Remember my forgotten man,
You had him cultivate the land;
He walked behind the plow,
The sweat fell from his brow,
But look at him right now!

“Remember My Forgotten Man,” words by Al Dubin, Music, Harry Warren

Al Dubin and Harry Warren, who wrote the music and lyrics for the Gold Digger series (”gold digger” was slang for chorus girls who sought rich men) of Hollywood films, grasped the importance of Franklin Roosevelt’s evoking “the forgotten man” in a speech that ranks as one the greatest campaign speeches of the last century. Its message would define the Great Depression and the Democratic Party for the next half-century.

The two penned a song they titled, “Remember My Forgotten Man.” The substitution of the word “my” for the more generic “the” personalized the plight of millions of Americans and adding “remember” to the title reinforced the importance of the message.

Their song is uncannily constructed like Roosevelt’s speech, beginning with World War I, then moving on to the farmer and the family (tariffs just aren’t song worthy). The song’s last three lines pack a powerful message:

Forgetting him, you see,
Means you’re forgetting me
Like my forgotten man.

That song would become an anthem for 1930s America.

A former World War I artillery lieutenant named Busby Berkeley would then put the song on screen in a musical number that would last almost as long as the speech. Berkeley was a choreographer whose elaborate dance sequences usually featured hundreds of stunning women, all of them performing in perfect unison that reflected his experience organizing parades during the war. But what still draws people to his movies lay in his brilliant decision to have the camera look down on his intricate formations so they became abstract patterns that moved in the camera lens like images from a kaleidoscope.

Wildly popular in the 1930s, Berkeley’s movies had about them the atmosphere of a musical New Deal, seeming to echo Roosevelt’s “Forgotten Man” line:

The generalship of that moment conceived of a whole Nation mobilized for war, economic, industrial, social and military resources gathered into a vast unit.

The standard plot line in movies choreographed by Berkeley usually featured hard-luck entertainers getting their big break, a story that resonated with those who had paid their nickels and dimes to sit in dark theater rows. Although today Berkeley is chiefly remembered for his glamorous numbers, many of his films also had songs set in a Depression-like atmosphere such as the New York street scenes of 42nd Street.

Berkeley’s choreography for “Remember My Forgotten Man” drew on 42nd Street, which had been made just before Gold Diggers. He would show World War I and the Depression from a darker perspective: wounded soldiers in the rain, soup kitchens and a man curled up on a sidewalk being prodded by a policeman’s nightstick. As always, though, the number would finish on an upbeat note and in 1933 Berkeley grasped that the best way to do that was to pay homage to the New Deal.

Like Dubin and Warren, Berkeley seemed to draw his inspiration from Franklin Roosevelt’s April 7th speech, starting with his decision not to sugar coat reality but to see the Depression in FDR’s terms:

In my calm judgment, the Nation faces today a more grave emergency than in 1917.

His choice for the leads in the number has a Rooseveltian tone to it, for instead of the girl-next-store Ruby Keeler or the sophisticated Ginger Rogers, he chose Joan Blondell, a blond paradox with stunning beauty who could project an every woman quality through an expressive face (highlighted by liberal use of an eyebrow pencil) that Berkeley used for maximum advantage in closeups to convey the empathy of Roosevelt’s speech.

Blondell half-speaks, half-sings the song as if she were telling a story, placing the lyrics ahead of the music–a decision that lends even more weight to the words. (See link below, for an abbreviated video of the sequence.) Not a great singer, Blondell soon gives way to the powerful voice of Etta Moten.

In 1933 the choice of a black woman to serve as the voice for the anthem of the Depression–and thereby linking her to the newly-elected president was a radical casting decision. Most movies of the time stereotypically used people of color for broad comedy or as maids or domestics. In this sequence Moten is neither, implying a solidarity that was ahead of its times. Berkeley would never be so bold again, but you cannot help but wonder if this powerful statement was inspired by Roosevelt’s words–for if there was anyone forgotten in the Depression it was people of color.

The ending of “Remember My Forgotten Man” must have had Roosevelt and speechwriter Raymond Moley smiling for Berkeley’s genius lay in taking the downcast, almost maudlin lines from the song and transitioning to an ending that radiates optimism for the future. In one of Berkeley’s patented mass dance numbers, the dancers form the NRA eagle, somehow turning what had been a blues into a song of triumph. YouTube has part of the number, but it omits the famous ending. It is the only time I know that Hollywood has staged a major musical number celebrating an actual campaign speech and a program of a sitting president.

A year after the release of Gold Diggers, Moten would make history when she became the first African American stage and screen actress to sing and perform at the White House. It is notable the occasion was President Roosevelt’s birthday party. At his request, Moten sang “Remember My Forgotten Man.”

