Download Topic 4.8 King

Mass Media and the Jazz Age
4.8
Hollywood!!
• Few people outside of Los Angeles had
heard of the subdivision northwest of the
city
• Early 1900s filmmakers began moving
there
• Attracted by large work force in LA
• Variety of landscapes
• From deserts to snowy mountains
• Hollywood soon became the center of the
entertainment film industry
Mass Media
•What is it?
•“The print and broadcast methods of
communicating information to large
numbers of people”
•Leads to a national culture
•Before this time the United States had
been largely a collection of regional cultures
• “The Jazz
Singer”
• 1927 First Sound
Film
• Huge success
Movies
• 125 million
people in the US
• Sold roughly 80
million tickets a
week!
• Moviemaking
became a huge
business!
Greta Garbo
• Born in Stockholm,
Sweden
• Glamorous star from the
silent screen
• Moved to speaking roles
• Began her career
modeling for department
stores
Charlie Chaplin
• Delighted
Americans since
1914
• Chaplin added
music to his films
and continued his
soundless
performances
Newspapers and Magazines
• Followed the off-screen lives of their favorite stars
• Newsprint doubles from 1914-1927
• Started publishing tabloids
–
–
–
–
compact newspaper
large headlines
few words
lots of pictures
• Huge rise in popularity in newspapers and magazines
• Helped make a common popular culture
– Share the same information
– Read about the same events and ideas
– See the same fashions
Radio
• Barely existed until the 1920s
• Few Americans had radio sets
– Homemade
– Used to communicate with one another one-on-one
• 1920 Frank Conrad-worked for Westinghouse
Electric
• Set up a radio transmitter in his garage
– Began broadcasting programs regularly
• First commercial radio station Pittsburgh’s KDKA
• By 1922 more than 500 stations
Jazz Sweeps the Nation…
•
•
•
•
Comes from Blues in New Orleans
African American music of the south
Arrives with black musicians in Northern Cities
Radio listeners began hearing the new sound in the
1920s
• 2/3 of radio time is devoted to Jazz!!
• The 1920s came to be called the Jazz age
Duke Ellington
• Played in clubs at night and
painted signs during the day
• Moved to New York with
several other musicians
• Jazz band leader and
composer
• Wrote at least 1,000 pieces
in his long career
• Music for concerts
• Broadway shows
• Films
• Operas
Louis Armstrong
• Born and grew up in
New Orleans
• Jazz trumpet player
• Performed
improvised
extended solos
• Made solos become
key elements of jazz
ensemble
performances
“The Lost Generation”
• Rejected the quest for material possessions that
many Americans were captivated with
• The Lost Generation-Intellectuals that felt
disconnected from their country and its values
• Many moved to Europe (Paris)
Ernest Hemingway
Gertrude Stein
• Both part of the Lost Generation
• Both moved to Paris
• Hemingway introduced Stein’s term the lost
Generation to the public in his 1926 novel The
Sun Also Rises
F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Part of the lost generation
and Jazz age
• Some believed he helped
create the flapper culture
• 1920 novel This Side of
Paradise
• 1925 The Great Gatsby
• Concentrated on the
sophisticated/wealthy
Americans of the Jazz
Age
• He found them to be selfcentered and shallow
The Harlem Renaissance
• New York City’s Harlem
• Becomes the cultural center for
African Americans
• Number of African Americans
living in Harlem
• 1914- 50,000
• 1930- about 200,000
• Jazz, Poetry, Literature, and
Activism
• Harlem Renaissance-African
American literary awakening of
the 1920s, centered in Harlem
James Weldon Johnson
• Early leader of the National
Association for the
Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP)
• Writer
• Inspired younger members
of the Harlem group
• Most famous work
• 1927 God’s Trombones
• Collection of sermons
modeled after the style of
traditional black preaching
Zora Neale Hurston
• Anthropologist and author of:
• “Of Mules and Men”
• “Their Eyes Were Watching God”
– Expressed the longing for independence felt by many
women black and white
Langston Hughes
• Poet, short story writer, journalist
and playwright
• One of the most famous and
influential members of the Harlem
Renaissance
• Wrote about the joys and difficulties
of being human, being American,
and being African American
• I, Too by Langston Hughes - Poetry
Archive
• The Negro Speaks of Rivers by
Langston Hughes - Poetry Archive