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★ 1920s & 1920–1929 & Nineteen–Twenties

1920s & 1920–1929 & Nineteen–Twenties: see 20th Century & Jazz & 1930s

The Great Gatsby 1974 - The Great Gatsby 2013 - F Scott Fitzgerald - The Roaring Twenties 1939 - Agatha Christie - Colleen Moore - Joshua Zeitz - Eammon McCabe: Britain in Focus: A Photographic History TV - The 10 Year Lunch 1987 - Paris: The Golden Twenties TV -     

 

 

 

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.  Whenever you feel like criticising anyone, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages you had.  The Great Gatsby 1974 starring & Robert Redford & Mia Farrow & Bruce Dern & Sam Waterston & Karen Black & Scott Wilson & Lois Chiles & Edward Herrmann & Howard da Silva & Kathryn Leigh Scott & Regina Baff et al, director Jack Clayton, opening commentary

 

It had been a golden afternoon.  And I remember having the familiar conviction that life was beginning over again like the summer.  ibid.   

 

In his enchanted gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whispering and the champagne and the stars.  ibid.  

 

‘Mr Gatsby would be honoured if you would attend his little party tonight.’  ibid.  messenger

 

‘He never really goes to his own parties.’  ibid.  Joy  

 

‘The truth of the matter is, I don’t much like parties.’  ibid.  Gatsby

 

Him: Why didn’t you wait for me?

 

Her: Because rich girls don’t marry poor boys, Jay Gatsby.  ibid.  

 

‘I love New York on summer afternoons when everyone’s away.  There’s something very sensuous about it.  Overripe as if all sorts of funny fruits are going to fall into your hands.’  ibid.

 

‘This woman rushed out at us.  It all happened in a second.  It seemed she recognised the car.’  ibid.  Gatsby  

 

 

Back then, all of us drank too much.  The more in tune with the times we were the more we drank.  The Great Gatsby 2013 starring Leonardo di Caprio & Tobey McGuire & Carey Mulligan & Joel Edgerton & Isla Fisher & Jason Clarke & Elizabeth Debicki & Jack Thompson & Amitabh Bachchan et al, director Baz Luhrmann, opening scene, dude to shrink

 

He was the single most hopeful person I have ever met.  ibid.

 

Stocks reached record peaks.  And Wall Street boomed in a steady golden roar.  The parties were bigger.  The shows were broader.  The buildings were higher.  The moral were looser, and the ban on alcohol had backfired, making the liquor cheaper.  ibid.

 

We were buoyed by a sort of chemical madness, a willingness of the heart that burst thunderously upon us all.  ibid.

 

Where did the money come from?  ibid.

 

He talked a lot about the past as if he wanted to recover something.  ibid.

 

After Tom and Daisy's visit, Gatsbys lights went out one by one.  There were no more parties.  Daisy visited discreetly.  ibid.

 

But not one of the sparkling hundreds that enjoyed his hospitality attended the funeral.  And from Daisy not even a flower.  ibid.

 

After Gatsby's death New York was haunted for me.  That said my once golden shimmering mirage now made me sick.  ibid.

 

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.  ibid.

 

 

It was an age of miracles.  It was an age of art.  It was an age of excess.  And it was an age of satire.  We were the most powerful nation.  Who could tell us any longer what was fashionable and what was fun?  It was a whole race going hedonistic.  Deciding on pleasure.  The jazz age now raced along under its own power served by great filling stations full of money.  F Scott Fitzgerald, Echoes of the Jazz Age

 

Somebody had blundered.  And the most expensive orgy in history was over.  Now once more the belt is tight.  And we summoned the proper expression of horror as we looked back on our wasted youth.  Sometimes though there is a ghostly rumble among the drums.  Enigmatic whispers in the trombones.  That swings me back into the early twenties.  When we drank wood alcohol and every day in every way grew better and better.  And there was an abortive shortening of the skirts.  And people you didn’t want to know said, Yes, we have no bananas.  And it all seems rosy and romantic to us who were young men.  Because we will never quite so intently about our surroundings any more.  ibid.

