(Don’t jump to any conclusions about that pattern on the floor–before Hitler took the swastika for his Nazi Party, it was a perfectly respectable symbol dating from ancient times that was often used to decorate mosaics, tiles, pottery, and other items. This photo pre-dates the Nazis.)

I saw Midnight in Paris last night. Why oh why didn’t someone tell me what a good movie that is? Or maybe they did, and I wasn’t listening because I dislike Woody Allen. Thankfully, that didn’t keep me from watching his movie, because I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

Time travel pieces don’t usually appeal to me, but this one was charming. One must suspend disbelief when the main character, Gil, a frustrated American writer vacationing in Paris, gets picked up each night at midnight by people in an antique car and steps into the Golden Age of Paris, the 1920s world of Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Picasso, and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Each night he returns to the Twenties and his new friends, which he vastly prefers to his life and friends in the present. There’s a lesson to be learned, and when Gil learns it, he gets the girl!

The subject of the film was quite familiar to me, since I had just finished reading “The Paris Wife,” a fictionalized account of Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley, who lived in Paris for most of their five year marriage, a time when Hemingway was poor and unknown. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and others figure in that story too. 

If you like the Twenties–and if you don’t, why are you reading this blog?–see this film. It provides a marvelous glimpse of Paris in the Twenties, not to mention lovely photos of Paris today. And read “The Paris Wife” for another take on life in Paris during these magic years.

Come Hither, Sighed Her Hat

As “The Artist,” the black-and-white silent film set in late 1920s Hollywood, gathers Oscar chatter, the Jazz Age fashion of that time is having a moment in real time. Cloche hats, the toppers the ingénue Peppy Miller (charmingly played by Bérénice Bejo) wears on her rise to stardom, were all over Ralph Lauren’s romantic spring runway as well as at Marc Jacobs. “There’s a mystery to the cloche,” said Mark Bridges, the costume designer of “The Artist.” “They sort of half hide the face and are coy.” Bridges used period styles to frame Bejo’s face, but these cloches are available now — for warmth and a little hat flirting.

For example, here’s Ralph Lauren’s latest, obviously inspired by the fashions of the Roaring Twenties. 

Vaudeville performers, like those in touring theatricals, were adored on stage and snubbed off it. Lumped together with other itinerants like gypsies, hobos, and vagabonds, they were met with suspicion and distrust wherever they went. They were assumed to be criminals–pickpockets, fakers, shoplifters, grifters. Many hotels refused to take in vaudeville players or actors. Those that did were the lowest quality, usually with one shared toilet per hall and located near the train station. These would cost around a dollar a night. Performers usually tried to save the dollar by taking a night train, traveling on Saturday night after the last performance of the week and arriving in the next town on Sunday. Boarding houses often took up the slack. Most vaudeville performers stayed in boarding houses for a week at a time, eating breakfast and sometimes dinner there, if their schedules allowed. 

Circus and carnival workers, called carnies, were even more distrusted, but they had an advantage: they didn’t have to search for lodging at every stop. They lived in wagons that traveled with the show. 

Everyone knows that Prohibition brought about several unintended consequences, one of them the rise of organized crime. Less known is that it also brought about a huge increase in corrupt policemen and other law enforcement agents. Why? 

During Prohibition, thousands of federal agents were hired to enforce the new laws against selling alcohol.  In spite of this, historians estimate that only about 5% of all illegal liquor produced in the U.S. was ever intercepted. Were these agents stupid or lazy or ill-equipped? No, they were bought off! You have only to look at the numbers to see why. 

Federal agents made $1,800 a year. There was so much money to be made in bootleg liquor that they could easily be bribed. An agent could make $500 in one day just by letting his underworld contact know he was going to phone in sick, thereby allowing area shipments to move without anyone worrying about getting caught. Not just federal agents, but police, too, were bribed too, with money, liquor, women, or all three. All they had to do was look the other way. And to most people, it didn’t seem like a real crime–something that had been legal forever was suddenly illegal with the stroke of a pen. 

     In 1923 the Mississippi Valley Association of State Highway Departments thought up some recommendations about street signs, their colors, their shapes. They recommended a Stop sign with 8 sides, but their color of choice was yellow.

     The red sign didn’t come along until 1954. Red had been the preferred color much earlier (after all, stop lights are red), but a good, reflective red paint did not exist until the early Fifties. A non-reflective yellow, on the other hand, could be seen better at night. 

     So I’ve had to be careful in my novel, set in 1925, not to mention red stop signs. In fact, considering how slowly ideas spread back then, I’ve concluded that there were few stop signs at all in the mid-Twenties, expect perhaps in the larger cities. 

Swain’s Cats and Rats was famous. George Burns joked about it in 1976, recalling his own days in vaudeville by saying “I was so bad, once I was on the bill, and the headliner was Swain’s Cats and Rats.” A newspaper review describes the show: “One of the best animal acts in vaudeville and misses greatness by the man’s mild showmanship. The rats and cats fraternize like lodge brothers and execute a difficult routine of wire walking and jumping and balancing stunts. One of the feature tricks is a cat stepping over seven hurdles on top of each one a rat is reclining.” Vaudeville player Joe Laurie, Jr., noted in his memoirs that the cats were fed right before each show. The rats were kept semi-starved and docile. 

