The Roaring Twenties Fitzgeralds America

F Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgearld

The Roaring Twenties Fitzgeralds America

The Roaring Twenties Fitzgeralds America

Roaring Twenties is a phrase used to describe the 1920s, principally in North America, that emphasizes the period's social, artistic, and cultural dynamism. Normality returned to politics in the wake of World War I, jazz music blossomed, the flapper redefined modern womanhood, Art Deco peaked, and finally the Wall Street Crash of 1929 served to punctuate the end of the era, as The Great Depression set in. The era was further distinguished by several inventions and discoveries of far-reaching import, unprecedented industrial growth and accelerated consumer demand and aspirations, and significant changes in lifestyle.. The social and societal upheaval known as the Roaring Twenties began in North America and spread to Europe in the aftermath of World War I. Europe spent these years rebuilding and coming to terms with the vast human cost of the conflict. The spirit of the Roaring Twenties was marked by a general feeling of discontinuity associated with modernity, a break with traditions. Everything seemed to be feasible through modern technology. New technologies, especially automobiles, movies and radio proliferated 'modernity' to a large part of the population. Formal decorative frills were shed in favor of practicality, in architecture as well as in daily life. At the same time, amusement, fun and lightness were cultivated in jazz and dancing, in defiance of the horrors of World War I, which remained present in people's minds. The period is also often called "The Jazz Age".

The Roaring Twenties Fitzgeralds America

http://www.awesomedna.com/20sjazz.html

In the 1920's new kinds of dancing evolved along with the new Jazz and Blues music.
The new music and dances were fast paced and energetic, like the optimistic 1920's themselves. They were an escape from the horror of war, and an opportunity to release pent up emotions created by the restricted lifestyles forced on the public by the war effort

agtime which had been popular during and

after the war was suited to the new music tempos and so it flourished. Old favorites like the Waltz and Foxtrot remained popular due to people like Arthur Murray who ran dance schools and published "How to" books on all the popular dances. Dances like the Tango and Charleston received a huge boost in popularity when featured in movies by stars like Rudolph Valentino and Joan Crawford. Freed from the restrictions of tight corsets and the large puffed sleeves and long skirts that characterized dress during the late Victorian era, a new generation of dancers was swaying, hugging, and grinding

The Roaring Twenties Fitzgeralds America

to the new rhythms in dances. While the new dances appealed to the youth they were not so popular with the older, more conservative generation who saw jazz in particular as decadent. This was partly due both to the nightclubing and parties that were the venues for the dancing, and to the style of dance itself. F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel "The Great Gatsby" illustates the lifestyle of young people at this time. It is worth pointing out that in the early 1900's both the Waltz and the Tango were considered scandalous dances because they involved physical contact between partners during the dance. Once the dance crazes which took off in Paris were demonstrated in America, they were embraced by the public and close dancing became a social norm. In the 1920's and 30's the Lindy hop, named for the pilot Charles Lindburgh's first solo flight, emerged and was the first dance to include swinging the partner into the air, as well as jumping in sequence. People saw the new dances in Hollywood movies and practiced them to phonograph records or to radio broadcasts before going out on the dance floors of nightclubs or school gymnasiums. Dancing was a major part of peoples entertainment center and an important part of every party. Schools taught dancing to small children, while churches used dances to attract young people. Tangos, Foxtrots, Camel Walks, even Square dances (which were heavily promoted by Henry Ford) were popular. Magazines and books on social dancing and related social activities were very popular, as were dance schools teaching all the latest dance crazes. Dance etiquette inherited from the previous century began to change. Parents who could afford to would send their children to learn Tap and Ballet dancing. Dancing was an extremely popular social activity for all age groups. Young people introduced their own fashion styles and so the "flapper" and "sheik" came into existence. Young women with short bobbed hairstyles, close fitting hats and short skirts were referred to as flappers, and young men with ukeleles, racoon coats and bell-bottom trousers were called "sheiks". Dancing began to actively involve the upper body for the first time as women began shaking their torsos in a dance called the Shimmy. Young people took to throwing their arms and legs in the air with reckless abandon and hopping or "toddling" every step in the Foxtrot, and soon every college student was doing a new dance which became known as the Toddle. The dance that epitomizes the 1920's is the Charleston. The Charleston was introduced to the public in the Ziegfield Follies of 1923 by the all black cast Afro-American Broadway musical "Running Wild", and became

