Amazing, in that my mother's parents cried also in 1927, when my mother, whose long red hair went to her waist at 17, went to Portland and had a " Bob" ( I have before and after photos) when she returned home in rural western Oregon her mother and father were seen weeping quietly.
May I say that I admire you for creating this channel and this series of informative videos. My parents, aunts and uncles were born in the 1920s. Dad in 1920 and mom in 1921. And although they were children at the time, these videos help me understand the era they grew up in. Thanks so much!
Regarding bobbed hair, there was a sort of hybrid style where a young woman would have the front cut, but leave the back long, then tuck it under so that it looked like she had bobbed hair, even though she didn't. Or she might just coil it into a chignon. My grandmother wore her hair this way and she was by far not the only one.
I used to tease my grandmother for being a flapper and she would deny it. She was born in 1903 and lived in the mecca of Green Bay, Wisconsin. My grandparents worked in the Paper Mill industry - and that's how they met. She was very interested in photography, so I have so much evidence of her bobbed French style hair, head bands, and the lacy dresses at the knee. She always looked like she was having a ball. My grandfather was the sharpest dresser I've ever seen in reality. Decade after decade the photos show him in the latest men's wear. The funny part is as his health declined so did fashion, so by the late 1970s he was wearing these garish colored leisure suits. lol
People had little overall back then, but the always put on their best when the occasion called for it. I wish the same were true now, as the sign " no shirt, no shoes, no service" is cropping up again in store windows, like it did in the Hippie Era of the 60' s and 70' s
Your comment on your dad's late 70s clothes reminds me of my favorite Steve Martin line, (after observing a gentleman standing next to him) in indignation: "How many Polyesters had to die to make that suite ?!?" 😉
Makes total sense. I was a teen/in my 20s during the 1980s. I have attended "80s parties the women we all dressed like Madonna or Cyndi Lauper. I cannot recall seeing any woman dressed that way in the real world, just on MTV.
Great point on the '80s. The Madonna garb seem to be something you might wear to a dance club but you're right not everyday clothing which was preppy Izods and for a brief moment Esprit shirts.
My great-grandmother was alive during this period. I never got a chance to meet her, but I heard a lot of stories about her from my grandma. One of her favorite stories to tell was how she experimented with shaving her legs. She had heard that if a girl shaved their legs, it would grow back thicker, so she only shaved one of them as an experiment. One night, one of her sorority sisters asked her why one of her legs didn't have any hair on it. She told her she'd been struck by lightning! My grandma loved telling that story, and I loved hearing it.
A few decades later, my mother was a (very young) dancer on the _Paul Whiteman Show._ So, I tend to get a kick when I hear details of his influence. How I wish she were alive to share these videos with. Thank you so much for your continued video essays on this time.
I'm lucky to have a lot of family photos from this era, some of my favorite ones are of my Gramma Lola and her sisters Eva, Emma, and Lena. They lived on a farm in the backwoods of West Virginia and one might assume that poor folk had no time for trends, but there they are in the snapshots smiling and sporting the classic bobbed hair . 4 teenage gals scrubbing laundry and feeding the chickens and looking just like Colleen Moore or L. Brooks, it's pretty cute. I know they had ZERO $$$ and their clothes were out of date, but they had stylin' hair and it was the least they could do to feel pretty, trendy and fashionable.
Ive been meaning for some time to compliment you on your high production value, particularly your sound. It makes a subject I'm already interested in so much more enjoyable.
Bix Biderbeck...what a talent and what a sad story! Ken Burns Jazz covered him. When he went home to visit his folk and found all the records he made that he'd sent to them in the closet!
Jazz artists were considered to a certain extent "socially dubious" persons and their music a "fad" that was "trash music" (kind of the tag given by those over 49 to early rock and roll). Also his family was small town upper middle class and I believe his father had gone to College and his mother had an education and when their parents noticed their son was a virtuoso with wind instruments after some music lessons (meant for educational and social reasons) they paid for him to take lessons in classical music and later attended classes at a conservatory. He got first a job in a "serious" light orchestra and later a job (not trumpet, I think it was clarinet) in a Phillarmonic Orchestra (I look it up) around 1918 or 1919. His family was proud, they "discovered" a classical musician. One day he came home for a visit after a "series" of concerts to relax and one of his brother bought a jazz record by "The Original Dixieland Orchestra" and began playing his "other" instrument (were as we know he excelled): the trumpet while the record was playing instead of practicing for the next round of concerts with his clarinet. His family knowing he was barely a man, thought: the boy is just fooling around and will get back to normal when he goes back to work at the city (in modern words "the young thing is going through a phase and will go back to normal when he is tired of fooling around") . Well Bix didn't say anything but went back, quit his job at the philharmonic, joined initially what I think was one of the newer bands (let's remember at this point he was a jazz newbie) to play trumpet and then most likely wrote home and while history doesn't say, but I wonder if good'ole conservative dad thought which of his buddies in the Sheriff's office he could "tip" to abduct his wayward son and bring him back home. Too old to look him in the basement until he learns his lesson, that doesn't work after 16. Maybe we can lock him up for a few weeks in the county jail until he comes to his senses and figures out he threw out a respectable career. Once his repentant he's not going back to playing music, no siree, not taking any chances of him going crazy again. He's working in an office from Monday to Saturday. I'll pray also he meets soon a strict girl which will rule well over him, since it seems he's the type who needs a wife that will make sure he walks a straight path. Just imagining, but if you take into account how parents were back then, who knows? Anyway thankfully early bands toured a lot in big cities so no chance dad could even try, but it must been in his mind. I guess. Bix was lucky they just put his record in the closet, and that after he stepped in the family home two man in white did not grab him and take him to a running car ready to send him to an Asylum "for the unfortunate," so they could "fix" him with the many well known tortures in vogue at the time dismissed as psychiatric treatment (lobotomies and shock therapy weren't around then but hypnotic medication supposedly meant to "weaken the cognositive mind" so the doctor could put ideas in your head to create a "new healthy ethos" were around, and did more harm than good. So Did punishments for "insolense", in straight jackets and little coffin like cages and isolation in padded rooms. Sorry if I'm too graphic, I'm a history buff with some background in psychology and sociology and this is what many "respectable" families did to their offspring if they thought they were in "moral danger". And believe it or not many truly cared for their children and thought they were doing the right think "to help them".