Before he developed Cats and Rats, Mr. Swain (I couldn’t find a first name) has at least two other animal acts, Swain’s Alligators and Swain’s Cockatoos. Evidence for the bird act exists from as early as 1907 to at least 1918. It played all over the country: Denver, Brooklyn, Cincinnati. “A novelty from birdland,” one reviewer said, and he rated them “very good.” I found no information at all about the alligators–perhaps it was a short-lived act. 

I was so taken with Cats and Rats that I worked the act into my (as yet unpublished) mystery, set in 1925. Just a quick mention as part of a description of a vaudeville act–here it is.

The next-to-last act was Jack Benny, whose straight face and knack for timing brought laughter to the simplest lines. He screeched when he played his violin, not from lack of skill but on purpose to add humor to his act. Many’s the time I’d heard him play his old instrument better than any pro in the pit. His gags flopped, but I whistled and applauded like a madwoman. Never mind, I’m sure he could tell from the tepid audience response that tonight his schtick was off. Cats and Rats ended the show, astonishing the audience as rats rode peacefully on cats’ backs around a track, crossed tightropes, and for the finale, walked across a raised platform carrying miniature American flags.

“However do they teach them to do that!” exclaimed Valerie as we worked our way out of the box and down the side steps.

“They stuff the cats and starve the rats,” I said bluntly. “Come on.”

I could find my way backstage at any theater in the world blindfolded, with nothing but my sense of smell to guide me. The wings teemed with performers dodging in and out of dressing rooms, musicians packing up their instruments, and stage crew hauling down lights, sweeping floors, and repairing scenery for Monday’s new line-up. Shouts, scrapes, crashes, arguments, and warning calls—“Watch out! Heads up! Coming through!—surrounded us. Boys who worked for free to see the show trotted alongside electricians, scene shifters, and carpenters like young apprentices eager to help. Everything was confusion and noise. It sounded like home.

For vaudeville players, traveling was a constant struggle. These performers rarely stayed more than a week in one place, so they were forever on the move, catching a train to the next town on the circuit. But it wasn’t as easy as packing a suitcase and hopping the train. Performers had a lot of baggage to schlep around–trunks full of costumes (which they usually made themselves), makeup (which they also make themselves, since this was before the days of commercial makeup), wigs, and essential stage props. Those who were unable to bring scenic backdrops and stage props with them had to rely on whatever the theater had for backdrops and scrounge for whatever furniture or props their play required. 

They stayed at hotels near the station and boarding houses because they were cheap and because reputable hotels wouldn’t allow actors as guests. They were adept at sleeping on the train–most planned their travels to include an overnight train ride to save the dollar for the hotel. Vaudeville players would try to leave the theater late Saturday night after the last performance and arrive in the next city on Sunday morning, ready to start a new week at a new theater.  Theater actors had it worse–they might stay just one or two nights in a town before moving.

Obviously, children of these families didn’t attend school. Some were functionally illiterate; others, like Mary Pickford, taught themselves to read from the billboards alongside the train tracks.  Constantly on the move, they were out of reach of truant officers, who were ineffectual anyway.  

Vaudeville actors, like all actors, were applauded on stage and despised off stage. They faced overt discrimination everywhere, from hotels that would not rent them rooms to restaurants who turned them away at the door. Church congregations scorned them and often refused to perform marriages or funerals. They were assumed to be petty criminals, prostitutes, shoplifters, con artists, thieves, and beggars, and in fact, some were. 

Amazing luck–I happened to see a small notice in the newspaper about the Verizon building in Richmond, Va., opening it’s private telephone museum to the public for a few hours that same afternoon. I jumped in the car and headed downtown to a corporate display of old telephones and related equipment. Several retired telephone workers were there to explain the intricacies of early technology, how telephone operators worked, and what sort of promotional advertisements played along with the decades. Fascinating. Several rooms of stuff dating from the 1800s to the present. This private museum (which I had never heard of, even though I’ve lived in this city for 34 years) is opened by Verizon on request or on rare occasions, like that afternoon. I learned a lot.

I had never been satisfied that I understood state-of-the-art telephone equipment of 1925, when my novel takes place. Now I do. Now I can write about it with confidence. (Yes, it’s a very minor part of my story, but historians are compulsive about getting the details right.)

Here are some pictures I took of three telephones from the Roaring Twenties. And I now know how they worked! My main character’s house has the wall version, below, that you cranked (the handle on the right) to talk to the operator (into the mouthpiece, center) and then asked for the number you wanted. She (operators were all female) plugged it in to make the connection and the other line rang a bell. You put the left hand apparatus to your ear. 

Vaudeville performances were variety shows consisting of about nine acts, almost always including music, singing, dancing, comedy, animal acts, and juggling or acrobatic acts. Vaudeville shows generally lasted one week, then the performers moved on to the next town to a different lineup.

Touring theater consisted of full-length plays, sometimes musicals, but they were often one-night stands. During the first part of the twentieth century, there were hundreds of touring theater companies working in the United States, most pretty poor quality. The height of success for an actor was to get a role in a Broadway play. That provided some stability and a stationary lifestyle, at least for a few months or as long as the play lasted.  

Silent film producers got their actors and actresses from vaudeville and the theater. Making films was originally considered a big step down from the theater stage, even for those touring in second-rate companies, like Mary Pickford. Little Mary, a teenager, was so mortified that her mother made her work for a New York film studio that she would sneak in and out of the studio so no one would see her. But the family needed money desperately and Little Mary, or Our Mary, as she would later be known, was the breadwinner. So she went slumming in the silent pictures, never imagining that they would bring her international fame and immense fortune.