Famous People of the
Twenties –
Deborah Hoeflinger- Butler High School
A gallery of the people who made news in
the decade
Musicians
 Louis Armstrong was
the greatest of all Jazz
musicians. Armstrong
defined what it was to
play Jazz. His amazing
technical abilities, the
joy and spontaneity,
and amazingly quick,
inventive musical mind
still dominate Jazz to
this day.
Bessie Smith
 She was the greatest of
the classic Blues
singers of the 1920s
Her rendition of "St. Louis Blues"
with Armstrong is considered by
most critics to be one of finest
recordings of the 1920s
Bessie had started to style herself
as a Swing musician and was on
the verge of a comeback when
her life was tragically cut short by
an automobile accident in 1937.
Their car rear-ended a slow
moving truck and rolled over
crushing Smith's left arm and
ribs. Smith bled to death by the
time she reached the hospital.
King Oliver
 Joe Oliver is one of the
most important figures in
early Jazz. When we use
the phrase Hot Jazz, we
are really referring to his
style of collective
improvisation (rather than
solos). He was the mentor
and teacher of Louis
Armstrong. Louis idolized
him and called him Papa
Joe.
Jelly Roll Morton
 Jelly Roll Morton was the
first great composer and
piano player of Jazz. He
was a talented arranger
who wrote special scores
that took advantage of the
three-minute limitations of
the 78 rpm records. But
more than all these things,
he was a real character
whose spirit shines
brightly through history,
like his diamond studded
smile.
Duke Ellington
 Duke Ellington brought a
level of style and
sophistication to Jazz that
it hadn't seen before.
Although he was a gifted
piano player, his orchestra
was his principal
instrument. Like Jelly Roll
Morton before him, he
considered himself to be a
composer and arranger,
rather than just a
musician.
Paul Whiteman
 Paul Whiteman's
Orchestra was the
most popular band of
the 1920s. They are
also the most
controversial to Jazz
historians because
Whiteman billed
himself as "The King
Of Jazz".
In 1924 he secured his place in
history when he
commissioned and introduced
George Gershwin's Rhapsody
In Blue.
George Gershwin
 George and Ira
Gershwin were famous
composing brothers.
George was one of the
first composers to
combine American jazz
with traditional concert
music in pieces such as
Rhapsody in Blue and
An American in Paris.
Movie Stars
Sports
 The Pride of the
Yankees – Babe Ruth
and Lou Gehrig
Jack Dempsey –”The Manassa Mauler”
 His opponents feared
him – his fans adored
him –
 His record – 60-7-8
 Finally defeated (twice)
 by Gene Tunney
Bobby Jones
 From 1923 to 1930 he
won thirteen major
championships and
remains the only player
ever to win all four
majors in the same
year-all before retiring
from competitive golf
when he was just 28
years old.
Knute Rockne
 Player and coach at




Notre Dame
one of the most
innovative and
charismatic coaches of
his era.
coined the phrase, "Win
one for the Gipper."
coached the "Four
Horsemen" –
Aided development of
the forward pass
Red Grange – The Galloping Ghost
Played for the Chicago
Bears.
Many have said that
Red was the player who
first made professional
football a respected and
popular sport.
Red was the most famous
athlete of the time, and he
lent his name to many
different products.
Gertrude Ederle
 First woman to swim the
English Channel at age 19!!
 At the 1924 Summer
Olympics, she won a gold
medal as a part of US 400meter freestyle relay team
and bronze medals for
finishing third in the 100meter and 400-meter
freestyle races.
Ederle passed away on
November 30, 2003 in
Wyckoff, New Jersey at the
age of 97.
Bill Tilden
 The biggest tennis star
of the 1920s
 There has never been a
single player who
dominated an entire era
of tennis as Tilden had
during his prime.
 For seven straight years
in the 1920s, he never
lost a single important
match, especially when
the Davis Cup was at
stake.
Reformers
 John Dewey –
educational reformer
 Marcus Garvey –
colonist or back to
Africa movement.
Alice Paul "Equality of rights under the law shall not be
denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on
account of sex."
 While many suffragists left public life and activism
after the 19th Amendment was enacted, Alice Paul
believed the true battle for equality had yet to be won.
Paul announced that she would be working for a new
constitutional amendment, one she authored. The
Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was introduced in
every session of Congress from 1923 until it passed
in 1972.
Margaret Sanger “No woman can call herself
free who does not own and control her body. “
 Sanger gave up nursing
work to dedicate herself to
the distribution of birth
control information
 Coined the term birth control.
 set up the first birth control
clinic in the United States,
and the following year, she
was sent to the workhouse
for "creating a public
nuisance."
 helped organize the Planned
Parenthood Federation
The Infamous – Sacco and Vanzetti
 Two Italian immigrants who
were tried(1921) and
executed(1927) for the murder
of a paymaster and a security
guard.
 Many people believed they were
innocent, convicted because
they were foreign and
anarchists.
 "Never in our full lives could we
hope to do such work for
tolerance, for justice, for man's
understanding of men as now
we do by accident... That last
moment belongs to us. That
agony is our triumph." -Bartolomeo Vanzetti
Corrupt Officials
They were….
Harry Sinclair
Edward Doheny
Charles Forbes
Albert Fall
Harry Daugherty
Writers –’The Lost Generation”
 F. Scott Fitzgerald – Gertrude Stein– Ernest
Hemingway – William Faulkner – John
Steinbeck – Thomas Wolfe – T.S. Eliot – Zora
Neale Thurston – Edna St. Vincent MillayWilliam Carlos Williams – John Dos Passos
 ‘expatriates’ – Paris – Greenwich Village –
 Rebellion against accepted social and sexual
norms
Politicians
Politicians
 Calvin Coolidge
 Warren G. Harding
 Herbert Hoover
 Al Smith
 Frank Kellogg
 Charles Dawes
 Charles Evans Hughes
 Andrew Mellon
One of a Kind…