You nailed it with the comparisons to hippies. That’s what I was thinking right up until you said it. In the late 60 and early 70s ( when I was between 6and 10) all the teenagers in the neighborhood wore beads, the dye shirts, platform shoes, and hip hugging bell bottoms. But, they were all hippie wannabes who ( for the most part) did exactly what their parents said and conformed to mostly traditional norms. Especially given the fact that all the older brothers and lots of the dads were Vietnam vets or in Vietnam at the time ( including my father and uncle).
This channel is of great interest to me because my grandparents were young adults in the 1920s. Both my grandmas were the right age to be flappers, but I know for sure that Mom's mom was most definitely NOT a flapper. That lifestyle went against so much of what she believed in, although she didn't hate any of them. Nor would she have scorned them. She always accepted everyone. She just didn't feel the need to accept what they did if it went against her own lifestyle. My dad's mom, though, did bob her hair. She also had strong morals, but she wasn't opposed to the occasional drink. I think that, if she was a flapper at all, that it was the most mild kind. She didn't really have time for a flapper's lifestyle since she worked full time as a psychiatric nurse until she married her first husband (not my grandpa) and had two sons from that marriage. Still, flappers are an interesting lot and many were real pioneers in being free as women. Some took it too far, I think, but, then again, the 1920s was a time of great relief for most of the world after WWI & the Spanish flu and losing so many young men through both of these, as well as lots of other people. I don't blame people for going a bit wild, really.
Born and raised in England 🏴 Britain 🇬🇧 in 1967. Listening from Cheshire England 🏴 Britain 🇬🇧 on a rainy Sunday June 9th 2024 @ 21:05 GMT+1 Simply Fascinating. Thank you 😊 ❤
Flappers got their name from the noise their ankle boots made when they walked around with them unbuckled. They were the generation that followed the Victorian age. Victorian women never cut their hair, they wore corsets, and buckled ankle boots. Flappers first stopped fastening their boots to reveal their bare ankles, shoes we now wear began appearing after the shock at the sight of bare ankles subsided. Any girl who wore their hair short, no corset and bare ankles was called a flapper. I was born in 1954. I knew several elderly women who had been flappers in their youth. They appreciated my mini skirt and hippie outfits much more than my parents did. We reminded them of them in spirit and style.
First of all, I love your channel. You do a great job; very articulate. Thank you also for your research. I was born in 1950 in Southern California and raised on the beaches there. So that made me 18 in 1968…..the height of Hippie influence. I appreciate your comparison of the Hippie movement with the Flapper movement. Like you said, not everyone was a Flapper and not everyone was a Hippie.
I was so happy to hear you say that Colleen Moore was your favorite. I adore her. She had a magical quality that made her pop off the screen and straight into your heart. She’s definitely one of a kind.
I love jazz! I am off to New Orleans next month, third time in the past year. I have always thought the 1920s was jazz heaven. At least we still have New Orleans! ❤️ from 🇨🇦
Thank you so much. I never knew most of the things your program covered. Why wasn't this mentioned in our history books when I was a kid during the 1950s? We've been lied to!
The first years of 1920s were pretty violent down here in South America as well such as The Paulista Revolt of 1924 in Brazil. The decade had violence just like any other. Scary! Thanks for the video! Amazing!
"The Times They Are 'uh Changing" by Bob Dylan is showing a teenager's ignorance. People don't change. That's something American "social engineers" never recognize. Human nature is always the same. The current American social engineering is straight out of the Stalinist Communism era. The changes you speak of were the same in Mexico, just finished in WWI by the U.S.A., et al.
Great content - thank you! I've always been drawn to the 1920s, mostly for that phenomenal artwork: Art Deco. It seemed to be everywhere, most notibably in architecture (to this day, I think the most beautiful building in America is the Chrysler Building in New York City...and that's saying a lot for a Boston gal such as myself 🫠).* I was wondering, unless this has already been done, if you could do an episode on Hollywood in the 1920s. There was so much going on then - from the glamorous to the grotesque - and everything in between....🎭 . Anyway, thanks again for a great video! *(GO Red Sox)!!! 😄
Thanks for your comments on jazz and popular music, and the focus on Paul Whiteman. He called his music symphonic jazz, and thought of his work as bringing jazz to a wider audience. Whiteman commissioned Rhapsody in Blue from George Gershwin, and featured it in a 1924 concert of all sorts of American (white) popular music, with an array of popular songs, offerings from the "Original Dixieland Jazz Band", and finally, Gershwin's offering, with the composer at the piano and Whiteman's band playing. It is interesting to see what music survived and became regarded as American Classic music, and what fell away... you might want to talk about the racial divide in Jazz, about how sincere white performers went to.listen to Black musicians to improve their musicality--there seems always to have been a realization of the Black performers' innovativeness and skill.
Thanks for this video. The 20's have always been fascinating to me. There was SUCH a rapid change from the late Victorian and Edwardian times. It was much like the 1960s as you point out. I was 18 in 1968, and though I was a native San Franciscan, and sold my paintings in galleries there in the 70s, I wasn't a hippie. I was serious and hardworking. People would say "you don't act like an artist!". As if they wanted me to conform to the crazy artist stereotype. My parents were kids during the 20s. Dad was older, turning 18 in 1929. It must have been a n interesting time to grow up!
