1. Mass Media and the Jazz Age
Angela Brown
Chapter 11

2. 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

3. http://www. originalprop
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”

4. 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

5. Radio
Pittsburgh KDKA – nations first radio station (Frank Conrad of Westinghouse Company experimented in 1920)
stations on air
National Broadcasting Company (NBC) linked many stations together
Radio became a medium for the masses

6. The Jazz Age Jazz Arrives
The Jazz Age
Jazz Arrives
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
Mix of African American, ragtime and blues
1929 2/3 of radio stations played Jazz
sum up character of decade = Jazz Age

7. Duke Ellington The Jazz Clubs 1923 band in NY – job at Hollywood Club
Hottest place to listen to Jazz – Harlem NYC (Cotton Club, Connie’s Inn, Saratoga Club)
Duke Ellington – best remembered Jazz Musicians
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”

8. Paintings Other Artists George Gershwin, “Rhapsody in Blue”
Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent showed the nation’s rougher side
Georgia O’Keefe painted natural objects (flowers, animal bones, landscapes) died in – 100 years old
Other Artists
George Gershwin, “Rhapsody in Blue”

9. Literature
Sinclair Lewis – attacked American society (Main Street, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry)
Refused Pulitzer Prize 1926
Accepted Nobel Prize in Literature in – 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

10. 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

11. The Lost Generation
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
Hemingway on the left, Harold Loeb,
Lady Duff Twysden; Hadley,
Don Stewart and Pat Guthrie.

12. 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 wrote God’s Trombone – collection of sermons

13. 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)

14. Dreams