Transcript Mass Media and the Jazz Age - Kentucky Department of Education

Mass Media
and the Jazz
Age
http://www.bri.ucla.edu/nha/ishn/hollywoodland-small.jpg
Angela Brown
Chapter 11
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The Mass Media

1920’s everyone knew about
Hollywood (built by prohibitionists –
hoped it would remain dry and free of
bad behavior)

Films, nationwide news gathering,
and the new industry of radio
broadcasting produced a truly
national culture

Print and broadcast methods of
communicating information to large
numbers of people = mass media
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Movies

Beginning in 1890’s,
motion pictures had been
a widely popular mass
medium

Movie making had
become the fourth largest
business in the country

Before 1927, movies were
silent

1927 – first film with
sound introduced The
Jazz Singer starred
Vaudeville star Al Jolson

Audiences loved “talkies”
3
Newspapers

Use of newsprint doubled between
1914-1927.

Many med-sized city papers were 50
pages daily – Sunday editions were
enormous

Thousands went out of business in
U.S. – merged into chains

William Randolph Hearst – San
Francisco Examiner and the New
York Journal gained control of
newspapers in more than 20 cities

Newspapers create a common
culture
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Radio

Pittsburgh KDKA –
nations first radio
station (Frank Conrad
of Westinghouse
Company experimented
in 1920)

1922 - 500 stations on
air

National Broadcasting
Company (NBC) linked
many stations together

Radio became a medium
for the masses
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The Jazz Age


Jazz – features
improvisation, a
process by which
musicians make up
music as they are
playing it rather
than relying
completely on
printed score.
Off-beat rhythm
called syncopation
Jazz
Arrives

Mix of African
American,
ragtime and
blues

1929 2/3 of
radio stations
played Jazz

sum up
character of
decade = Jazz
Age
6
The Jazz
Clubs

http://www.jubileejumpers.de/images/cotton-club.gif

Hottest place
to listen to
Jazz –
Harlem NYC
(Cotton Club,
Connie’s Inn,
Saratoga
Club)
Duke
Ellington –
best
remembered
Jazz
Musicians
Duke
Ellington

1923 band in
NY – job at
Hollywood
Club

played until
death n 1974

greatest genius
as band leader

Ellington’s
music lives on
today –
“Bojangles”,
“Mood”
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Paintings

Edward Hopper,
Rockwell Kent
showed the nation’s
rougher side

Georgia O’Keefe
painted natural
objects (flowers,
animal bones,
landscapes) died in
1986 – 100 years
old
Other Artists

George Gershwin,
“Rhapsody in
Blue”
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Literature

Sinclair Lewis – attacked American
society (Main Street, Arrowsmith,
Elmer Gantry)

Refused Pulitzer Prize 1926

Accepted Nobel Prize in Literature in
1930 – first award to go to an
American

Eugene O’Neill – poetic tragedies out
of material of everyday American life

Proved to public that the American
stage could achieve a greatness
rivaling that of Europe
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The Lost Generation

Lost Generation – group of writers who
believed that they were lost in a greedy,
materialistic world that lacked moral
values

Flocked to Grenwiche Village in
Manhattan NY – remained a cultural
center for bohemians – rebels against
conventional lifestyles

Others became expatriates , or people who
live outside their homeland (Europe)

Most prominent writers of Lost
Generation were John Dos Passos,
Archibald MacLeish, Hart Crane, E.E.
Cummings, Earnest Hemingway, and F.
Scott Fitzgerald
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The Lost Generation
Hemingway on the left, Harold Loeb,
Lady Duff Twysden; Hadley,
Don Stewart and Pat Guthrie.

The Sun Also Rises 1926;
This Side of Paradise 1920;
The Great Gatsby 1925 – F.
Scott Fitzgerald – part of
the Lost Generation and
flapper world

After Hemingway made the
term “Lost Generation”
famous, it was taken up by
the flappers
11
The Harlem
Renaissance

For African Americans, the cultural
center of U.S. was NY city’s Harlem –
200,000 by 1930

Home of Harlem Renaissance –
literacy awakening as well as
national center for Jazz

James Weldon Johnson – leading
writer – Executive Secretary of
NAACP- 1927 wrote God’s Trombone –
collection of sermons
12

Alain Locke’s 1925 book – The New
Negro celebrated the blossoming of
African American culture

Leading writers : Zora Neale
Hurston, Dorothy West, Claude
McKay, Countee Cullen

Most studied writers, Langston
Hughes – poet, short story writer,
journalist, playwright through
1960’s (See poem page 619)
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Dreams
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