My interest has sparked by watching Boardwalk Empire and though its fiction it has a few facts. Your show has provided a sobering effect ( no pun) to what I have imagined life to be like in the 20's First rate job. Thanks for your efforts
Regarding music, both my teenaged mother and father played in their own band , " Mac's Syncopaters" in the mid 1920's working summer break by taking " short line" trains to Oregon logging camps in the Oregon Coast Range, even lugging a piano with them. All with a chaperone ( my grandmother) The money was excellent, sometimes making $200 a day with tips and special requests. Loggers were hungry for entertainment and especially music in these isolated camps.
A lot of your information was new and quite surprising to me. I was one of the people who had all the misconceptions you mentioned so far. I’m not sure that this suggestion would fly for other people, but information on the auto industry would capture my interest. Keep up the good work. Really good 👍🏼
The term "Flapper" in referring to women of the day was used prior to the arrival of the 1920's. It was used in the 1918 Christopher Morley book, The Haunted Bookshop. Thank you for this video.
While I all ways enjoy your videos, I really thought your historical recap of the time was exceptionally good to include. To me, it gave a certain realism about the time.
"Flappers" in the 1920's are EXACTLY like "Hippies" in the 1960's. Yeah, they were there, they were NOT uncommon but they were NOT the majority as portrayed in the media. BTW, I was just old enough to remember the late '60s (I was "only" in grade school). But I think I'll take a "flapper" over a "hippie". They seemed to be more fun, and better looking. (Hell at least they were clean!) LOL. As to the music. Of Course, Jazz was not the most popular. But since it was the NEW THING in the 1920s, we associated it with the decade. We do this with early Rock and Roll. It's often used to portray the 1950's. I've seen many videos showing a 1955 Buick and the tune picked is from Chuck Berry! No, the original owner of that car was more likely to be digging on Mario Lanza! Anyone listening to Rock and Roll in the mid 50's would have been driving a '46 Chevy if the kid was lucky to have a car at all. They distort time reality like this all of the time in the media. I saw a recent thing about the 1970's. The high schoolers had 70's cars! LOL. Unless you got Mom or Dads car for the day, you had something from the late 1950s to mid 1960s. I was in high school in 1976. I had a 1962 Buick!
Thank you for this informative video! It really opened my eyes to an era I've always loved. And appreciated the comparison to the 1970's hippies. Very well done.
We can all agree that we hate misconceptions and myths about the past. But I mostly hate when people make up myths and misconceptions about the fashions especially clothing from the 1800s and 1920s. And corset's
THE 1920s=THIS DECADE HOLDS A LOT FOR ME🙏🙏ALL MY GRANDPARENTS WERE VERY YOUNG,AND MY DAD WAS ALMOST HERE🌹🌹🙏🙏 THEY'RE ALL GONE,BUT I'LL NEVER EVER FORGET THEM:EVEN THE ONES THAT I NEVER KNEW
This is so great! Some women didn't cut their hair at all, but rolled it up into a mock bob. It was a bull market for hairpins. There's an Easter Egg in this video: In one of the photos of the Isham Jones orchestra, look for the musician sitting in front on the right. He's the one with the adolf hitler mustache and haircut.
Thank you so much being honest about the US at that time! Thank you for mentioning the rise of the KKK, the Tulsa & Florida massacres of whole Black Communities and of course, lynchings! Thank you for telling the truth!
A main characteristic of the flapper was 'vertical' clothing suppressing female curves. Louise Brookes is the best-known model for the shingle. In order to get such vogueish styles, women had to invade barbers' shops, hitherto a male arena.
I am almost 60, and both sets of my grandparents married in the 1920s. In the 1970s when I was a kid/ tween there was a retro fad for the twenties style. I grilled my Grandma and Grand Aunt about the period. They very much emphasized curls- which seemed logical as all the older ladies of the 1960s/ 70s still wore a bob with tight gray ( “blue” curls). I liked Brookes and said as much- The Grands assured me her straight blunt cut hair look was “ severe” and avant-garde
In my college level Jazz classes and books indicated Jazz (but, the Blues came first) music was the predominant music in the 1920’s. I was surprised to hear you mention otherwise. Love your channel regardless.
thank you for this. particularly the last section on the conflicts that raged during the 1920s. WW1 may have ended in the western part of Europe, but the reality is that there was almost continuous conflict all the way up to the out break of WW2. and. if we are honest with ourselves, that conflict has continued up to the present day. which means that we have been in a constant state of arguably "modern" mass war since... well, the French Revolution and the dissolution of the Anciens Régimes and empires.
Probably depended on where you lived and how conservative your family was and if you lived in a larger city My grandparents were very middle class, my grandfather was a railroad engineer in the 1920s , they had a house, car , radio and even a refrigerator ( type with the motor on top). Now the 1930s were not so good because my overly religious grandmother mode of birth control was abstinence and my grandfather ran off with my grandmothers best friend, so the divorce changed their economics severely and the depression made it worse
Very good video - thank you for it. Just one note - the film clip you included of Paul Whiteman dancing around isn't Paul. It was an impersonator. I only know this because I have the film "The King Of Jazz" from 1929 (where the clip of Crosby came from). I would have never known if it hadn't been pointed out in the video.
Looking for information on Colleen Moore, this and other videos I've found have been a great help. Thanks for posting! Public Library does not have her Autobiography, looking for one now.
Interesting video as usual. I didn't realize there were all sorts of bobs available back in the 20s. I am currently, and have been for some time, sporting an inverted bob and I love it so easy to care for. My mom was born at the end of the 20s and my dad was born in the mid 30s so they didn't participate in any of these goings on. But what a time before income tax etc. Thank you for the video!
