The Roaring Twenties, generally known as the Jazz Age, is the decade from the 1920s in Western society that featured economic prosperity and social change inside the United States and Europe.
As the economies on the western world prospered, wages rose and prices fell, creating a higher lifestyle which saw a dramatic boost in consumer consumption and new trends in lifestyle and culture.
With the invention on the radio, movies and mass-produced consumer goods, mass-market advertising influenced consumer demand, jazz blossomed and flappers redefined today’s look for Western women.
1920s United States
America gained dominance from the financial world and hang up it with respect to becoming a superpower.
As America’s 30th President (1923-1929), Calvin Coolidge restrained government spending to provide consistent government surpluses amid the content prosperity which many Americans were enjoying in the 1920s era.
The negative influences with the 1920s inside United States witnessed declining moral standards as much people defied Prohibition and organized crime and murder rose.
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947), American industrialist and founder with the Ford Motor Company was the principle developer in the assembly line manner of mass production.
The First World War (1914-18) hastened enhancing airplanes making sure that by the early 1920’s these folks were capable of flying longer distances and carrying heavier loads.
As Air-Mail became popular, other industries began looking at the airplane for freighting that has been much faster than land-based transport.
Rudolph Valentino (May 6, 1895 – August 23, 1926)
Rudolph Valentino, was an Italian actor based inside United States who became a a cultural film icon.
His early death with the age of 31 caused mass hysteria among his fans.
Charlie Chaplin (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977)
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin KBE, was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame inside era of silent film.
He became a worldwide icon as “The Tramp”, and it is considered one in the most important figures inside the history on the film industry.
The Italian Mafia
In the 1920s, Italian Mafia families began waging wars for absolute treatments for lucrative bootlegging rackets with Irish and Jewish ethnic gangs.
Bank robberies, kidnapping, auto theft, gambling, and drug trafficking become increasingly common crimes stemming from national Prohibition.
The Volstead Act of 1920, also called the 18th Amendment was passed into law prohibiting the manufacture, sale and transportation of booze.
Eliot Ness (April 19, 1903 – May 16, 1957), was obviously a famous American Prohibition crime fighter who led a nine-man team of law officers nicknamed the “Untouchables,” to combat Al Capone’s underworld network in Chicago.
1920s Europe
Great Britain
George V (3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King in the United Kingdom as well as the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936.
George V’s reign saw an upswing of socialism, communism, fascism, Irish republicanism plus the Indian independence movement which impacted the British Empire.
Germany
The 1920s were an unsound time for Germany after Kaiser Wilhelm II was made to abdicate and flee to Holland for the end of World War I.
The Weimar Republic was Germany’s government from 1919 to 1933, until the growth of Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany.
Faced with reparation payments they can not afford, Germany began printing huge amounts of money which squeeze country right into a state of super inflation and reached the stage where millions of marks became worthless.
The Jazz Age
The Jazz Age was obviously a cultural ‘golden age’ where new varieties of music and dance emerged.
Largely credited to African-Americans, Jazz music, soon expanded to America’s white middle class.
Buddy Bolden, an African-American bandleader (“the initial man of jazz”) was with the forefront with the jazz movement.
Jazz musicians caused it to be a major global phenomenon like Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton for the big-band sounds of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington to vocalists like Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone.
Louis Armstrong, a trendy African-American jazz musician who literally trumpet and cornet and was renowned for his distinct, gravelly singing voice was the most well-known jazz musician from the decade and maybe of all time.
Charleston
The Charleston is one with the most iconic from the Roaring Twenties dance styles.
Named following your harbor area of Charleston, South Carolina, it gained popularity inside the U.S. because of a 1923 song on the Broadway show Runnin’ Wild, composed by James P. Johnson who was raised listening to Scott Joplin, the “King of Ragtime” (musical style that enjoyed its peak popularity between 1895 and 1919).
Fox Trot.
Named due to the creator, vaudeville entertainer Harry Fox, the fox trot made its debut in 1914.
The smooth and stylish Ballroom dance with the Fox Trot would be a favorite of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
Al Jolson
Al Jolson (1885 – October 23, 1950), was America’s most popular and highest-paid entertainer which is remembered today since the star in the first talking picture, The Jazz Singer (1927).
“Swanee” is undoubtedly an American popular song coded in 1919 by George Gershwin, with lyrics by Irving Caesar.
The song charted for 18 weeks in 1920 selling one million sheet music copies plus an estimated two million records.
Flappers
Flappers from the 1920s were considered the 1st generation of young, independent Western girls that rejected the concept they should uphold society’s morals through temperance and chastity.
They wore short-skirts (knee height), short (bobbed), hairstyles, been smokers, wore bolder makeup and hang rouge on the knees to develop a “look at me” effect below the waistline.
Colleen Moore, Clara Bow and Louise Brooks were the three most popular flappers in Hollywood inside the 1920s.
The flapper became a quite popular character in films of ‘the Roaring Twenties’.
The Great Depression (October 29, 1929)
The 1920s decade began that has a roar even so the era ended together with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 that brought the United States plus the western world to its knees.
The Great Depression was obviously a severe economic depression which brought numerous years of hardship from 1929 to 1939.
It began following your stock market crash which sent Wall Street to a panic and wiped out countless investors.
Ultimately, it caused drastic declines in output, severe unemployment, and acute deflation in virtually every country on the world.
The average American family lived because of the Depression-era motto: “Use this, use it out, put up or do without.”
Economic mobilization for World War II finally cured the depression as a lot of men and women joined the military or began in defense jobs.