MASS MEDIA & THE JAZZ AGE

MOVIES o Movies – wildly popular mass medium o  5,000 theaters rose to 22,500 o Late 1930s  100 million Americans seeing movies each week o 4th largest business in the country o 1927 o 1st film with sound was The Jazz Singer o Movies w/sound called “talkies”

NEWSPAPERS Helped create a common culture 1920s – newspapers increased both in size and in # of readers  use of newsprint doubled in the US Papers getting bigger, but # of papers was declining Newspaper chains owned by an individual or company bought up established papers and merged them  # of chains doubled and total # of papers they owned rose by 50% William Randolph Hearst  gained control of newspapers in more than 20 cities – his life and quest for power were the basis for one of the most popular motion pictures ever, Citizen Kane

RADIO  Barely existed until the 1920s  1920 – experiment by Frank Conrad of the Westinghouse Company  tried sending recorded music and baseball scores over the radio = SUCCESS!  Began broadcasting regularly and became KDKA  Tremendous growth and by 1922, more than 500 stations were on the air  Americans eagerly bought radios to listen in  To reach more people, networks linked individual stations together (NBC)

JAZZ CLUBS Jazz Arrives – grew out of African-American music of the south Harlem – 500 jazz clubs Cotton Club, Connie’s Inn, and Saratoga Club all gave shows for mostly white visitors Jazz musicians included The Jelly Roll Morton Band, Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, and Duke Ellington

DUKE ELLINGTON ( ) 17 years old – supporting himself playing in clubs in Washington at night and painting signs during the day 1923  moved to New York, formed a band, and played at the Hollywood Club Greatest genius was as a bandleader, arranger, and composer Works included “Mood Indigo,” “Solitude,” “In a Sentimental Mood,” “Blue Harlem,” and “Bojangles”

OTHER ARTISTS Painting – Edward Hopper and Rockwell Kent showed the rougher side of life; Georgia O’Keeffe painted natural objects Literature – Sinclair Lewis, a Muckraking novelist, attacked American society w/savage irony – Targets included the small town, the prosperous conformist, the medical business, and dishonest ministers – Refused a Pulitzer in 1926, but won and accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930, which was a first for an American Eugene O’Neill, playwright – wrote dark, poetic tragedies out of the material of every day life

THE LOST GENERATION Set of writers in the 1920s who believed they were lost in a greedy, materialistic world that lacked moral values Some flocked to Greenwich Village, others became expatriates as they were discontented with American society Most prominent were John Dos Passos, Archibald MacLeish, Hart Crane, E.E. Cummings, Ernest Hemingway (made the term “Lost Generation” famous), F. Scott Fitzgerald Fitzgerald was part of both the Lost Generation world and the flapper world Some think he had a part in creating the flapper culture with his novel This Side of Paradise published in – The Great Gatsby – focused on the wealthy, sophisticated Americans of the Jazz Age (he found the rich to be self-centered and shallow)

THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE For African-Americans, Harlem was the cultural center of the US James Weldon Johnson, the leading writer of the Harlem group lived in two worlds, the political and the literary executive secretary of the NAACP most famous work is 1927s God’s Trombones Alain Locke (The New Negro) celebrated the blossoming of African-American culture Other important writers of the Harlem Renaissance were Zora Neale Hurston, Dorothy West, and Langston Hughes the most studied Harlem writer today Leading poets of the Harlem Renaissance were Claude McKay and Countee Cullen

CLOSE In no less than one paragraph, write a summary of your notes AND THEN answer the following: What influence do film and radio have on current popular culture?