It's more than OKAY to have fun! I don't need a constant reminder that the present and the past is full of injustice. I want to know how good folks found joy, love and hope in the 1920's despite the misery. Maybe they have something to teach us! "Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum"
You should consider making a video about William Howard Taft as Chief Justice of SCOTUS (1921-30). Under his leadership, they made a lot of rulings that we would now consider restrictive.
Most women in the 1920s were too busy either having families or working to spend much time partying. Most of our grandmothers/great-grandmothers/great-great grandmothers were probably NOT flappers.
My mothers mom looked like Colleen Moore-flapper was more of a style than a life choice - she was a farm girl who worked at the Dept store in town making wax flowers but could sew clothes,bedding and can vegetables back on the farm-she always wore jeans,was skinny as a rail and could ring a chickens neck when I was a child but she still had that Colleen Moore haircut
Yes, I’ve seen pictures of my grandmother on my Mom’s side. She had the short haircut. But not a flapper girl. She died in 1930 from complications from Pneumonia. My Mom was only 6 when she passed. I think there may have been at least a handful of women who were tired of long hair and just wanted to cut it. Some of them looked so much better that way too. To me a “ Hair Bob” just means a short cut to the hair, how ever they style it. Even today, at the salon, you might hear someone say, “ Oh, what a cute little Bob.” 😉
I really enjoy watching movies made in the 1920's, although I really dislike watching modern movies that portray the same time period. If they would only do a small amount of research on the things mentioned in this video, then they would probably be much more enjoyable!
I used to think of the '20s as a peaceful time and another channel I subscribe to The Great War covered The events of World War I for each week exactly 100 years afterward. They continued on into the 1920s and noted a lot of skirmishes you mentioned, and also many particularly in Eastern European countries to establish the eventual governments.
The early 1920s were violent in Germany, a lot of politically motivated assassinations happened, not to mention the Beer Hall Putsch and multiple Communist revolts. Then there was a big war or two between Poland, the USSR and Lithuania.
In the '20s, the page boy 'do we today associate with Louise Brooks would have been linked to Colleen Moore, a far bigger star in her day than Brooks ever was. Moore was renowned for her vivacity, and among comic actresses of her day, only Clara Bow and Marion Davies rivaled her. Brooks was more a figure of the late '20s equivalent of the art-house crowd and had much less domestic success.
While the term didn't exist in the 1920s, I prefer "pseudo-flapper" to "semi-flapper'. Almost every generation since the turn of the 20th century has had its youthful counter-culture movement and the flapper movement was it for the 1920s. Most youths do not want to be singled out as not being part of the popular crowd of their age group so they give the appearance of belonging to the popular group even if they don't fully partake in the lifestyle. Pseudo can be defined as "seemingly but not really", which perfectly fits someone who outwardly appears to belong to a lifestyle but doesn't practice it.
Imagine that 100 years from now anybody doing "Myths & Misconceptions Of The 2020s" will have to be making a full-season miniseries. And this generation is going to look comparatively delusional and stupid. Very very stupid. "No, not everybody back then bought into the crazy notion that men could give birth, etc. etc."
As a young woman in Germany, when my great-aunt bobbed her hair, her father cried when she came home and took off her hat. He was that upset.
I suppose she had beautiful long hair
Amazing, in that my mother's parents cried also in 1927, when my mother, whose long red hair went to her waist at 17, went to Portland and had a " Bob" ( I have before and after photos) when she returned home in rural western Oregon her mother and father were seen weeping quietly.
The same happened in Norway. My granddad cried when my mother bobbed her hair. My mum was born in 1926 so this must have been well into the 1930s.
I bet her father cried a lot more in about 10 to 20 years after this. That is nothing compared to what will happen in her native born country.
Aww
May I say that I admire you for creating this channel and this series of informative videos. My parents, aunts and uncles were born in the 1920s. Dad in 1920 and mom in 1921. And although they were children at the time, these videos help me understand the era they grew up in. Thanks so much!
Just found this channel.
So well done! A great history lesson. ❤😊
Regarding bobbed hair, there was a sort of hybrid style where a young woman would have the front cut, but leave the back long, then tuck it under so that it looked like she had bobbed hair, even though she didn't. Or she might just coil it into a chignon. My grandmother wore her hair this way and she was by far not the only one.
That was one of the style's......There were MANY........😊
I used to tease my grandmother for being a flapper and she would deny it. She was born in 1903 and lived in the mecca of Green Bay, Wisconsin. My grandparents worked in the Paper Mill industry - and that's how they met. She was very interested in photography, so I have so much evidence of her bobbed French style hair, head bands, and the lacy dresses at the knee. She always looked like she was having a ball. My grandfather was the sharpest dresser I've ever seen in reality. Decade after decade the photos show him in the latest men's wear. The funny part is as his health declined so did fashion, so by the late 1970s he was wearing these garish colored leisure suits. lol
People had little overall back then, but the always put on their best when the occasion called for it. I wish the same were true now, as the sign " no shirt, no shoes, no service" is cropping up again in store windows, like it did in the Hippie Era of the 60' s and 70' s
Your comment on your dad's late 70s clothes reminds me of my favorite Steve Martin line, (after observing a gentleman standing next to him) in indignation: "How many Polyesters had to die to make that suite ?!?" 😉
Makes total sense. I was a teen/in my 20s during the 1980s. I have attended "80s parties the women we all dressed like Madonna or Cyndi Lauper. I cannot recall seeing any woman dressed that way in the real world, just on MTV.
Great point on the '80s. The Madonna garb seem to be something you might wear to a dance club but you're right not everyday clothing which was preppy Izods and for a brief moment Esprit shirts.
