Education and Popular Culture
Section 3
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School Enrollment
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More students attended high school
Sparked by prosperous times and higher educational
standards for industry jobs
High Schools focus changed from preparing only
college bound students to preparing students for
vocational jobs as well.
 Schools were responsible for Americanizing
Immigrant children.
 Taxes increased to pay for more schools.

Mass Culture: Magazines
http://www.time.com/time/personoftheyear/archive/covers/1927.html
Tabloids
lured
readers.
Literacy Rates
were high and
newspapers
and magazines
were available
for Americans.
http://www.ellisparkerbutler.info/epb/coverart.asp?p=Better+Homes+and+Garde
Time Magazine
started in the
1920’s.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug00/rekas/attic/main.htm
http://www.ellisparkerbutler.info/epb/coverart.asp?p=Red+Book
http://lancefuhrer.com/life3.htm
http://www.ellisparkerbutler.info/epb/coverart.asp?p=Saturday+Evening+Post
Mass Culture: Radio
The most powerful communication medium to emerge in the 1920’s.
Listening to radio was a new experience in
the early 1920s, and boys were ardent
enthusiasts of the emerging technology.
Bettmann/Corbis
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/09/dayintech_0929
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http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug00/3on1/radioshow/1920radio.htm
As the popularity of radio expanded,
advertisers began sponsoring radio shows to
appeal to consumers.
By the end of the decade, 40% of homes had
radio receivers.
Radio dance parties were common.
In the 1920’s, radio was a formal affair.
Announcers and musicians dressed in their
finest attire, even without a live audience.
Mass Culture: Music and the Music
Industry
Although the phonograph first
became available at the turn of
the century, the device became
more popular as sturdy disc
recordings replaced delicate wax
cylinders during World War I.
 As America developed mass
culture through film, advertising,
and radio, previously isolated
musical styles blended to produce
lively and often rebellious radio
hits.
 Record companies profited as
Americans snapped up dance
records and new, exciting types of
music.

http://www.lawlessdecade.net/20-61.htm
Listen to Dance Music @ http://www.besmark.com/danc3c.html
Learn how to dance the Charleston: http://lancefuhrer.com/charleston.htm
George Gershwin
Known for merging traditional elements of
music with American Jazz.
 Rhapsody in Blue
 Concerto in F

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/george-gershwin/about-the-composer/65/
Visit the Official Site @ http://www.gershwin.com/
Baseball in the 1920’s

Babe Ruth
 The
Sultan of Swat
 Home Run record
of 60

Lou Gehrig
 The
Iron Horse
 Record for
consecutive games
played-2,130
See Official Babe Ruth Web page: http://www.baberuth.com/
http://www.lawlessdecade.net/27-1.htm
https://www.msu.edu/~jeakleke/babe2.htm
http://www.lawlessdecade.net/24-11.htm
Red Grange
“ The Galloping
Ghost”
 Premier Running
Back for the
University of Illinois

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
http://www.lawlessdecade.net/
Scored 4
touchdowns in 12
minutes
Played for the
Chicago Bears
Knute Rockne
Visit Official Site @ http://www.knuterockne.com/
Visit Unofficial Site @ http://www.knuterockne.net/
Visit Crash Site @ http://www.kansasphototour.com/rockne.htm
Knute Kenneth Rockne is highly regarded as college
football's greatest head coach.
 As Notre Dame's head coach from 1918 to 1930,
Rockne set the greatest all-time winning percentage of
.881. This mark still ranks at the top of the list for both
college and professional football.
 During his 13-year tenure as head coach of the
Fighting Irish, Rockne collected 105 victories, 12
losses, five ties and six national championships.
 He also coached Notre Dame to five undefeated
seasons without a tie.
 Died in a plane crash near Matfield Green, Kansas

Jones at age 14, in the
1916 U.S. Amateur
Bobby Jones
http://www.bobbyjones.com/index.htm
l


Jones is most famous for his unique "Grand Slam,"
consisting of his victory in all four major golf
tournaments of his era (the open and amateur
championships in both the U.S. & Britain) in a single
calendar year (1930).
Co-designed the Augusta National course with Alister
MacKenzie, and founded The Masters Tournament, first
played at Augusta in March 1934.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Jones_(golfer)
http://espn.go.com/sportscentury/features/00014123.html
https://www.msu.edu/~jeangue1/iahweb.htm
http://www.lawlessdecade.net/27-21.htm
The Famous LONG COUNT
Jack Dempsey
BIRTH NAME: William Harrison Dempsey
 NAME CHANGE: Changed his name to Jack
Dempsey at the age of 19.
 NICKNAMES:

'The Manassa Mauler'
 'Kid Blackie'
 'Young Dempsey‘



World Heavy Weight Crown from 1919-1926
Suffered 2nd defeat to Gene Tunney in 1927
Official Jack Dempsey site: http://www.cmgww.com/sports/dempsey/index.php
Helen Wills
http://tennis.quickfound.net/history/suzanne_lenglen_helen_wills.html
http://www.tennisfame.com/famer.aspx?pgID=867&hof_id=95
Helen Wills was widely considered one of the greatest female
tennis players of all time.
 Known as “Little Miss Poker Face”
 Wills won 31 Grand Slam titles (singles, women's doubles,
and mixed doubles) during her career, including seven
singles titles at the U.S. Championships, eight singles titles at
Wimbledon, and four singles titles at the French
Championships.

Big Bill Tilden

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Tilden

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Bill Tilden (1893-1953)
Known as "Big Bill"
The first American tennis player to
compete at Wimbledon - and the first
American winner.
During the 1920s, he was
undefeated for seven years.
His book The Art of Tennis is still
regarded as a classic in the game.
"In the 1920s and 1930s, Bill Tilden
was to tennis what Babe Ruth was to
baseball."
Kim Shanley on tennisone.com
http://www.answers.com/topic/bill-tilden
http://espn.go.com/sportscentury/features/00016509.html
Gertrude Ederle


In 1926, at the age of 19,
she became the 1st
women to swim the
English Channel and
broke the record
previously held be a man.
14 hours and 39 minutes
Charles Lindbergh
flew the first
nonstop solo flight
across the Atlantic in
a record 33 hours
and 29 minutes
 Instantly became
America’s Hero
 “Spirit of St. Louis”

http://www.charleslindbergh.com/
Mass Culture: The Movies
Silent Films
 Films celebrated themes like consumerism, romance, exotic locales, and
new fashions.
 Young people emulated the glamorous Hollywood elite just as they do
today, raising much concern among parents.
 Rudolph Valentino and Clara Bow- two sex symbols and film icons of the
Jazz Age.

http://www.goldensilents.com/
Walt Disney and Steamboat Willie

Disney's Steamboat Willie
is a landmark in the
history of animation. It
was the first Mickey
Mouse film released and
the first cartoon with
synchronized sound. It
threw silent animation
into obsolescence, and
launched an empire.
http://www.moma.org/collection/bro
wse_results.php?object_id=89284
http://disney.go.com/vault/archives/movies/steamboat/steamboat.html
http://disney.go.com/disneyatoz/familymuseum/collection/masterworks/steamboat/index.html
The Jazz Singer & End of Silent Movies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jolson

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Although it was not the first film to incorporate an
element of sound, the 1927 Warner Brothers film The
Jazz Singer is widely credited with heralding in the age
of "talkies" and the end of the silent film era.
The star Al Jolson appears in blackface in the film.
http://www.lawlessdecade.net/26-11.htm
Rudolf Valentino – “The Sheik”
http://www.goldensilents.com/stars/rudolphvalentino.html
http://www.goldensilents.com/stars/rudolphvalentino.html
In Death
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolph_Valentino
Rudolph Valentino Site
http://www.rudolph-valentino.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolph_Valentino
http://www.lawlessdecade.net/26-1.htm
A Sainted Devil
http://www.lawlessdecade.net/261.htm
Clara Bow – The “It” Girl
http://www.lawlessdecade.net/26.htm
http://www.moviemaidens.com/
Mary Pickford “America’s Sweetheart”
http://www.moviemaidens.com/
Douglas Fairbanks
Fairbanks as
Robin Hood
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Fairbanks
Douglas and Mary Pickford, his 2nd Wife
http://www.goldensilents.com/stars/douglasfairbanks.html
Charlie Chaplin – “The Little Tramp”
http://www.goldensilents.com/comedy/charleschaplin.html
Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan,
in the classic silent film "The Kid" (1921)
Georgia O’Keeffe
Produced intensely colored canvases that
captured the grandeur of New York City.
 Later became famous for her paintings of
the southwest

 Skulls
 Flowers
 Desert
Landscapes
View her work @ http://www.okeeffemuseum.org/home.aspx
Sinclair Lewis
The first American to win the Nobel Prize
in Literature.
 Wrote Main Street and Babbitt
 Theme was to show the shallow, stifling
existence of middle class America

