Claudia Shapiro

1920’s Notes

Highlights

  • Talkies: movies with sound
  • “The Bob” haircuts: short haircut
  • Flappers: risqué, sexy women
  • Black Tuesday: October 29, 1929, stock market crashed
  • Great Depression
  • Prohibition: ban on sale and consumption of alcohol
  • Diners, Drive Throughs
  • Dates on front porch (before cars)
  • Refridgerator
  • Radio
  • General Motors (GM)
  • Radio Corporation of America (RCA)
  • ATT telephones
  • Cars:
  • “Struggle Buggie” (General Motors)
  • Highways
  • Frequent vacation

People

  • Babe Ruth: baseball player for NY Yankees
  • Alcoholic
  • Womanizer
  • Foul mouth
  • Charles Lindberg: pilot
  • Flew from New York to Paris
  • Nazi supporter, fascist
  • Baby kidnapped for ransom
  • Al Capone “Scar Face”: leader of the mob
  • Organized crime against Prohibition
  • Valentine’s Day Massacre
  • Alcatraz – died of syphallis
  • Klu Klux Klan (KKK)
  • 5% of population
  • Discriminated against Jews, Cristians, anyone with different values
  • Clara Bow: movie star
  • Original flapper
  • Symbol of sex appeal

Causes of Cultural Changes

  • Prohibition: ban of sale and consumption of alcohol
  • Women suffrage (19th amendment): women’s right to vote
  • Spanish Flu: 20-40 million people died worldwide
  • WWI and the Horror
  • End of Russian Revolution (1917-1923)
  • Post WWI depression
  • General strike of everything in Seattle in 1919

Clash of Cultures

  • Very conservative
  • Church, KKK: “stop unstoppable forces”
  • Wanted to keep everything conservative and traditional
  • 4-6 million people in KKK
  • Thought they were moral
  • John T. Scopes: arrested for teaching evolution in Tennessea
  • Rebellion
  • Flappers: sexy women
  • Short dresses
  • Short hair
  • Sex appeal
  • Beauty changed
  • More makeup
  • Short hair
  • More revealing clothing

Effects

  • Women
  • Women in workplace: secretaries, telephone operators
  • Women suffrages: right to vote, 19th amendment
  • Flappers: young independent, partiers, sexy, risqué
  • Politics
  • The Red Scare: communism, sent 1000 people to Russia
  • Sacco and Vanzetti: Italian men accused of killing bank guard(s) in 1921
  • Executed in 1927
  • Later found to be innocent
  • National Origins Act: limited immigration
  • Scopes Monkey Trial: Scopes arrested for teaching evolution
  • Defense: Clarence Darrow
  • Prosecution: William JenningsBryan
  • Warren Harding: “a return to normalcy”
  • Teapot Domes Scandal: leased federal land
  • Calvin Coolidge: “the business of government is business”
  • Also known as “Silent Cow” because did nothing for country
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR): 1933 saved Depression

Economics

  • Changes in the work place
  • Consumerism: buying a lot, by with installment plans
  • Stock Market crash: Great Depression
  • October 29, 1929-1942
  • Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

Organized Crime

  • Mafia
  • Valentine’s Day Massacre
  • Al Capone: leader
  • Tax evasion
  • Alcatraz
  • Prohibition: ban on sale and consumption of alcohol
  • Enforced by Volstead Act
  • Speakeasies: under cover bars
  • Ended in 1932

Rise of Women

  • Flappers
  • Dancing: swing dance, Charleston
  • Slang:
  • Ossified: drunk
  • Banana oil: non-sense, insincere flattery
  • Swanky: elegant
  • Keen: good looking
  • Cake-eater: ladies man
  • Hotsy-totsy: pleasing
  • Cat’s meow: admirable, wonderful

Music and Literature

  • Harlem Renaissance: cultural expansion in Harlem
  • Creation of Jazz: “the only American art form”
  • Langston Hughes: author
  • Lost Generation: white authors went to Paris to escape consumerism in America
  • Earnest Hemingway

Art

  • Georgia O’Keefe: painter
  • Yonic imagery: female falic, feminism
  • Dadaism: nonsense, purposefully having no point
  • Surrealism: world unbalanced, uncomfortable
  • Art Deco: architectural style, clean lines, simple, straightforward

Entertainment

  • George and Ira Gershwin: composers of Broadway scores
  • Charlie Chaplin: silent movie star
  • Clara Bow: movie star, “It” girl
  • Talkies: movies with sound
  • First: Al Jolsom – Black face acting

The Roaring 20’s

Lucas Waldburger

10/25/10

  • Women began to drink in bars as well.
  • Causes
  • Flu: kills 20-40 million
  • WWI
  • Prohibition of alcohol
  • Post WWI depression
  • Woman’s suffrage
  • Russian revolution
  • Women joined the work force and where no longer dependent on others for income.
  • Flappers changed how the “perfect woman” looked like.

Red Scare

  • Planned to be a world-wide revolution
  • Led to creation of National Origins Act

Politics

  • Harding:“return to normalcy”
  • Teapot dome scandal – illegal leases
  • Coolidge: “the business of government is business”
  • Hoover: considered the worst president in history because he was in office when the stock market crashed.
  • Dawes Plan – U.S. businesses would lend 2.5 billion dollars to pay reparations of WWI, then Germany would pay the Allies, which owed money to the U.S. government.
  • Installment Plans – pay something over time. Caused americans to buy a lot and end in debt.

10/26/10

  • October 29, 1929 the stock market crashed.
  • Effects of the crash
  • Organized crime
  • Bootlegging – alcohol
  • Speakeasies
  • Bolsted Act – inforced prohibition
  • Conservatism
  • KKK – 4 to 6 million members
  • Christian Fundamentalism – grew after WWI
  • Harlem Renaissance – hundreds of artists (authors, musicians, poets); creation of jazz
  • Art

Georgia O’Keefe – painter

Art Deco – desire for simplicity

Surrealism – reality but skewed

Dadaism – art with no purpose -> because life has no purpose

  • Entertainment

Charlie Chaplin

Geore and Ira Gershwin

Clara Bow – the “it” girl