Button fly 501s and a band shirt. You couldn’t wear a bustier to a suburban high school for goodness sake
My great-grandmother was alive during this period. I never got a chance to meet her, but I heard a lot of stories about her from my grandma. One of her favorite stories to tell was how she experimented with shaving her legs. She had heard that if a girl shaved their legs, it would grow back thicker, so she only shaved one of them as an experiment. One night, one of her sorority sisters asked her why one of her legs didn't have any hair on it. She told her she'd been struck by lightning!
My grandma loved telling that story, and I loved hearing it.
A few decades later, my mother was a (very young) dancer on the _Paul Whiteman Show._ So, I tend to get a kick when I hear details of his influence. How I wish she were alive to share these videos with.
Thank you so much for your continued video essays on this time.
The internet was way slow back then
@@JTSunriseMusic So I've read. 🤭
I'm lucky to have a lot of family photos from this era, some of my favorite ones are of my Gramma Lola and her sisters Eva, Emma, and Lena. They lived on a farm in the backwoods of West Virginia and one might assume that poor folk had no time for trends, but there they are in the snapshots smiling and sporting the classic bobbed hair . 4 teenage gals scrubbing laundry and feeding the chickens and looking just like Colleen Moore or L. Brooks, it's pretty cute. I know they had ZERO $$$ and their clothes were out of date, but they had stylin' hair and it was the least they could do to feel pretty, trendy and fashionable.
You are so lucky. I’d love to have photos of my family from the 20s!😊
Ive been meaning for some time to compliment you on your high production value, particularly your sound. It makes a subject I'm already interested in so much more enjoyable.
Bix Biderbeck...what a talent and what a sad story! Ken Burns Jazz covered him. When he went home to visit his folk and found all the records he made that he'd sent to them in the closet!
Bix beiderbecke was such an amazing artist! Unthinkable that his family didn't liked his art.
Jazz artists were considered to a certain extent "socially dubious" persons and their music a "fad" that was "trash music" (kind of the tag given by those over 49 to early rock and roll). Also his family was small town upper middle class and I believe his father had gone to College and his mother had an education and when their parents noticed their son was a virtuoso with wind instruments after some music lessons (meant for educational and social reasons) they paid for him to take lessons in classical music and later attended classes at a conservatory. He got first a job in a "serious" light orchestra and later a job (not trumpet, I think it was clarinet) in a Phillarmonic Orchestra (I look it up) around 1918 or 1919. His family was proud, they "discovered" a classical musician. One day he came home for a visit after a "series" of concerts to relax and one of his brother bought a jazz record by "The Original Dixieland Orchestra" and began playing his "other" instrument (were as we know he excelled): the trumpet while the record was playing instead of practicing for the next round of concerts with his clarinet. His family knowing he was barely a man, thought: the boy is just fooling around and will get back to normal when he goes back to work at the city (in modern words "the young thing is going through a phase and will go back to normal when he is tired of fooling around") . Well Bix didn't say anything but went back, quit his job at the philharmonic, joined initially what I think was one of the newer bands (let's remember at this point he was a jazz newbie) to play trumpet and then most likely wrote home and while history doesn't say, but I wonder if good'ole conservative dad thought which of his buddies in the Sheriff's office he could "tip" to abduct his wayward son and bring him back home. Too old to look him in the basement until he learns his lesson, that doesn't work after 16. Maybe we can lock him up for a few weeks in the county jail until he comes to his senses and figures out he threw out a respectable career. Once his repentant he's not going back to playing music, no siree, not taking any chances of him going crazy again. He's working in an office from Monday to Saturday. I'll pray also he meets soon a strict girl which will rule well over him, since it seems he's the type who needs a wife that will make sure he walks a straight path.
Just imagining, but if you take into account how parents were back then, who knows? Anyway thankfully early bands toured a lot in big cities so no chance dad could even try, but it must been in his mind. I guess.
Bix was lucky they just put his record in the closet, and that after he stepped in the family home two man in white did not grab him and take him to a running car ready to send him to an Asylum "for the unfortunate," so they could "fix" him with the many well known tortures in vogue at the time dismissed as psychiatric treatment (lobotomies and shock therapy weren't around then but hypnotic medication supposedly meant to "weaken the cognositive mind" so the doctor could put ideas in your head to create a "new healthy ethos" were around, and did more harm than good. So Did punishments for "insolense", in straight jackets and little coffin like cages and isolation in padded rooms.
Sorry if I'm too graphic, I'm a history buff with some background in psychology and sociology and this is what many "respectable" families did to their offspring if they thought they were in "moral danger". And believe it or not many truly cared for their children and thought they were doing the right think "to help them".
@@roverworld7218 thank you so much for this deep dive, which makes me appreciate his work of art even more given the headwinds he had.
This was the era of my Grandmother living in NYC, she was a magnificent lady. LOVE the old footage!
She was an old brass.
You nailed it with the comparisons to hippies. That’s what I was thinking right up until you said it. In the late 60 and early 70s ( when I was between 6and 10) all the teenagers in the neighborhood wore beads, the dye shirts, platform shoes, and hip hugging bell bottoms. But, they were all hippie wannabes who ( for the most part) did exactly what their parents said and conformed to mostly traditional norms. Especially given the fact that all the older brothers and lots of the dads were Vietnam vets or in Vietnam at the time ( including my father and uncle).
"Petting parties"
THAT'S a term that needs to make a comeback.
That's hot stuff!
When you don't wanna go all the way, but you just wanna get a "feel" for the goods.
Heavy Petting...
Today it’s pneumatic butt plug parties.
Hear, hear!
This is high quality content. Your channel is one of the only places I can learn about the 1920s. It's my favorite decade.