The Roaring Twenties Fitzgeralds America

so popular that even today, it is still a symbol for the 1920s Jazz Age. The Charleston is characterized by outward heel kicks combined with an up and down movement achieved by bending and straightening the knees in time to the music. Flappers with their knock knees, crossing hands, and flying beads danced the Charleston, and a dance called the "Black Bottom", first introduced in a 1926 Broadway production. Within the year, the dance swept not only America, but the entire world. The overwhelming popularity of the Charleston inspired choreographers and dance teachers to fabricate and promote several new fad dances to a public hungry for novelty. A new style of Blues Dancing also developed to fit the disreputable atmosphere of the speakeasy. It seemed as if the good times would never end, however the prosperity and optimism of the 20's came to a halt with the Stock Market crash on Black Monday in September of 1929. America's mood changed significantly during the Great Depression that followed.

The Flapper - A 1920's Phenomenon

Up until the early 1900's the pace of change in American lifestyles had been relatively slow with most people experiencing a similar lifestyle to what their preceding generations had also followed. The rate of change started to accelerate in the early 1900's as new influences had an effect that reached even the furtherest parts of the country. This had the effect of creating a new country-wide culture in the early twentieth century. The movies, radio shows, sophisticated advertising, and popular magazines all had an influence on the lives of 1920's youth who saw themselves as different from the older generation. Young people began to model themselves on movie and sports stars who represented a glamorous new age, but they also took on many of the negative traits of their idols like smoking, bad language, immorality, and selfishness. And so the new youth culture manifested itself as the flapper and sheik. The flapper stereotype is one of short bobbed loose knee-length dresses with a dropped stockings with garters, heavy makeup, and Flappers are also associated with Jazz and or shingled hair, straight waistline, silk or rayon long beaded necklaces. 1920's dances like the

The Roaring Twenties Fitzgeralds America

Charleston.
Here are some contemporary descriptions of the flapper!

One Connecticut damsel gives the following recipe for the flapper:"Take two bare knees, two rolled stockings, two flapping goloshes, one short skirt, one lipstick, one powder puff, 33 cigarettes, and a boy friend with flask. Season with a pinch of salt and dash of pep, and cover all with some spicy sauce, and you have the old-time flapper." "Then you have the real modern American flapper: Two bare knees, two thinner stockings, one shorter skirt, two lipsticks, three powder puffs, 132 cigarettes, and three boy friends, with eight flasks between them." A magazine article, written by four members of the Junior League in different parts of the country, says that the flapper was a post-war creation. Her hair overnight resembled that of a Hottentot; her skirts ended about her knees; she sneaked her brother's cigarettes, and swore like a trooper. She chewed gumgreat wads of itvigorously and incessantly. Her make-up was as crude as a clown's. The flapper started to fade away in 1928 as indicated by the following magazine article published in February of that year.

Gone is the flapper. In her place has come the young woman with poise, of soft-toned and correct speech, soberly dressed, and without closely cropped hair. Such, at all events, are the specifications of Miss 1928 as portrayed in the current number, of the "Junior League Magazine," which is the national organ of the younger social sets of some thirty of the principal American cities. According to an investigation which has been conducted by members of the Junior League throughout the country it has been revealed that the flapper has sung her swan song in north, south, east, and, west. "Those hard-boiled little things with shaved necks have gone completely out of' style," says one active Chicago member of the Junior League. Miss 1928 on the other hand, is much more subtle and polished, and she wears black satin instead of cerise. She blends rouge evenly and inhales cigarettes gracefully without puffing furiously and, unlike her predecessor, she drinks her liquor from a teacup rather than from a flask. "This year's style in young girls is to be quiet, conversational, and terribly in earnest about careers."

The Roaring Twenties Fitzgeralds America

The Flapper

Literature of the times captured the changes in Society

Authors of the period struggled to understand the changes occuring in society. While some writers praised the changes others expressed disappointment in the passing of the old ways.

eading was a popular recreational activity especially during the winter

months when other forms of activity were limited. Prior to radio and television most people gained knowledge of the wider world and current events through printed material. Consequently books, newspapers and magazines were an important part of most peoples lives and formed a large part of their wider education. Knowledge of the classics was considered an essential part of a good education. Magazines of the period are full of short stories or serials (usually illustrated) to entertain their readers.

