ROARING TWENTIES - JAZZ AGE
After the trauma of World War I, the world relaxed and started to enjoy itself. There was an explosion in the cultural world, especially in music with the genre of jazz which gave the decade its alternate name, and in the growth of Art Deco. Technology was booming with the invention and spread to the middle classes of the radio, the phonograph, the automobile, and moving pictures (still silent until 1927).

With the passage of the 19th Amendment (Women's Suffrage) in 1920, women gained not only the vote but an increasing sense of freedom. The ultimate goal of most was still marriage and a family; except for secretarial work and teaching, most jobs were still closed to them. They adopted new styles of dress with short hair and still shorter skirts, and the flapper was born. They also popularized new dances, the fox-trot, the Charleston, the Lindy Hop and others.

THE GREAT DEPRESSION
All this ended suddenly with the Wall Street Crash on October 29, 1929, Black Tuesday. Billions of dollars of wealth disappeared in one day and many people like Mame lost their entire fortunes. Over 4,000 banks failed. Since communication was so slow, it took days for some people to learn about the Stock Market Crash. Unemployment soared to over 25%. The Great Depression lasted until the beginning of the 1940s and the start of World War II.

PROHIBITION
In 1920, the 18th Amendment mandated a ban on the sale, manufacture and transportation of alcohol. Thus, all through the Roaring Twenties it was illegal to drink most alcoholic beverages. (There were exceptions; people were allowed to make their own wine and hard cider, but not beer.) What were partygoers and others to do? Ironically, it was not illegal for people to consume alcohol if they could get hold of it, and it didn't take long for organized crime to take over the business of seeing that the demands for hard liquor were met. Powerful bootlegging gangs proliferated and, as tends to happen, wars broke out between rival gangs and organized crime developed. Since strong liquor was more profitable for distributors than wine or beer, it soon became the drink of choice among manufacturers. Speakeasies operated openly. Bootleggers often used the ethyl alcohol still available for use in stores as the basis for their concoctions. The government responded by requiring the addition of poison to this stock, and as many as 10,000 people died. Grape juice was sold with a warning not to use the accompanying, clearly described steps to make it ferment! Finally, the abuses convinced the government to repeal the Amendment in 1933.

PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION
At the end of the nineteenth century there was a movement to reform the rigid education system which relied on rote learning and which was designed to prepare students for college. Those who could not benefit from this has no alternative and left school. This led to the development of the progressive education movement led by John Dewey and Francis Parker. Its watchword was "learn by doing". There was an emphasis on projects, experiments and group learning, and a de-emphasis on textbooks. Well done, such methods greatly improved the educational process for all students but there were also many abuses. The school run by Ralph Devine in Mame is and extreme example of one of these..

RIGHT PEOPLE
In the early twentieth century there was discrimination against many racial and ethnic group, some subtle but most quite open and well known. Discrimination against women was widespread, especially when it came to employment, and usually accepted without question. Another widespread practice was "redlining" in which red lines were made around certain areas on maps in which banks would not invest and certain services such as markets, health care etc. were limited. Less obvious were residential areas where Jews or other ethnic groups were excluded. An example is the community where the Upsons live in Connecticut; certain unspecified types of people were not allowed. The property right next door to them was outside this area and they were anxious to acquire it so they would not become contaminated. Of course, the broad-minded Mame bought it first to build a home for unwed mothers! Many colleges and universities, including those in the Ivy League had quotas which limited the number of spaced available to Jews, blacks and other ethnic groups. These were made illegal, but there is now the often controversial practice of affirmative action or "reverse discrimination" designed to increase ethnic variety

PROPER CONDUCT
Mame definitely did not fit the pattern of well brought up ladies. Gloria did. Until the fifties, proper dress and behavior was rigidly observed. No woman would think of going shopping without wearing a hat and gloves. In the forties, coeds were not allowed to wear trousers on campus, only skirts. They could not leave the dormitory after dinner without signing out, there were strict curfews and coeducational get togethers were strictly chaperoned. Mame broke all the rules. After World War II this began to change , but dress codes lingered for a long time in places like upscale restaurants.

COMMUNICATIONS AND WORLD TRAVEL
It is hard for today's younger generation to realize what life was like in the 1920s and 1930s. During this time radios began to be found in middle class homes and they were big pieces of furniture as were the wind-up phonograph players. Very few ordinary people had automobiles. Travel was by public transportation in the cities, by rail across the country and by steamship across the ocean. There were no home refrigerators or freezers, only iceboxes with blocks of ice delivered daily to keep things cool. When in the thirties most people began to have telephones, they were plugged into the wall and there was only one in each house. There were no area codes and the "numbers" began with words. As late at the fifties in rural areas one could not dial a number. The phone box was mounted on the wall, and the caller would turn a crank. This brought an operator to whom one gave a number, and then she would make the connection. This had certain advantages. If you were going out you could leave a message where you would be so that others could reach you if necessary (rather like services such that doctors and others have today). There were no televisions, no cell phones, no computers and e-mail, no iPods or other such devices. This was Mame's world.

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Revised August 2011
Please credit Lyric Opera San Diego when using this material.