Selling the United States to the World: Developing Domestic and Global Markets for Olympic Spectacles in the 1920S and 1930S

By the time the Olympic Games came to Los Angeles in 1932 to celebrate the enduring dreams of American visions of consumer capitalism even in the midst of the Great Depression, American entrepreneurs had developed powerful national and international markets in which to market Olympian spectacles. (1) During the 1920s the Olympics became a major global phenomenon that, like the older system of world's fairs on which much of the Olympic structure was based, provided a key international technology for communicating fundamental ideas about culture to global audiences. (2) In the era of "prosperity" that preceded the Great Depression, the United States perfected a strategy of selling American culture at Olympic venues. As the American Olympic leader Colonel Robert Means Thompson fondly proclaimed throughout the 1920s, the fundamental purpose for sending American teams to the Olympics was to "sell the United States to the rest of the world." (3) At Antwerp in 1920, at Paris and Chamonix in 1924, and at Amsterdam and St. Moritz in 1928, Thompson and his partners in the American Olympic cartel perfected the process of selling the United States to the world. Their efforts also made the Olympics a popular domestic product, as the industrious American quest to capture the 1932 summer and winter games revealed. Shrewd operators who had previously manifested little interest in the Olympics came to understand the possibilities of the Olympic brand. Certainly General Douglas MacArthur grasped the new market opportunity. In 1928 as an Olympic novice he led the American team to Amsterdam in order to bolster his rasuma for a potential bid for the presidency. He needed civilian accomplishments to compliment his illustrious military record in order to keep his future political ambitions alive. He chose the "common language of sport," as the sportswriter John R. Tunis dubbed it, (4) to connect with potential voters. MacArthur's choice was no accident. His odes to "athletic America" attached his name and fame to the national fascination with Olympic sport. (5)