The Roaring Twenties Fitzgeralds America

Books That Define the Period

The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot - The ultimate indictment of the modern world's loss of personal, moral, and spiritual values. The New Negro by Alain Locke - A hopeful look at the negro in America The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald - The American dream that anyone can achieve anything Strange Interlude by Eugene O'Neill - A look at 30 years in the life of a modern woman The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway - The lost generation of expatriates Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis - A satirical look at small town life The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner - Details the moral decay of the Old South

Jazz, Ragtime and Broadway musicals were popular facets of 1920's music.

azz gained popularity in America and worldwide by the 1920s.

Nothing quite like it had ever happened before in America. New exuberant dances were devised to take advantage of the upbeat tempos of Jazz and Ragtime music.

By the mid-1920s, jazz was being played in dance halls and roadhouses and speakeasies all over the country. Early jazz influences found their first mainstream expression in the music used by marching bands and dance bands of the day, which was the main form of popular concert music in the early twentieth century. Meanwhile, radio and phonograph records Americans bought more than 100 million of them in 1927 were bringing jazz to locations so remote that no band could reach them. And the music itself was beginning to change an exuberant, collective music was coming to place more and more emphasis on the innovations of supremely gifted individuals. Improvising soloists, struggling to find their own voices and to tell their own stories, were about to take centre- stage.

The Roaring Twenties Fitzgeralds America

In its early years jazz was considered the devils music by diverse segments of the American public. Vigorous public debate raged between supporters and detractors. A typical exchange took place between music critic Ernest Newman who debunked Jazz in a 1927 magazine article, with a reply soon forthcoming from jazz-king Paul Whiteman who argued that jazz was a genuine musical force - and we know who history shows was correct in his views. Public dance halls, clubs, and tea rooms opened in the cities. Strangely named black dances inspired by African style dance moves, like the shimmy, turkey trot, buzzard lope, chicken scratch, monkey glide, and the bunny hug were eventually adopted by the general public. The cake walk, developed by slaves as a send-up of their masters' formal dress balls, became the rage. White audiences saw these dances first in vaudeville shows, then performed by exhibition dancers in the clubs. The popular dance music of the time was not jazz, but there were early forms taking shape in the evolving blues-ragtime experimental area that would soon turn into jazz. Popular Tin Pan Alley composers like Irving Berlin incorporated ragtime influence into their compositions, though they rarely used the specific musical devices that were second nature to jazz playersthe rhythms, the blue notes. Few things did more to popularize the idea of hot music than Berlin's hit song of 1911,"Alexander's Ragtime Band," which became a craze as far from home as Vienna. Although the song wasn't written in rag time, the lyrics describe a jazz band, right up to jazzing up popular songs, as in the line, "If you want to hear the Swanee River played in ragtime...." The 1920's were Broadway's prime years, with over 50 new musicals opening in just one season. Record numbers of people paid up to $3.50 for a seat at a musical. It was also a decade of incredible artistic developments in the musical theatre. Even in the 1920's the lights of Broadway lit up the billboards at night in a huge splash of colour that was immortalized in song. The dazzling lights were an attraction in their own right that compared with the shows in popularity. The Broadway shows were produced by showmen who took musical theatre seriously and tried to provide quality entertainment while making a profit at the same time. This attitude kept the musical theatre booming right through the 1920s. Among the hundreds of popular musical comedies that debuted on Broadway in the early 1920s, two classic examples epitomise the Broadway musical of that era Sally and No, No, Nanette. Prohibition in the United States.

The Roaring Twenties Fitzgeralds America

During Prohibition, the manufacture, transportation, import, export, and sale of alcoholic beverages were restricted or illegal. Prohibition was supposed to lower crime and corruption, reduce social problems, lower taxes needed to support prisons and poorhouses, and improve health and hygiene in America. Instead, Alcohol became more dangerous to consume; organized crime blossomed; courts and prisons systems became overloaded; and endemic corruption of police and public officials occurred.

