The 'Roaring Twenties'

II – Entertainment, Prohibition and Crime

Going Deeper

The links below will help you widen your knowledge:

1.  Entertainment

1. Films

   • movie actors such as Charlie Chaplin, Rudolf Valentino and Mary Pickford became 'stars'. 

   • in 1927,The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson, was the first 'talkie'.

   • a well-known early two-colour film was The Toll of the Sea (1922) and two-colour films were common by the end of the 1920s; after 1932, films were produced in three-colour technicolour.

   • Mickey Mouse was created by Walt Disney in 1928 (who released Snow White in colour in 1937).

   • by 1930, 100 million Americans went to the movies every week

   • companies like United Artists and MGM produced hundreds of films a year.

   • films taught people new fashions (e.g. smoking) and new ways to behave – many girls wanted to be like 'It' girl, Clara Bow.

 

2. Jazz

   • Jazz was first played in New Orleans by black musicians such as Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton.  After 1917, racist violence forced many of them to leave New Orleans, so they went north to play in the night clubs of towns like Chicago and New York. 

   • The invention of radio and the phonograph (record player) made it available in people's homes.  The first jazz record was made in 1917 by the Dixieland Jazz Band.  They were called 'race records', because they were recorded by black musicians.

   • Because it was often played in speakeasies, by black musicians, it was seen as wild and exciting - which soon made it very popular.

   • Jazz music contributed to many of the social developments of the age – baggy trousers and short skirts, wild dancing such as the Black Bottom, and a new kind of convention-free poetry called 'jazz poetry' (poets such as TS Eliot and ee cummings).  It was part of the Harlem Renaissance, and the growth of black pride (see here).

 

3. Dances

   • The Charleston was a fast dance developed in Black communities which was adopted by flappers, who danced it alone to challenge the 'drys' who wouldn't go out to clubs.  (Both Joan Crawford and Ginger Rodgers began their movie careers by winning Charleston competitions.)

   • The 'Black Bottom Stomp' was first recorded by Jelly Roll Morton and named after Black Bottom – a Black neighbourhood in Detroit.  After 1926 it became the most popular dance.

   • The dances scandalised many Americans, who thought they were immoral.

Clara Bow – the 'It' girl, playing self-confident shop-girl Betty Lou Spence, who has ‘it’ and is ‘it’, flirting with rich businessman Cyrus Waltham. 
Watch clips from the movie 'It' on YouTube.

The King & Carter Jazzing Orchestra, 1921. 

Dancing The Charleston 

2.  Prohibition

In 1919 - as the result of a long and powerful campaign (see panel) – the 18th Amendment to the Constitution made the manufacture, transport or sale of alcoholic drinks illegal.  The Volstead Act, passed at the same time, declared any drink more than 5% proof 'alcoholic'.

ARGUMENT 1: Prohibition was a failure [DAMAGE]

1. Drinking continued: impossible to enforce (not enough police – only 4000 agents, many of whom were sacked for taking bribes). 

2. Available: the liquor trade just 'went underground'.  speakeasies (illegal bars), moonshine (illegally-made alcohol), bootlegging (smuggling alcohol to sell).  It is sometimes asserted that there were more speakeasies than there had been saloons (not true, but there were 200,000 speakeasies in 1933).

3. Made criminals of ordinary people.

4. Adverse effects: moonshine was poor quality and sometimes killed people.  'Jackass brandy' caused internal bleeding, 'Soda Pop Moon' contained poisonous alcohol.

5. Gangsterism flourished running the illegal trade: It became hugely profitable, and led to a growth of violence, protection rackets etc. associated with the illegal trade (see 'Organised Crime' below).  The general flouting brought the rule of law in general into disrepute as police 'turned a blind eye.  Corruption grew.

6. End: in 1933 the 21st Amendment abolished Prohibition (= 'proved' that it failed - see panel).

ARGUMENT 2: Prohibition was a success [ALE]

1. Amount of alcohol destroyed: in 1929, 50 million litres of illegal alcohol were discovered and destroyed. 

2. Legacy: the actual consumption of alcohol fell, not just during prohibition, but for many years after – did not reach pre-1914 levels until 1971.

3. Eliot Ness and the Untouchables: became famous as examples of the high standards police SHOULD achieve.

BBC Bitesize - Prohibition

Brilliant Prohibition mindmap

Good Essay arguing the traditional case that Prohibition was a failure.

'Wets' and 'Dries' - extensive resources

YouTube

Great Student video

AQA-suggested Interpretation of Prohition and Crime:

Felix von Luckner, Sea Devil Conquers America (1928)

Felix Luckner's comments on Prohibition

3.  Organised Crime

Organised crime stepped in to take over from the breweries and spirits manufacturers:

1. They ran the speakeasies, and bootlegging. 

2. They also ran protection rackets, prostitution and drug-running. 

3. They bribed trade union leaders, police, lawyers, judges and even Senators.

4. The most famous gangster was Al Capone, who earned $100,000 a year from beer sales alone, ran a private army of more than 700 mobsters, and is thought to have murdered more than 200 opponents.

5. They fought with each other for control of their 'territory' – the most famous incident was the St Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, when 'torpedoes' from Capone's gang shot dead 7 members of Bugs Moran's gang.

Source A

In 1930, Al Capone made the front page of Time magazine.