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= Leisure Time = Laborsaving appliances and shorter working hours gave Americans more leisure time. Higher wages also gave them money to spend on leisure activities. People wanted more fun, and they were willing to spend money to have it. Americans paid 25 cents or more to see a movie—an increase of at least 5 times the price in the previous decade. By the end of the 1920s, there were more than 100 million weekly moviegoers. In addition to attending movies, some Americans went to museums and public libraries. Others bought books and magazines. Sales rose by 50 percent. Americans also spent time listening to the radio, talking on the telephone, playing games, and driving their cars. In 1929, Americans spent about $4 billion on entertainment—a 100 percent jump in a decade. But not all Americans were able to take part equally in leisure-time activities or in the consumer culture of the 1920s. Some, like African Americans and Hispanic Americans, had their time and choices limited by factors such as income and race.

= Mass Media =

New types of mass media—communications that reach a large audience—began to take hold in the 1920s. Radio and movies provided entertainment and spread the latest ideas about fashions and lifestyles. The first commercial radio broadcast took place in Pittsburgh at station KDKA in 1920. Other radio stations soon emerged. The number of households with radios jumped from about 60,000 in 1922 to 10 million in 1929. Radio stations broadcast news, sports, music, comedy, and commercials. Not only were Americans better informed than before, but lis- tening to the same radio programs united the nation. Of all the powerful new influences of the 1920s, none shaped the ideas and dreams of Americans more than motion pictures. The moviemaking industry was centered in Hollywood, California. Movies gave people an escape into worlds of glam- our and excitement they could never enter. Audiences flocked to movie theaters to see their favorite actors and actresses. These included Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Clara Bow, and Rudolph Valentino. Movies also spread American popular culture to Europe. Popular culture included songs, dances, fashions, and even slang expressions like scram (leave in a hurry) and ritzy (elegant). Moviemakers like Samuel Goldwyn, the Warner brothers, and Louis B. Mayer made fortunes overnight. For most of the 1920s, films were silent. In 1927, The Jazz Singer introduced sound. Another talkie caused a sensation in 1928—Walt Disney’s car- toon Steamboat Willie, featuring Mickey Mouse. Within a few years, all movies were talkies.

= Got Heroes? =

Another leisure activity was watching sporting events and listening to them on the radio. Sporting events of all types—baseball, football, hockey, boxing, golf, and tennis—enjoyed rising attendance. Boxing became very popular. Fans who could not attend the fights listened to matches on the radio or saw them on newsreels shown at movie theaters. The Jack Dempsey–Gene Tunney boxing match of 1926 drew 120,000 fans. In the 1920s, professional baseball gained many new fans because games were broadcast on radio. As a result, fans flocked to major league ballparks. In New York City, fans went to Yankee Stadium, which opened in 1923, to watch the “Bronx Bombers”—the nickname for the New York Yankees. Even college football and basketball attracted huge crowds. Sports figures captured the imagination of the American public. They became heroes because they restored Americans’ belief in the power of the individual to improve his or her life. Babe Ruth of the Yankees was baseball’s top home-run hitter. Someone once asked Ruth why his $80,000 salary was higher than the president’s. Ruth supposedly replied, “Well, I had a better year.” Baseball players weren’t the only sports heroes. Golfers idolized Bobby Jones. People cheered Helen Wills and Bill Tilden on the tennis courts. In 1926, New York City threw a huge homecoming parade for Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel. Americans also made national heroes of two daring young fliers—Charles A. Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart.

= Harlem Renaissance =

Wartime military service and work in war industries had given African Americans a new sense of freedom. They migrated to many cities across the country, but it was New York City that turned into the unofficial cap- ital of black America. In the 1920s, Harlem, a neigh- borhood on New York’s West Side, was the world’s largest black urban community. The migrants from the South brought with them new ideas and a new kind of music called jazz. Soon Harlem produced a burst of African-American cultural activity known as the Harlem Renaissance, which began in the 1920s and lasted into the 1930s. It was called a renaissance because it symbolized a rebirth of hope for African Americans. Harlem became home to writers, musicians, singers, painters, sculptors, and scholars. There they were able to exchange ideas and develop their cre- ativity. Among Harlem’s residents were poets Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, and Countee Cullen and novelists Claude McKay and Zora Neale Hurston. Hughes was perhaps Harlem’s most famous writer. He wrote about the difficult conditions under which African Americans lived. Jazz became widely popular in the 1920s. It was a form of music that combined African rhythms, blues, and ragtime to produce a unique sound. Jazz spread from its birthplace in New Orleans to other parts of the country and made its way into the nightclubs of Harlem. These nightclubs featured popular jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, and singers such as the jazz and blues great, Bessie Smith. Harlem’s most famous nightclub was the Cotton Club. It made stars of many African-American performers, but only white customers were allowed in the club.

= The Lost Ones =

For some artists and writers, the decade after the war was not a time of celebration but a time of deep despair. They had seen the ideas of the Progressives end in a senseless war. They were filled with resentment and they saw little hope for the future. They were called the Lost Generation. For many of them, only one place offered freedom and tolerance. That was Paris. The French capital became a gathering place for American expatriates, people who choose to live in a country other than their own. Among the American expatriates living in Paris was the young novelist Ernest Hemingway. As an ambulance driver in Europe dur- ing World War I, he had seen the war’s worst. His early nov- els, The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, reflected the mood of despair that followed the war. Novelists F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis were two other members of the Lost Generation. Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, lived the whirlwind life of the Jazz Age—fast cars, nightclubs, wild parties, and trips to Paris. His master- piece, The Great Gatsby, is a tragic story of wealthy New Yorkers whose lives spin out of control. The novel is a portrait of the dark side of the Roaring Twenties. Lewis wrote Babbitt, a novel that satirized, or made fun of, the American middle class and its concern for material possessions.