Was there an American Dream? Was there a moral compass? What happened to America?

1. Was there an American Dream? Was there a moral compass? What happened to America?

2. America in the 1920s • The Jazz Age, the Golden Twenties or the Roaring Twenties • Everybody seemed to have money. • The nightmare that was the Wall Street Crash of October 1929, was inconceivable right up until it happened. • The 1920’s saw a break with the traditional set-up in America. • The Great War (WWI) had destroyed old perceived social conventions and new ones developed.

3. It was a time of conservatism, it was a time of great social change. From the world of fashion to the world to politics, forces clashed to produce the most explosive decade of the century. In music, the three sounds were jazz, jazz, and jazz. The Jazz Age came about with artists like Bessie Smith and Duke Ellington. Youth ruled everything. From the young styles of dress to the latest celebrities. If it was young, it was the thing. It was the age of prohibition, it was the age of prosperity, and it was the age of downfall. It was the age of everything.

4. The decade of the 1920s is often characterized as a period of American prosperity and optimism. It was the "Roaring Twenties," the decade of bath tub gin, the model T, the $5 work day, the first transatlantic flight, and the movie. It is often seen as a period of great advance as the nation became urban and commercial. Calvin Coolidge declared that America's business was business.

5. The decade is also seen as a period of rising intolerance and isolation; chastened by the first world war, historians often point out that Americans retreated into a provincialism evidenced by the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, the anti- radical hysteria of the Palmer raids, restrictive immigration laws, and prohibition.

6. Overall, the decade is often seen as a period of great contradiction: of rising optimism and deadening cynicism, of increasing and decreasing faith, of great hope and great despair. Put differently, historians usually see the 1920s as a decade of serious cultural conflict.

7. Popular Culture • Bathtub gin, speakeasies, hot jazz, the Charleston. . . • A wild era, a romantic era. Thoroughly modern. The 1920s, hope sprung afresh from the battlefields of Europe, a new freedom. • The United States had been engaged in a major European war and had been on the winning side. The farm-boys returned home, itching to live in the city. • Flappers were bobbing their hair, rolling down their stockings, raising their hemlines and wearing makeup.

8. The onset of World War I took many American men overseas, and women had no choice but to step in and run family businesses and keep the country going. Clothing became practical and functional. When the war was over and the men returned, young women in particular were loath to give up their freedoms. Many adopted a boyish look by cutting their hair, flattening their bosoms, and dropping their waistlines to the hip. Called the flapper, this woman wanted control of her own life and equal rights. By downplaying her feminine curves, she challenged notions of weakness and dependence. The horror of the war sent an entire generation in search of a means to forget,

9. Popular Culture • The young set themselves free especially, the young women. They shocked the older generation with their new hair style (a short bob) and the clothes that they wore were often much shorter than had been seen and tended to expose their legs and knees. • The wearing of what were considered skimpy beach wear in public could get the Flappers, as they were known, arrested for indecent exposure. They wore silk stockings rolled just above the knee and they got their hair cut at male barbers. • The President of Florida University said the low cut gowns and short skirts "are born of the devil they are carrying the present generation to destruction".

10. The Flapper Look

12. The Flappers • The Flappers also went out without a man to look after them, went to all-night parties, drove motor cars, smoked in public and held men’s hands without wearing gloves. • Mothers formed the Anti-Flirt League to protest against the acts of their daughters. But after the horror of WWI, the younger generation mistrusted the older generation and ‘did their own thing’ which flew in the face of the establishment.

13. The person who the Flappers most looked up to was Clara Bow - the vamp in the film "It". After staring in this silent film, she was dubbed the original “It girl.”

14. Dance • Linked to the growth of an alternate generation, was the growth in jazz. This lead to new dances being created which further angered the older generation. The Charleston, One Step and Black Bottom were only for the young and the last one angered the establishment by name alone.

15. Music The most famous jazzmen were Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller and Benny Goodman. The combination of the new music, new dances and new fashions outraged many.

16. Religious Opinion • "The music is sensuous, the female is only half dressed and the motions may not be described in a family newspaper. Suffice it to say that there are certain houses appropriate for such dances but these houses have been closed by law.  • "The Catholic Telegraph".

17. The “Crazies” • Along with jazz went the ‘crazies’ when people would do crazy things for fun such as: • Sitting on top of a flag pole for as long as possible; • Marathon dances that went on until everybody had dropped; and • Wing flying when you stood strapped onto the wing of a flying plane until it landed.

18. Sports • This was also the era of great sports champions such as Babe Ruth the baseball player and Bobby Jones "the greatest amateur golfer of all time."

19. Hollywood • The 1920’s made Hollywood. 100 million people a week went to the movies. In the 1910’s the stars of movies were never named (especially true for women) but by the 1920’s stars were world famous. For many films, the star was more important than the film itself and they could earn a fortune. • Slapstick comedy was dominated by Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy and Fatty Arbuckle.

20. Movies • The decade saw the first "talkie" - "The Jazz Singer" starring Al Jolson. Many silent screen stars lost their jobs as their voices sounded too strange or their accents were difficult to understand.

21. Hollywood Stars • The stars lived lavish lifestyles - Beverly Hills was the place to live and they cultivated in people’s minds the belief that you could succeed in America regardless of who you were.

22. Inventions • Around 1920, the idea of public radio began to take hold in America. The first public radio broadcasting station opened in Pittsburgh, 1922. It was an instant success; listeners would sit around the radio listening to everything that was broadcasted. • Radio provided a cheap and convenient way of conveying information and ideas. The first broadcasts consisted of primarily news and world affairs. Later in the decade, radios were used to broadcast everything from concerts and sermons to "Red Menace" ideas. • The radio was certainly one of the most important inventions of the 1920s, because it not only brought the nation together, but it brought a whole new way for people to communicate and interact.

23. The Legendary Ford Model -T. • This was a car for the people. It was cheap; mass production had dropped its price to just $295 in 1928. The same car had cost $1200 in 1909. By 1928, just about 20% of all Americans had cars. • Hire-purchase (paying on credit) made cars such as these very affordable. • To cope with the new cars new roads were built which employed a lot of people. • Not everybody was happy with cars. Critics referred to cars as "prostitution on wheels" as young couples courted in them and gangsters started to use the more powerful models as getaway cars after robberies. • But cars were definitely here to stay.

24. Prohibition • In 1918, Prohibition had been introduced into America. This law banned the sale, transportation and manufacture of alcohol. • However, there was a ready market for alcohol throughout the 1920's and the gangsters provided it. • Capone's earnings at their peak stood at $60 million a year from alcohol sales alone with $45 million from other illegal ventures. Notorious in Chicago, Capone achieved national celebrity status when he appeared on the front of the celebrated "Time" magazine

25. Gangsters • Even murderous gang bosses achieved stardom. The most famous of all was Al Capone - the gangster boss who all but controlled Chicago. His fame rivaled that of Hollywood's superstars.

26. What was the American Dream? • How could someone make a lot of money in the 1920s? Explain. • What was the lure of the cities/urban areas? • What social problems could occur between the “haves” and the “have nots”? • Was there a difference between “old” money and “new” money? Explain.