Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

Aug 6, 1975

1h 47m

★ 6.1

The lean, mean 30's, when America laughed… to keep from crying!

Overview

Period music, film clips and newsreel footage combined into a visual exploration of the American entertainment industry during the Great Depression.

Genres

Documentary

History

Production Companies

Goodtimes Enterprises

VPS Studios

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

Self (archive footage)

Laverne Andrews

Self (archive footage)

Maxene Andrews

Self (archive footage)

Patty Andrews

Self (archive footage)

Fred Astaire

Self (archive footage)

Warner Baxter

Self (archive footage)

Wallace Beery

Self (archive footage)

Brooks Benedict

Self (archive footage)

Constance Bennett

Self (archive footage)

Jack Benny

Self (archive footage)

Busby Berkeley

Self (archive footage)

Irving Berlin

Self (archive footage)

Willie Best

Every American who has listened to the radio knows Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land." The music of the folk singer/songwriter has been recorded by everyone from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to U2. Originally blowing out of the Dust Bowl in Depression-era America, he blended vernacular, rural music and populism to give voice to millions of downtrodden citizens. Guthrie's music was politically leftist, uniquely patriotic and always inspirational.

7.1

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6.8

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7.2

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5.7

Riding the Rails

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Riding the Rails offers a visionary perspective on the presumed romanticism of the road and cautionary legacy of the Great Depression. The filmmakers relay the experiences and painful recollections of these now-elderly survivors of the rails. Forced to travel more by economic necessity than the spirit of adventure, the film's subjects dispel romantic myths of a hobo existence and its corresponding veneer of freedom. Riding the Rails recounts the hoboes' trade secrets for survival and accounts of dank miseries, loneliness, imprisonment, death, and dispossession. Sixty years later, the filmmakers transport their subjects back to the tracks, where the surging impact of sound and movement resuscitates memories of a shattered adolescence and devastating rite of passage.

0.0

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8.5

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6.5

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7.1

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6.2

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7.6

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6.7

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6.7

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7.8

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6.2

40,000 Years of Dreaming

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7.1

Universal Horror

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A documentary about the era of classic monster movies that were made at Universal Studios during the 1930s and 1940s.

7.2

12 Mighty Orphans

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7.0

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Documentary film interviews leading Latinos on race, identity, and achievement.

6.5

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