Yet again a brilliant critique of the subject I cannot tell you how much I love your channel 🙏🙏🙏🙏
Amazing to see how times have changed and yet stay the same…
This channel is of great interest to me because my grandparents were young adults in the 1920s. Both my grandmas were the right age to be flappers, but I know for sure that Mom's mom was most definitely NOT a flapper. That lifestyle went against so much of what she believed in, although she didn't hate any of them. Nor would she have scorned them. She always accepted everyone. She just didn't feel the need to accept what they did if it went against her own lifestyle.
My dad's mom, though, did bob her hair. She also had strong morals, but she wasn't opposed to the occasional drink. I think that, if she was a flapper at all, that it was the most mild kind. She didn't really have time for a flapper's lifestyle since she worked full time as a psychiatric nurse until she married her first husband (not my grandpa) and had two sons from that marriage.
Still, flappers are an interesting lot and many were real pioneers in being free as women. Some took it too far, I think, but, then again, the 1920s was a time of great relief for most of the world after WWI & the Spanish flu and losing so many young men through both of these, as well as lots of other people. I don't blame people for going a bit wild, really.
This was fantastic....it sheared away the concept of the happy go lucky
Twenties. Gave me a lot of history to brush up on. Thank you!!
Born and raised in England 🏴 Britain 🇬🇧 in 1967.
Listening from Cheshire England 🏴 Britain 🇬🇧 on a rainy Sunday June 9th 2024 @ 21:05 GMT+1
Simply Fascinating.
Thank you 😊 ❤
Flappers got their name from the noise their ankle boots made when they walked around with them unbuckled. They were the generation that followed the Victorian age. Victorian women never cut their hair, they wore corsets, and buckled ankle boots. Flappers first stopped fastening their boots to reveal their bare ankles, shoes we now wear began appearing after the shock at the sight of bare ankles subsided.
Any girl who wore their hair short, no corset and bare ankles was called a flapper. I was born in 1954. I knew several elderly women who had been flappers in their youth. They appreciated my mini skirt and hippie outfits much more than my parents did. We reminded them of them in spirit and style.
John Buchan, writing pre WWI thrillers used the term flapper to describe a young woman, in one of his books printed in about 1913.
First of all, I love your channel. You do a great job; very articulate. Thank you also for your research. I was born in 1950 in Southern California and raised on the beaches there. So that made me 18 in 1968…..the height of Hippie influence. I appreciate your comparison of the Hippie movement with the Flapper movement. Like you said, not everyone was a Flapper and not everyone was a Hippie.
I was so happy to hear you say that Colleen Moore was your favorite. I adore her. She had a magical quality that made her pop off the screen and straight into your heart. She’s definitely one of a kind.
I love jazz! I am off to New Orleans next month, third time in the past year. I have always thought the 1920s was jazz heaven. At least we still have New Orleans! ❤️ from 🇨🇦
Thank you so much. I never knew most of the things your program covered. Why wasn't this mentioned in our history books when I was a kid during the 1950s? We've been lied to!
Learned quite a lot from this. As a student of America between the world wars, good job!
A Douglass Fairbanks film in 1917 use the word flapper in the titles cards.
The first years of 1920s were pretty violent down here in South America as well such as The Paulista Revolt of 1924 in Brazil.
The decade had violence just like any other.
Scary!
Thanks for the video! Amazing!
"The Times They Are 'uh Changing" by Bob Dylan is showing a teenager's ignorance. People don't change. That's something American "social engineers" never recognize. Human nature is always the same. The current American social engineering is straight out of the Stalinist Communism era. The changes you speak of were the same in Mexico, just finished in WWI by the U.S.A., et al.
My other and her siblings were born in the 1910-20's. Interesting to see that time period.
Great content - thank you!
I've always been drawn to the 1920s, mostly for that phenomenal artwork: Art Deco.
It seemed to be everywhere, most notibably in architecture (to this day, I think the most beautiful building in America is the Chrysler Building in New York City...and that's saying a lot for a Boston gal such as myself 🫠).*
I was wondering, unless this has already been done, if you could do an episode on Hollywood in the 1920s. There was so much going on then - from the glamorous to the grotesque - and everything in between....🎭
.
Anyway, thanks again for a great video!
*(GO Red Sox)!!! 😄
Thanks for your comments on jazz and popular music, and the focus on Paul Whiteman. He called his music symphonic jazz, and thought of his work as bringing jazz to a wider audience. Whiteman commissioned Rhapsody in Blue from George Gershwin, and featured it in a 1924 concert of all sorts of American (white) popular music, with an array of popular songs, offerings from the "Original Dixieland Jazz Band", and finally, Gershwin's offering, with the composer at the piano and Whiteman's band playing. It is interesting to see what music survived and became regarded as American Classic music, and what fell away... you might want to talk about the racial divide in Jazz, about how sincere white performers went to.listen to Black musicians to improve their musicality--there seems always to have been a realization of the Black performers' innovativeness and skill.
Hello, I am a huge history buff, especially concerning the early 20th century. I love your channel. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for this video. The 20's have always been fascinating to me. There was SUCH a rapid change from the late Victorian and Edwardian times. It was much like the 1960s as you point out. I was 18 in 1968, and though I was a native San Franciscan, and sold my paintings in galleries there in the 70s, I wasn't a hippie. I was serious and hardworking. People would say "you don't act like an artist!". As if they wanted me to conform to the crazy artist stereotype.
My parents were kids during the 20s. Dad was older, turning 18 in 1929. It must have been a n interesting time to grow up!
You have helped to create the current present. As chaotic as it may seem, it's interesting. Thank you.
Great documentary!!!