 See
excerpt of Babbitt on page 450
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1930/lewis-autobio.html
H.L. Mencken
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Henry Louis Mencken (1880 - 1956)
by Gibbons Burke
The most prominent newspaperman, book
reviewer, and political commentator of his
day, Henry Louis Mencken was a libertarian
before the word came into usage. His prose is
as clear as an azure sky, and his rhetoric as
deadly as a rifle shot.
Frequent targets of his lance were Franklin
Roosevelt and New Deal politics, Comstocks,
hygenists, "uplifters", social reformers of any
stripe, boobs & quacks, and the insatiable
American appetite for nonsense and gaudy
sham.
But his life was not defined by negativity. He
was positively enthusiastic about to the
writings of Twain and Conrad, the music of
Brahms, Beethoven and Bach, and the victuals
offered up by Chesapeake Bay.
Mencken's writing is endearing because of its
wit, its crisp style, and the obvious delight he
takes in it.
http://www.io.com/~gibbonsb/mencken.html
Literature and Poetry in the Jazz Age:
The Lost Generation
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July
27, 1946) was an American writer who
spent most of her life in France, and who
became a catalyst in the development of
modern art and literature. Coined “Lost
Generation”,
Lost Generation Writers
Expatriate Writers – lived in
Europe because of a dissatisfaction
with the U.S.
Ernest Hemingway
F. Scott Fitzgerald
John Dos Passos
Ezra Pound
T.S. Elliot
Photo By Carl Van Vechten
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/stein/stein.htm
F. Scott Fitzgerald
http://www.lawlessdecade.net/24-11.htm

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Wrote: The Great
Gatsby
Coined the “Jazz Age”
F. Scott Fitzgerald often
wrote critically about
the illusions of wealth
and fame, while at the
same time partaking in
the excesses of
celebrity and striving for
immortality in literature.
F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald
He suffered from alcoholism
and she struggled with mental
illness after years behind the
facade of glamour and
celebrity.
Visit the following: http://www.pbs.org/kteh/amstorytellers/bios.html
Ernest Hemingway
http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/hemingway/index-paris.htm
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Ernest Hemingway’s dense,
understated writing style became a
model for generations of writers. He
wrote for "the lost generation," of
young men who came of age in the
trenches of World War I and were
unable to settle back into the norms
of traditional society.
WW I veteran.
Introduced tough, simplified style of
writing using “hard, little sentences”
Criticized the glorification of war
Check out Site: http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/hemingway/index.htm
Explore Michael Palin’s Heminway Adventures @
http://www.pbs.org/hemingwayadventure/index.html
Algonquin Round Table

The Algonquin Round Table
was a celebrated group of New
York City writers, critics, actors
and wits. Gathering initially as
part of a practical joke,
members of "The Vicious
Circle," as they dubbed
themselves, gathered for lunch
each day at the Algonquin
Hotel from 1919 until roughly
1929. At these luncheons they
engaged in wisecracks,
wordplay and witticisms that,
through the newspaper
columns of Round Table
members, were disseminated
across the country.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algonquin_Round_Table
Dorothy Parker


Dorothy Parker was one of the most
successful and influential women writers
of her era.
Member of the Algonquin Round
Table
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/parker/
“
Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.”
Dorothy Parker, Not So Deep as a Well
(1937), "News Item"
U.S. author, humorist, poet, & wit
(1893 - 1967)
The Flapper by Dorothy Parker
The playful flapper here we see,
The fairest of the fair.
She's not what Grandma used to be, -You might say, au contraire.
Her girlish ways may make a stir,
Her manners cause a scene,
But there is no more harm in her
Than in a submarine.
She nightly knocks for many a goal
The usual dancing men.
Her speed is great, but her control
Is something else again.
All spotlights focus on her pranks.
All tongues her prowess herald.
For which she well may render thanks
To God and Scott Fitzgerald.
Her golden rule is plain enough Just get them young and treat them rough.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
One of the premier twentieth-century lyric poets
First Fig
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light.
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/ednamillay/index.shtml#bio
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/millay/millay.htm
Other Writers
T.S. Elliot
 Ezra Pound
 Edith Warton – dramatized the clash between
traditional and modern values that had
undermined high society 50 years earlier.
 Willa Cather – celebrated the simple, dignified
lives of people such as immigrant farmers of
Nebraska in My Antonia and O Pioneers!.

http://www.willacather.org/
http://cather.unl.edu/gallery.html