-turned-prostitute in Safe in Hell, a 1931 Warner Bros. film directed by William Wellman.  

     Pre-Code Hollywood refers to the era in the American film industry between the introduction of sound in the late 1920s and the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code (usually labeled, albeit inaccurately after 1934, as the "Hays Code") censorship guidelines. Although the Code was adopted in 1930, oversight was poor and it did not become rigorously enforced until July 1, 1934. Before that date, movie content was restricted more by local laws, negotiations between the Studio Relations Committee (SRC) and the major studios, and popular opinion, than strict adherence to the Hays Code, which was often ignored by Hollywood filmmakers.

     As a result, films in the late 1920s and early 1930s included sexual innuendo, miscegenation, profanity, illegal drug use, promiscuity, prostitution, infidelity, abortion, intense violence, and homosexuality. Strong women dominated films such as Female, Baby Face, and Red-Headed Woman. Gangsters in films like The Public Enemy, Little Caesar, and Scarface were seen by many as heroic rather than evil. Along with featuring stronger female characters, films examined female subject matters that would not be revisited until decades later in American films. Nefarious characters were seen to profit from their deeds, in some cases without significant repercussions, and drug use was a topic of several films. Many of Hollywood's biggest stars such as Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck, and Edward G. Robinson got their start in the era. Other stars who excelled during this period, however, like Ruth Chatterton (who decamped to England) and Warren William (the so-called "king of Pre-Code", who died in 1948), would wind up essentially forgotten by the general public within a generation.

     Beginning in late 1933 and escalating throughout the first half of 1934, American Roman Catholics launched a campaign against what they deemed the immorality of American cinema. This, plus a potential government takeover of film censorship and social research seeming to indicate that movies which were seen to be immoral could promote bad behavior, was enough pressure to force the studios to capitulate to greater oversight.

Here's the photo mentioned above....racy, to be sure!