My interest has sparked by watching Boardwalk Empire and though its fiction it has a few facts. Your show has provided a sobering effect ( no pun) to what I have imagined life to be like in the 20's
First rate job. Thanks for your efforts
Regarding music, both my teenaged mother and father played in their own band , " Mac's Syncopaters" in the mid 1920's working summer break by taking " short line" trains to Oregon logging camps in the Oregon Coast Range, even lugging a piano with them. All with a chaperone ( my grandmother) The money was excellent, sometimes making $200 a day with tips and special requests. Loggers were hungry for entertainment and especially music in these isolated camps.
A lot of your information was new and quite surprising to me. I was one of the people who had all the misconceptions you mentioned so far. I’m not sure that this suggestion would fly for other people, but information on the auto industry would capture my interest. Keep up the good work. Really good 👍🏼
Banana republics back then, including Hawaii.
The term "Flapper" in referring to women of the day was used prior to the arrival of the 1920's. It was used in the 1918 Christopher Morley book, The Haunted Bookshop. Thank you for this video.
Thank you for this info. I will look for that book. I have attributed it to F. Scott Fitzgerald.
While I all ways enjoy your videos, I really thought your historical recap of the time was exceptionally good to include. To me, it gave a certain realism about the time.
"Flappers" in the 1920's are EXACTLY like "Hippies" in the 1960's. Yeah, they were there, they were NOT uncommon but they were NOT the majority as portrayed in the media. BTW, I was just old enough to remember the late '60s (I was "only" in grade school). But I think I'll take a "flapper" over a "hippie". They seemed to be more fun, and better looking. (Hell at least they were clean!) LOL. As to the music. Of Course, Jazz was not the most popular. But since it was the NEW THING in the 1920s, we associated it with the decade. We do this with early Rock and Roll. It's often used to portray the 1950's. I've seen many videos showing a 1955 Buick and the tune picked is from Chuck Berry! No, the original owner of that car was more likely to be digging on Mario Lanza! Anyone listening to Rock and Roll in the mid 50's would have been driving a '46 Chevy if the kid was lucky to have a car at all. They distort time reality like this all of the time in the media. I saw a recent thing about the 1970's. The high schoolers had 70's cars! LOL. Unless you got Mom or Dads car for the day, you had something from the late 1950s to mid 1960s. I was in high school in 1976. I had a 1962 Buick!
Your offerings filling in the cracks and misconceptions of history are very much appreciated. Keep up the good work!
Very interesting. I will look for Part 1. Thanks.
Haven't seen Part 1 yet but this video was so well executed. A job well done... enjoyed and subscribed.
Ayn Rand wore the Louise Brooks bob until her death in 1981.
Thank you for your work in providing information about the 20s.
Thank you for this informative video! It really opened my eyes to an era I've always loved. And appreciated the comparison to the 1970's hippies. Very well done.
Sweet jazz might include Lawrence Welk, Bert Kaempfert, Herb Alpert as some contemporary examples.m
If one thing can be said about the 1920s, it sure was an entertaining decade
Yes
We can all agree that we hate misconceptions and myths about the past. But I mostly hate when people make up myths and misconceptions about the fashions especially clothing from the 1800s and 1920s. And corset's
THE 1920s=THIS DECADE HOLDS A LOT FOR ME🙏🙏ALL MY GRANDPARENTS WERE VERY YOUNG,AND MY DAD WAS ALMOST HERE🌹🌹🙏🙏 THEY'RE ALL GONE,BUT I'LL NEVER EVER FORGET THEM:EVEN THE ONES THAT I NEVER KNEW
Bix was originally from Davenport Iowa.
It's amazing to compare the women's hairstyles from 1910's with their often waist length hair with the bobbed hair of the 1920's
This is so great! Some women didn't cut their hair at all, but rolled it up into a mock bob. It was a bull market for hairpins. There's an Easter Egg in this video: In one of the photos of the Isham Jones orchestra, look for the musician sitting in front on the right. He's the one with the adolf hitler mustache and haircut.
Thank you so much being honest about the US at that time!
Thank you for mentioning the rise of the KKK, the Tulsa & Florida massacres of whole Black Communities and of course, lynchings!
Thank you for telling the truth!
A main characteristic of the flapper was 'vertical' clothing suppressing female curves.
Louise Brookes is the best-known model for the shingle. In order to get such vogueish styles, women had to invade barbers' shops, hitherto a male arena.
I am almost 60, and both sets of my grandparents married in the 1920s. In the 1970s when I was a kid/ tween there was a retro fad for the twenties style. I grilled my Grandma and Grand Aunt about the period. They very much emphasized curls- which seemed logical as all the older ladies of the 1960s/ 70s still wore a bob with tight gray ( “blue” curls). I liked Brookes and said as much- The Grands assured me her straight blunt cut hair look was “ severe” and avant-garde
In my college level Jazz classes and books indicated Jazz (but, the Blues came first) music was the predominant music in the 1920’s. I was surprised to hear you mention otherwise. Love your channel regardless.
Another excellent informative video for your channel. Also, I’m glad Colleen is your fave. She’s tied with Clara for my fave. ❤️❤️❤️
thank you for this.
particularly the last section on the conflicts that raged during the 1920s.
WW1 may have ended in the western part of Europe, but the reality is that there was almost continuous conflict all the way up to the out break of WW2.
and.
if we are honest with ourselves,
that conflict has continued up to the present day.
which means that we have been in a constant state of arguably "modern" mass war since...
well, the French Revolution and the dissolution of the Anciens Régimes and empires.
Probably depended on where you lived and how conservative your family was and if you lived in a larger city
My grandparents were very middle class, my grandfather was a railroad engineer in the 1920s , they had a house, car , radio and even a refrigerator ( type with the motor on top). Now the 1930s were not so good because my overly religious grandmother mode of birth control was abstinence and my grandfather ran off with my grandmothers best friend, so the divorce changed their economics severely and the depression made it worse
I have a British record from around 1913 that refers to a girl as a flapper.