n 1919, the requisite number of legislatures of the States ratified The

18th Amendment to the Federal Constitution, enabling national Prohibition within one year of ratification. Many women, notably the Womens Christian Temperance Union, had been pivotal in bringing about national Prohibition in the United States of America, believing it would protect families, women and children from the effects of abuse of alcohol. Prohibition began on January 16, 1920, when the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect. Federal Prohibition agents (police) were given the task of enforcing the law. Even though the sale of alcohol was illegal, alcoholic drinks were still widely available at "speakeasies" and other underground drinking establishments. Many people also kept private bars to serve their guests. Large quantities of alcohol were smuggled in from Canada, overland and via the Great Lakes. While the government cracked down on alcohol consumption on land it was a different story on the water where they argued that ships outside the 3 mile limit were exempt. Needless to say, this technicality was exploited by everyone including the State owned shipping line. Legal and illegal home brewing was popular during Prohibition. Limited amounts of wine and hard cider were permitted to be made at home. Some commercial wine was still produced in the U.S., but was only available through government warehouses for use in religious ceremonies, mainly for communion. "Malt and hop" stores popped up across the country and some former breweries turned to selling malt extract syrup, ostensibly for baking and "beverage" purposes. Whiskey could be obtained by prescription from medical doctors. The labels clearly warned that it was strictly for medicinal purposes and any other uses were illegal, but even so doctors freely wrote prescriptions and drug-stores filled them without question, so the number of "patients" increased dramatically. No attempt was made to stop this practice, so many people got their booze this way. Over a million gallons were consumed per year through freely given prescriptions. Because Prohibition banned only the manufacturing, sale, and transport - but not possession or consuming of alcohol, some people and institutions who had bought or made liquor prior to the passage of the 18th Amendment were able to continue to serve it throughout the prohibition period legally. Even prominent citizens and politicians later admitted to having used alcohol during Prohibition. President Harding kept the White House well stocked with bootleg liquor,

The Roaring Twenties Fitzgeralds America

though, as a Senator, he had voted for Prohibition. This discrepancy between legality and actual practice led to widespread contempt for authority. Over time, more people drank illegally and so money ended up in gangsters' pockets. Arguments raged over the effectiveness of prohibition. It appears to have been successful in some parts of the country but overall led to an increase in lawlessness. Prohibition also presented lucrative opportunities for organized crime to take over the importing ("bootlegging"), manufacturing, and distributing of alcoholic drinks. Al Capone, one of the most infamous bootleggers of them all, was able to build his criminal empire largely on profits from illegal alcohol. The American grape growing industry was largely situated in California where there were about 700 bonded wineries producing table wines. Initially, prohibition forced the closure of most of the wineries when growers pulled up their vines thinking their market had evaporated. This created an enormous shortage of grapes forcing the the price per ton to rise 1000% and more from $20 to over $200. Growers realizing their mistake replanted vineyards but in their greed planted much greater acreages than previously. The increased supply forced the price per ton down to $15 by the end of prohibition. Every passing year the number of repeal organizations and demand for repeal increased. In 1932, the Democratic Party's platform included a promise to repeal Prohibition, and Franklin Roosevelt ran for President promising to repeal of federal Prohibition laws. By then, an estimated three quarters of American voters, and an estimated forty-six states, favoured repeal. In 1933, the legislatures of the states ratified the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed Amendment XVIII and prohibited only the violations of laws that individual states had in regard to "intoxicating liquors". Federal Prohibitionary laws were then repealed. Some States, however, continued Prohibition within their own jurisdictions. Almost two-thirds of the states adopted some form of local option which enabled residents to vote for or against local Prohibition; therefore, for a time, 38% of Americans still lived in areas with Prohibition. By 1966, however, all states had fully repealed their state-level Prohibition laws.

The Roaring Twenties Fitzgeralds America

The Roaring Twenties Fitzgeralds America

http://www.slideshare.net/CoolTeacher/fitzgerald-the-1920s

The Roaring Twenties Fitzgeralds America

Speakeasy

A speakeasy, also called a blind pig or blind tiger, is an establishment that illegally sells alcoholic beverages. Such establishments came into prominence in the United States during the period known as Prohibition (19201933, longer in some states). During this time, the sale, manufacture, and transportation (bootlegging) of alcoholic beverages was illegal throughout the United States.

The term bootlegging came into use in the 1880s, when it referred to the practice of hiding flasks of illegal liquor inside boots. Bootlegging was widespread in the United States during Prohibition. Even though the Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages, the law was widely disobeyed by the public and even by government officials. During Prohibition, the production of illegal beer and whiskey quickly expanded across the country. Bootleggers made large profits by distributing these products to speakeasies and other consumers. Bootlegging became an organized business run by crime families and gangsters, (e.g., Al Capone).

