It was the worst of times in the real world, but on the shimmering silver screen, everything was being put right by a brave and courageous cast of characters. It was the 1930s in America, and as the country suffered through the Great Depression, everyone craved a comforting refuge, an escape, from the bleakness of everyday life. People found their comfort in the fantasy worlds of a group of creative innovators who forged a new national identity on the movie screen. Before television, the great events of the day reached the masses only in the forms of still photographs and newspaper accounts -- except at the movies, where people could view actual footage of breaking news, but also enter an alternate world where good men triumphed, love conquered all, and morality was never relative. The bad guys wore black hats, the dashing young man always got the girl in the end, and the Depression was an abstraction to be abandoned at the ticket booth. The decade marked by the Great Depression and leading into the horrors of World War II is remembered as the Golden Age of cinema because new genres were forged, new stars were born, and more than 5,000 new films were introduced to an eager and grateful public. At the height of cinema's popularity, 80 million people took in at least one film per week. As a national medium, film was more unifying than regional radio, more hopeful than local newspapers, and had the potential to entertain more people simultaneously in more locations than vaudeville ever could. For many stars, this Golden Age was a time of frightening changes, as talkies replaced Silent films and the rules of storytelling were forever altered. But before there were big-time directors and scripts auctioned to the highest bidder, the film star was secure in his or her reign, as the draw that brought people into the theaters. The 1930s was a decade that introduced the world to such divine luminaries as Clark Gable, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, Greta Garbo (with voice), Cary Grant, Shirley Temple, Henry Fonda, Laurel and Hardy, Joan Crawford, Jimmy Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, and dozens of others. Even Walt Disney created a movie milestone with 'Snow White and Seven Dwarfs," the first full-length animated feature, which delighted audiences of all ages in 1937. This was also the era that produced what many people forget are the original versions of more well-known remakes. It was in the 1930s that the world first glimpsed film versions of "A Star Is Born," "Scarface," "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," "Little Women," "Alice in Wonderland," "Tarzan the Ape Man," "42nd Street," "Cleopatra," "Flash Gordon," "Angels with Dirty Faces," "Bride of Frankenstein," "King Kong," "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," "Dracula," and many now classic stories that have been remade and rehashed dozens of times since their initial releases. It's clear why this period in the history of cinema is regarded as "classic" -- at no time before or since were so many auteurs working at the same time, writing our collective history onto film. No other decade can claim credit for film moments as diverse and groundbreaking. We still feel horror at the tragic war piece, "All Quiet on the Western Front." We cringe at Bela Lugosi's chilling portrayal of Count Dracula or when King Kong climbs to the top of the Empire State Building. Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire still hold romance for many, practically spinning on air as they dance. The Marx Brothers' antics in "A Night at the Opera" have lost none of their hilarity. Charlie Chaplin's biting social commentary, "Modern Times," is disturbingly relevant to this day. Few cannot recall the occasion when they first saw Judy Garland slip on her sparkling ruby slippers, or when Jimmy Stewart went to Washington as Mr. Smith. And of course, it was in the Classic era of Hollywood that we saw the kiss to end all kisses in the film to end all lists, the smoldering tension breaker between Rhett and Scarlett in the epic "Gone with the Wind," which was released in 1939.