Going Down on Good Neighbours: Imagining América in Hollywood Movies of the 1930s and 1940s (Flying Down to Rio and Down Argentine Way)

During the Good Neighbor Era of the 1930s and 1940s, the USA sought to normalise relations with Latin America in order to promote hemispheric unity, particularly so after the outbreak of the Second World War, which provoked anxiety about transatlantic trade routes and South American attitudes towards the Axis. An Office of the Co-ordinator of Inter-American Affairs was established, which in turn set up a Motion Picture Division. The Division pressed for a Latin American specialist to monitor and control representations of Latin America via the Production Code Administration. The attempt to promote positive portrayals of Latin Americans assisted a boom in musical comedies dealing with North Americans visiting their southern neighbours. This article examines an early precursor, Flying Down to Rio (1933), and a full-blown Good Neighbor movie, Down Argentine Way (1940). The article uncovers, behind the optimistic projection of neighbourliness, hidden tensions and deep-rooted anxieties about American identities.