The Roaring Twenties Fitzgeralds America

bootlegging, in U.S. history, illegal traffic in liquor in violation of legislative restrictions on its manufacture, sale, or transportation. The word apparently came into general use in the Midwest in the 1880s to denote the practice of concealing flasks of illicit liquor in boot tops when going to trade with Indians. The term became part of the American vocabulary when the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution effected the national prohibition of alcohol from 1920 until its repeal in 1933. Prohibition ended the legal sale of liquor and thereby created demand for an illicit supply. The earliest bootleggers began smuggling foreign-made commercial liquor into the United States from across the Canadian and Mexican borders and along the seacoasts from ships under foreign registry. Their favourite sources of supply were the Bahamas, Cuba, and the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, off the southern coast of Newfoundland. Bootlegging helped lead to the establishment of American organized crime, which persisted long after the repeal of Prohibition. The distribution of liquor was necessarily more complex than other types of criminal activity, and organized gangs eventually arose that could control an entire local chain of bootlegging operations, from concealed distilleries and breweries through storage and transport channels to speakeasies, restaurants, nightclubs, and other retail outlets. These gangs tried to secure and enlarge territories in which they had a monopoly of distribution. Gradually the gangs in different cities began to cooperate with each other, and they extended their methods of organizing beyond bootlegging to the narcotics traffic, gambling rackets, prostitution, labour racketeering, loan-sharking, and extortion. The national American crime syndicate, the Mafia, arose out of the coordinated activities of Italian bootleggers and other gangsters in New York City in the late 1920s and early 30s. In 1933 Prohibition was abandoned. The bootlegger did not become extinct, however. In the late 20th century, prohibition still existed in many U.S. counties and municipalities, and bootlegging continued to thrive as an illegal business.

The Roaring Twenties Fitzgeralds America

Violence was a fact of life in bootlegging. In the Philadelphia Delaware Valley area, waves of racketeer murders were particularly prominent in 1922, 1925, 1928, 1930, and 1932, and continued well beyond Prohibition. The violence obscures a remarkable facet of bootlegging operations: cooperation among racketeers, retailers, and authorities. Investigations uncovered a complex network of police graft and official protection of racketeers' manufacturing, warehousing, distribution, and retailing interests. The use of violence to settle disputes was actually secondary to that of monetary negotiations, both legal and illegal. The unskilled youths from humble backgrounds developed no small level of business acumen to accompany their street savvy. Perhaps that is why bootleggers continued to dominate the rackets after prohibition ended, moving into numbers and casino gambling, untaxed liquor, union racketeering, and other illegal enterprises, as well as the legal liquor distilling business.

American Dream The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes a promise of the possibility of prosperity and success. In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement" regardless of social class or circumstances of birth.[1] The idea of the American Dream is rooted in the United States Declaration of Independence which proclaims that "all men are created equal" and that they are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights" including "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

The Roaring Twenties Fitzgeralds America

For many immigrants, the Statue of Liberty was their first view of the United States, signifying new opportunities in life. The statue is an iconic symbol of the American Dream

Since its founding in 1776, the United States has regarded and promoted itself as an Empire of Liberty and prosperity. The meaning of the "American Dream" has changed over the course of history. Historically the Dream originated in the New World mystique regarding especially the availability of low-cost land for farm ownership. As the Royal governor of Virginia noted in 1774, the Americans, "for ever imagine the Lands further off are still better than those upon which they are already settled." He added that if they attained Paradise, they would move on if they heard of a better place farther west.[3] The ethos today simply indicates the ability, through participation in the society and economy, for everyone to achieve prosperity. According to the dream, this includes the opportunity for one's children to grow up and receive a good education and career without artificial barriers. It is the opportunity to make individual choices without the prior

The Roaring Twenties Fitzgeralds America

restrictions that limit people according to their class, caste, religion, race, or ethnicity. Immigrants to the United States sponsored ethnic newspapers in their own language; the editors typically promoted the American Dream

In the 20th century

Historian James Truslow Adams popularized the phrase "American Dream" in his 1931 book Epic of America: The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, also too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.[1] And later he wrote: The American Dream, that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class. Martin Luther King Jr. in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (1963) rooted the civil rights movement in the black quest for the American dream:[6] "We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands. . . . when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence."
Since the 1920s, numerous authors, such as Sinclair Lewis in his 1922 novel Babbitt, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, in his 1925 classic, The Great Gatsby, satirized or ridiculed materialism in the chase for the American dream. Within 'The Great Gatsby', Gatsby - the character representative of the American dream was killed, symbolizing the pessimistic belief that the American dream is dead. In 1949 Arthur Miller wrote the play "Death of a Salesman" in which the American Dream is a fruitless pursuit.

The Roaring Twenties Fitzgeralds America

Map of East Egg and West Egg

The Roaring Twenties Fitzgeralds America