Historic Photo: Kids at an L.A. Halloween Party, 1935.

Today, obviously, is Halloween. And, as this is primarily a history blog, the appropriate subject for today is pretty obvious: a look at Halloween in the past. So enjoy this photo from nearly 90 years ago, showing Los Angeles children dressed up for a Halloween party in 1935. Even at the height of the Great Depression, kids were still kids, and they still are today; there’s something comforting about that.

If you look closely you can observe some interesting details about the cultural choices for these kids’ Halloween costumes. The “default choice” for Halloween costumes here appears to be clowns, as five of 15 kids have clown-related outfits on. Two boys are dressed recognizably as pirates. I can’t quite tell exactly what the boy at the far left is supposed to be, though from the napkin-like cloth hanging down from his waist, which I suspect is red, and his pants I surmise he might be a bullfighter. The girls are a little more generic and none, perhaps surprisingly, are dressed as witches, although the girl in the second row up, far right, has a top hat which includes black cats and the only adult in the photo is carrying a witch-like broom. The boy near the center of the photo looks none too happy to be dressed in a bunny suit. Anyone who’s seen the 1983 family classic film A Christmas Story will identify with that.

Halloween is a little different today. I think it was probably much more the rule in the 1930s that kids would choose generic or archetypical costumes—a pirate, a bullfighter, a ghost, etc.—rather than something specific, like Batman, Superman, or something of that nature. While horror films were as popular in the 1930s as they are today, that after all being the golden age of Universal monsters, I wonder how common or uncommon it would’ve been to see a 1930s kid dressed as Dracula or Frankenstein, in contrast with kids who dress up today as Jason from Friday the 13th or Freddy Krueger. Ironically, clowns are now regarded as legitimately scary horror icons in a way they could never have been conceived of 90 years ago. Do we have Stephen King to thank for that?

Incidentally, this photo has an interesting, totally non-Halloween related historical connection. We know exactly where it was taken: 6816 Arbol Drive in Los Angeles. A house only four blocks away, 6812 Arbol Drive, was the childhood home of one Norma Jean Mortensen, who later became Marilyn Monroe. She and her family moved out of the house during the year 1935, but earlier than Halloween, so she probably could not have been invited to the party where this was taken. Arbol Drive and its homes, constructed in the 1920s, were demolished in the 1950s to make room for a parking lot.

I hope you have a great Halloween!

This photo is courtesy of the Los Angeles Times Photographic Collection at UCLA Library, Creative Commons 4.0.

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