Mass Media and the Jazz Age

Mass Media and the Jazz Age http://www.bri.ucla.edu/nha/ishn/hollywoodland-small.jpg Angela Brown Chapter 11

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

http://www.originalprop.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/hollywood-auction-29.jpghttp://www.originalprop.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/hollywood-auction-29.jpg 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”

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 http://www.notablebiographies.com/images/uewb_05_img0327.jpg

Radio • Pittsburgh KDKA – nations first radio station (Frank Conrad of Westinghouse Company experimented in 1920) • 1922 - 500 stations on air • National Broadcasting Company (NBC) linked many stations together • Radio became a medium for the masses http://old-photos.blogspot.com/2008_10_01_archive.html

http://galenet.galegroup.com/images/src/pct/00034076.jpg The Jazz Age Jazz Arrives Mix of African American, ragtime and blues 1929 2/3 of radio stations played Jazz sum up character of decade = Jazz Age • 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

The Jazz Clubs Duke Ellington 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” • Hottest place to listen to Jazz – Harlem NYC (Cotton Club, Connie’s Inn, Saratoga Club) • Duke Ellington – best remembered Jazz Musicians http://www.jubileejumpers.de/images/cotton-club.gif

Other Artists Paintings Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent showed the nation’s rougher side Georgia O’Keefe painted natural objects (flowers, animal bones, landscapes) died in 1986 – 100 years old • George Gershwin, “Rhapsody in Blue”

Literature • Sinclair Lewis – attacked American society (Main Street, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry) • Refused Pulitzer Prize 1926 • Accepted Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930 – 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

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

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.

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- 1927 wrote God’s Trombone – collection of sermons

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) http://ron-carr.com/WEBU/Websites/Elliott/The-Harlem-Renaissance.jpg

Dreams http://youthincontrol.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/quotes_langston-hughes.jpg

Mass Media and the Jazz Age