 

 

The uncertainties were over.  There seemed little doubt about what was going to happen.  America was going on the greatest gaudiest spree in history, and there was going to be plenty to tell about it.  F Scott Fitzgerald, Early Success

 

 

Unemployment coming in the wake of the wartime boom is beginning to grip the country ... The same old struggle: the struggle to survive.  The Roaring Twenties 1939 starring James Cagney & Humphrey Bogart & Prescilla Lane & Glady George & Jeffrey Lynn & Frank McHugh & George Meeker & Paul Kelly et al, director, commentary

 

It's not me, it's what I stand for  am I right?  ibid.  him to her

 

He had it coming to him.  ibid.  Bogart

 

You used to be quite a guy in the old days.  ibid.  barkeeper

 

He used to be a big shot.  ibid.  Panama

 

 

Now I am old-fashioned.  A woman, I consider, should be womanly.  I have no patience with the modern neurotic girl who jazzes from morning to night, smokes like a chimney, and uses language which would make a Billingsgate fishwoman blush!  Agatha Christie, Murder on the Links

 

 

They were smart and sophisticated, with an air of independence about them, and so casual about their looks and clothes and manners as to be almost slapdash.  I don't know if I realized as soon as I began seeing them that they represented the wave of the future, but I do know I was drawn to them.  I shared their restlessness, understood their determination to free themselves of the Victorian shackles of the pre-World War I era and find out for themselves what life was all about.  Colleen Moore

 

 

The New Woman of the 1920s boldly asserted her right to dance, drink, smoke, and date  to work her own property, to live free of the strictures that governed her mother’s generation ... She flouted Victorian-era conventions and scandalized her parents.  In many ways, she controlled her own destiny.  Joshua Zeitz, Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern

 

 

Cecil Beaton captured the spirit of the roaring Twenties.  Eamonn McCabe, Britain in Focus: A Photographic History II  

 

 

This is the room of the Algonquin Hotel in New York City.  It looks today much as it did in the 1920s.  It is a room for talk and laughter but it is missing its star players, ten or so men and women made their mark as humourous journalists and playwrights in a single decade after World War I … They came to be known as the Algonquin Round Table.  The Ten Year Lunch: The Wit and Legend of the Algonquin Round Table, 1987

 

It was that unique moment of confidence.  ibid.

 

It was the last time in America when the written word was paramount.  ibid.

 

85 theatres thrived in Times Square alone.  ibid.  

 

Dorothy Parker became the most quoted woman in New York.  ibid.

 

People came to stare at them at lunch.  ibid.

 

Groucho Marx never sat at the Round Table.  ibid.

 

 

Dazzling, talented, carefree, the Roaring Twenties are a magical moment in history.  In Paris a whole new era is bursting into flower.  After four long years of a terrible war, young French people have just one thing on their minds: to forget about all the tragedy.  There’s only one thing for it: to party in the wild hope of inventing a whole new world.  A world without war, a world of laughter and fun.  And end to old pre-war values, the emancipation of women, an explosion of the avant-garde.  These so-called Roaring Years are in fact a true cultural revolution.  Paris: The Golden Twenties, Sky Arts 2020

 

A hiatus of liberties between two World Wars.  ibid. 

 

The automobile had taken over the city … There’s a wind of folly blowing through the city.  ibid. 

 

In Montmartre, glory means a gold medal in the Boozy Olympics marathon.  ibid. 

 

The Roaring Twenties will make Paris the most cosmopolitan city in the world.  ibid. 

 

Montparnasse: what Henry Miller described as the Bellybutton of the World.  ibid. 

 

The bob is much more than a fashion, it’s a symbol of the Roaring Twenties.  ibid.        

 

The jazzmen are black; many of them soldiers who have played in the military bands.  ibid. 

 

 

She’s a black American, and she’s an exceptional artists: her name is Josephine Baker … she’s the darling of the avant-garde … She’s the first black star in history.  ibid.  

 

Americans soon become the largest ex-pat community in the Paris of the Twenties.  ibid.