While people like Berkeley, Charlie Chaplin and others celebrated the speech, it set off a firestorm after its delivery. Republicans accused Roosevelt of fomenting “class warfare.” But the most important reaction would come from Al Smith, who lashed back at a Jefferson Day dinner in Washington. Schlesinger quotes the speech:

Oratory puts nobody to work…At a time like this, when millions of men and women and children are starving throughout the land, there is always the temptation to stir up class prejudice, to stir up the bitterness of the rich against the poor and of the poor against the rich.

By the end of his speech Smith had worked himself into a red-faced frenzy. The crowd wondered if he would toss his famous brown derby into the ring. Smith did not disappoint:

I will take off my coat and fight against any candidate who persists in any demagogic appeal to the masses of the working people of this country to destroy themselves by setting class against class and rich against poor!

The anti-Roosevelt forces now had their candidate. The battle would become bitter and personal, a tone that persisted to the nominating convention.

Meanwhile the backlash to “Forgotten Man” was enough to convince Roosevelt and his advisors to tone down the rhetoric for the next six weeks until finally during some informal banter at Warm Springs reporters openly teased him about his insipid campaign speeches since “Forgotten Man.” FDR playfully challenged the writers, saying,

Well if you boys don’t like my speeches, why don’t you take a hand in drafting one yourselves?

They took up his offer–something that today would spark a congressional investigation–producing the Oglethorpe University Commencement Address of May 22, 1932 in which Roosevelt advocated “a wider, more equitable distribution of the national income” and stated “the reward for a day’s work will have to be greater than it has been, and the reward to capital . . . will have to be less.” The speech ends by proposing the experimentation that would become the hallmark of the New Deal:

This country needs, and unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

While the Oglethorpe speech was important, it was “Forgotten Man” that came to define Roosevelt’s candidacy and become synonymous with the New Deal. The power of “Forgotten Man” persists even today, for all one has to do is ask: what if a politician were to give such a speech today? My guess is that politician would be on a clear path to the presidency.

To recall “Forgotten Man” is to gauge how far the Democratic Party has strayed from its base, for Roosevelt’s “forgotten man” is William Jennings Bryan’s “commoner.” Today it is more fashionable to focus on the so-called “middle class” as John Kerry did in his run for the presidency and as some of today’s current candidates do in speeches and interviews. No one talks about FDR’s “bottom of the economic pyramid”

To recall “Forgotten Man” is also testimony to how far the country has fallen under the sway of a Republican Counterrevolution determined to turn back the clock to before the days of the New Deal.Today’s forgotten man is Sumner’s not Franklin Roosevelt’s. You could put Sumner’s words in the mouths of Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh and no one would be the wiser. As for the Bush Administration, its policies seem to come from Sumner’s essay.

In this climate it seems almost inevitable that someone would try to also turn back the clock on “Forgotten Man.” In fact a new book by Bloomberg columnist Amity Schlaes, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, argues that the true “forgotten men” of the Depression bear an uncanny resemblance to Sumner’s. A description of the book on her website says:

Roosevelt often spoke of the Forgotten Man, the man “at the bottom of the economic pyramid.” Yet, Miss Shlaes shows, his New Deal created a new forgotten man, the man who subsidizes the funding of other constituencies — and who haunts politics in all developed nations today.

Schlaes and her fellow Republicans have it wrong. FDR’s “forgotten man” still exists. The Katrina debacle still holds our attention because it showed that under the Sumner-like policies of the Counterrevolution, the right circumstances could make anyone one of the forgotten. Were Busby Berkeley to stage his number today he might chose the bleak streets of New Orleans. You can also find America’s forgotten in George W. Bush’s tax and budget cuts, his disdain for public education, the monopolistic media proposals of his FCC and in his refusal to listen to alternatives to his Iraq strategy.

Americans in 1932 knew they would not be forgotten because Roosevelt understood their plight. They also knew this was a man of principle who believed in Liberal America’s core belief that government exists to keep the playing field level.The words FDR spoke on that April day echo through American history. They speak to us today as clearly as they did to those who were privileged to hear them. We should listen.

These unhappy times call for the building of plans that rest upon the forgotten, the unorganized but the indispensable units of economic power, for plans like those of 1917 that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

Today those words still have a decidedly radical tone. One wonders if anyone would even have the courage to say them.

NOTE: An abbreviated version of the “Remember my Forgotten Man” sequence from Gold Diggers of 1933 is available online. UPDATE: YouTube has pulled the video. Warner Brothers said the use of it online violated their copyright. Sorry. You’ll just have to rent the DVD. Etta Moten’s version of the song is still available online as an audio clip at Napster and Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble (excerpt only).

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