Very good video - thank you for it. Just one note - the film clip you included of Paul Whiteman dancing around isn't Paul. It was an impersonator. I only know this because I have the film "The King Of Jazz" from 1929 (where the clip of Crosby came from). I would have never known if it hadn't been pointed out in the video.
Looking for information on Colleen Moore, this and other videos I've found have been a great help. Thanks for posting! Public Library does not have her Autobiography, looking for one now.
Interesting video as usual. I didn't realize there were all sorts of bobs available back in the 20s. I am currently, and have been for some time, sporting an inverted bob and I love it so easy to care for. My mom was born at the end of the 20s and my dad was born in the mid 30s so they didn't participate in any of these goings on. But what a time before income tax etc. Thank you for the video!
Thank you for your broad scope of the 20s. Many wars in the 20s.
It's more than OKAY to have fun! I don't need a constant reminder that the present and the past is full of injustice. I want to know how good folks found joy, love and hope in the 1920's despite the misery. Maybe they have something to teach us! "Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum"
That first picture! That's exactly how I wear my hair now!😊😊
Very interesting and informative!
Another wonderful and well done video!
You should consider making a video about William Howard Taft as Chief Justice of SCOTUS (1921-30). Under his leadership, they made a lot of rulings that we would now consider restrictive.
Most women in the 1920s were too busy either having families or working to spend much time partying. Most of our grandmothers/great-grandmothers/great-great grandmothers were probably NOT flappers.
Great episode.
Yes, I enjoyed this video very much.
Great video. Super informative.
My mothers mom looked like Colleen Moore-flapper was more of a style than a life choice - she was a farm girl who worked at the Dept store in town making wax flowers but could sew clothes,bedding and can vegetables back on the farm-she always wore jeans,was skinny as a rail and could ring a chickens neck when I was a child but she still had that Colleen Moore haircut
I love your channel.
Was Guy Lombardo popular in the 20s or did he come along later?
Yes, I’ve seen pictures of my grandmother on my Mom’s side. She had the short haircut. But not a flapper girl. She died in 1930 from complications from Pneumonia. My Mom was only 6 when she passed. I think there may have been at least a handful of women who were tired of long hair and just wanted to cut it. Some of them looked so much better that way too. To me a “ Hair Bob” just means a short cut to the hair, how ever they style it. Even today, at the salon, you might hear someone say, “ Oh, what a cute little Bob.” 😉
Would the cartoon character Betty Boop qualify as a flapper?
Sorta, kinda, maybe. More like Weimar Cabaret.
Thank you. That was very helpful
Very well done!
Jazz records were labeled as "foxtrot" as advice to buyers of the style of dance. Was the pop dance music labeled as something else?
What is the name of the background music? Also, Paul Whiteman released a song called "Felix Kept On Walking".
A story on the Government poisoning society ( with beer) would be Awesome.
would u b interested in the art & furniture of the art deco period??
I love art deco. The art, furniture, architecture & even the jewelry was so beautiful.
This is fascinating Thanks ❤
Fun fact, the word hippie in the 1950s referred to a college students who adopted at least part-time the culture of an attires of the beatnik
I think you mean ‘hipster’, not ‘hippie’
@@margaretcain3223 no I mean hippie however I'm sure hits there was also used in Skippy is probably a different ride from hipster
I really enjoy watching movies made in the 1920's, although I really dislike watching modern movies that portray the same time period. If they would only do a small amount of research on the things mentioned in this video, then they would probably be much more enjoyable!
Well Done!
I used to think of the '20s as a peaceful time and another channel I subscribe to The Great War covered The events of World War I for each week exactly 100 years afterward. They continued on into the 1920s and noted a lot of skirmishes you mentioned, and also many particularly in Eastern European countries to establish the eventual governments.
What happened to the banana wars?
@@JOHNKAUWELL th-cam.com/video/Ux_HBUsy1_4/w-d-xo.html
The early 1920s were violent in Germany, a lot of politically motivated assassinations happened, not to mention the Beer Hall Putsch and multiple Communist revolts.
Then there was a big war or two between Poland, the USSR and Lithuania.
In the '20s, the page boy 'do we today associate with Louise Brooks would have been linked to Colleen Moore, a far bigger star in her day than Brooks ever was. Moore was renowned for her vivacity, and among comic actresses of her day, only Clara Bow and Marion Davies rivaled her. Brooks was more a figure of the late '20s equivalent of the art-house crowd and had much less domestic success.
I love your channel!
While the term didn't exist in the 1920s, I prefer "pseudo-flapper" to "semi-flapper'. Almost every generation since the turn of the 20th century has had its youthful counter-culture movement and the flapper movement was it for the 1920s. Most youths do not want to be singled out as not being part of the popular crowd of their age group so they give the appearance of belonging to the popular group even if they don't fully partake in the lifestyle. Pseudo can be defined as "seemingly but not really", which perfectly fits someone who outwardly appears to belong to a lifestyle but doesn't practice it.
BERNICE BOBS HER HAIR by F Scott Fitzgerald is one of my favorite pieces of American literature. 💟☮️💟
How about a segment on motorcycle racers and airplane pilots
Imagine that 100 years from now anybody doing "Myths & Misconceptions Of The 2020s" will have to be making a full-season miniseries. And this generation is going to look comparatively delusional and stupid. Very very stupid. "No, not everybody back then bought into the crazy notion that men could give birth, etc. etc."
Paris in the '20s...?
I was born in 1952. I was a Hippie at heart and I know I was a Flapper in
a past life !!
Thanks for telling the truth! ❤
what is the song in the intro for all your videos?
"Sweet Mama" by Duke Ellington
@@The1920sChannel thank you! edit: btw, i ADORE your channel!