History Questions 1865-1945

Jazz Age

There have been disagreements about how much real jazz was actually associated with the Jazz Age of the 1920s. Such disagreements are not simply esoteric exercises between those who champion “real” jazz and others who apply it indiscriminately to any music that is somehow remotely related to it. It is true that the music of the Harlem Renaissance had more to do with authentic jazz than did the music of the Jazz Age in general.

Flaming Youth

“They're all desperadoes, these kids, all of them with any life in their veins; the girls as well as the boys; maybe more than the boys” (from Warner Fabian's Flaming Youth, 1923). When people think of the Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties, they think of the flapper, jazz, and bathtub gin. In startling contrast to her mother's gentle Gibson-girl image, the flapper, with her legendary bobbed hair, short skirt, rolled-down hose, and powdered knees, was an apt image for the period, and she became the heroine of the era as well as its symbol. Illustrator John Held, Jr., captured the essence of the Jazz Age. His cartoons made the flapper famous and captured her image for future generations. Held loved the period but honestly depicted it. He used irony to capture its superficial glitter. Held caught the flapper and her beaux with terrible clarity as his cartoons in Life, Vanity Fair, and The Smart Set clearly show.

The flapper was no longer confined to home and traditions. The automobile had aided her move toward greater freedom. Most people categorized the typical flapper as a young woman who was a little fast and brazen. Flappers offended older people through their “modern” notions of what feminine behavior should be—usually, the opposite of conventional views on the subject.

Generally, the flapper symbolized her defiance in the way she wore her hair. To challenge accepted standards she wore it bobbed instead of long. Her baggy dresses exposed her arms and legs to public view. She also wore makeup and was not above fixing her face in public. All of these acts helped the flapper literally embody the Jazz Age.

In the 1920s the movies provided young people with a model for what was modern in mores and dress. Louise Brooks was a key figure of the Jazz Age. Her rise as a major film star was in keeping with the central phenomenon of the flapper and reflected the period's worship of youth. Brooks socialized with most of the notable figures of the time: George Gershwin, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Benchley, H. L. Mencken, and Anita Loos. Before becoming a film star Brooks had a brief stage career in New York and was the inspiration for John H. Striebel's flapper cartoon, Dixie Dugan. Brooks also modeled and helped inspire and popularize the flapper look. Along with Joan Crawford, Colleen Moore, and Clara Bow (the “It” girl), Brooks helped fix the flapper image on screen.

Jazz and the Harlem Renaissance

Some authors held that jazz and sin were synonymous. Anne Shaw Faulkner's “Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation?” (1921), for example, strongly disapproves of the music. She states, “Welfare workers tell us that never in the history of our land have there been such immoral conditions among our young people, and in the surveys made by many organizations regarding these conditions, the blame is laid on jazz music and its evil influence on the young people of to-day. Never before have such outrageous dances been permitted in private as well as public ballrooms, and never has there been used for the accompaniment of the dance such a strange combination of tone and rhythm as that produced by the dance orchestras of to-day.” Certainly, the period after World War I witnessed greater freedom among American youth than any other previous era. It was, in fact, the beginning of the “sexual revolution,” often credited to the 1960s. Whether jazz was its inspiration or merely accompaniment is another matter. Duke Ellington allowed owners of Harlem's Cotton Club to bill his orchestra as the “Jungle Band,” but he never liked that billing.

Langston Hughes, one of the great artists of the Harlem Renaissance (a movement in the 1920s that was one of the more tumultuous and exciting moments in American cultural history, embracing African American literature, politics, art, and music, and leaving an enduring cultural legacy), had a different perspective on jazz but one that would not, perhaps, have allayed the fears of Faulkner. Hughes wrote of jazz as a long beauty dancing in a Harlem cabaret. This beautiful dancing girl tempts her audience just as Eve tempted Adam in the Garden of Eden and Cleopatra tempted Caesar and Antony in Egypt.

Fitzgerald and the Jazz Age Authors

The most popular author associated with the Jazz Age, however, is F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940). Fitzgerald was good-looking and friendly and had tremendous talent. His first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), was a great success. He drew attention to the significant changes in mores that followed World War I: petting parties, drinking, and youthful love affairs. Fitzgerald became an idol to young people, and his mentally fragile wife, Zelda, was his muse.

Fitzgerald and Zelda became almost as famous for their antics as for his great writing. They disrupted plays by inappropriately laughing when they should have wept and vice versa. They rode on hoods of cars, threw drunken parties during Prohibition, frolicked in public fountains, took extravagant trips, and generally misspent money. To support this lavishness Fitzgerald wrote short stories in great quantity. Popular magazines were delighted to get these stories, which depicted the Jazz Age in its entire splendor and with all its faults. His works helped define the period. Fittingly, his most popular short story is entitled “Bernice Bobs Her Hair.”

Dorothy Parker and Loos also helped define the period. Loos had vowed while a young girl never to be bored. That resolution led to her tales of golden-haired Lorelei Lee, a character she created during a tedious train ride. That sketch for that character led to the novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925), which was such a bestseller it was even serialized in Chinese. With Jazz Age wit Loos entitled the sequel But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1928).

Conclusion

The Jazz Age marked a vital change in American culture. Although the Great Depression retarded the implementation of these cultural changes, many of the post—World War II advances in sexual and civil rights had their roots in the movements of the 1920s. The disillusionment of the post—World War I generation and the generation's consequent questioning of received values are still playing themselves out in contemporary American life.