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The 1930s were a decade of great political and economic turmoil. After the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the entire world was consumed by an economic downfall called the Great Depression, which led to widespread unemployment and poverty. As a result, authoritarian political movements emerged in several countries in South America and Europe. Notorious among them was Adolf Hitler's Third Reich in Germany, whose expansionist policy resulted in the outbreak of World War II a few months before the end of the decade. In between, Gandhi walked to the Arabian Sea in the Salt March, a civil war established an authoritarian dictatorship in Spain, the Hindenburg exploded over New Jersey, Amelia Earhart became the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, and the Empire of Japan invaded China. (from left to right) Gandhi and his followers during the Salt March (March-April 1930); Japanese troops entering Manchuria (September 1931); the Hindenburg disaster (May 1937); German troo...

To celebrate Gary Cooper's 114th birthday, which was yesterday, this week on "Film Friday" I am bringing you the first Gary Cooper film I ever saw. Theatrical release poster Directed by Ernst Lubitsch , Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) begins when American millionaire Michael Brandon (Gary Cooper) enters a men's clothing store on the French Riviera to buy a pyjama . H e only wants to purc hase the top, which is all he sleeps in. This unusual request causes some consternation among the salesmen, but everything seems to be settled when Nicole de Loiselle (Claudette Colbert), an impoverish aristocrat, agrees to split the costs and buy the trousers. Michael is intrigued by the seductively coy Nicole and their meeting turns into a conversation about sleeping habits, with her suggesting that he try spelling "Czechoslovakia" backwards to cure his insomnia. Michael continues to have insomnia, however, and demands to change his suit...

The most attractive man who has ever lived, otherwise known as Gary Cooper , was born Frank James Cooper, in Helena, Montana on May 7, 1901. He was the youngest of two sons of English immigrants Alice (née Brazier), a homemaker, and Charles Henry Cooper, a prominent lawyer, rancher and eventually a Montana Supreme Court justice.   Wanting her sons to have an English education, Alice enrolled Frank and his brother Arthur in Dunstable Grammar School in Berdfordshire, their father's birthplace, where they where educated from 1910 to 1912. At Dunstable, Frank studied Latin and French, in addition to taking several courses in English history. While he readily accepted the school's «conservative political beliefs and code of dutiful self-sacrifice as well as it admirable emphasis on discipline, loyalty, patriotism, honor and pluck,» Frank never adjusted to its formal uniforms and constricted landscape.   I didn't like England, particularly, although I did admire the extraordi...