What Was America’s Tenth Largest Industry in the Twenties?

A couple weeks ago I wrote that the fifth-largest industry in America in the Twenties was alcohol (Feb. 11 post). Guess what the tenth largest was?

The motion picture business. 

That surprised the hell out of me, because the industry seems to have still been in its early stages, but really, it had been around for about two decades, if you count nickelodeons.  When you consider not just the production of motion pictures but the thousands of movie theaters and musicians across the country involved in showing a film, the ranking seems more reasonable.  

How often do you go to the movies? (Watching at home doesn’t count.) I watch a lot of movies through Netflix and a few on television, but went to a movie theater just once in 2011.  In 1925, the number of movie tickets purchased in America during an average week was 100 million. That was with a population of 115 million. Compare that to today, with our population of 313 million, when the average number of tickets purchased is 25 million per week. That’s roughly three times as many people buying a quarter of the tickets. 

Why? Obviously, there are more alternatives today, with movies shown on television and movie rentals to watch at home, not to mention competition from the computer game industry. In addition, ticket prices have soared, making it difficult for a family to take the kids to a movie or the teenagers to afford a date.  

Rin Tin Tin: Training

One of the most amazing things about Rin Tin Tin was his training. The idea that an ordinary person, like Lee Duncan, Rinty’s owner (below, center), could train his own pet was new in the Roaring Twenties.

 According to Susan Orlean in Rin Tin Tin: The Life and Legend, dog training started in Europe, as did obedience competitions. These concepts came to the United States in the twentieth century. Before then, owners simply didn’t train their own dogs. They sent them to professionals to train as hunters or shepherds or whatever. Professional handlers trained dogs in schools for several weeks or months, then returned them to their owners with instructions. 

I learned some things in this book that I can use in my Roaring Twenties mystery series. I’m working on #3, and added a dog to the plot, a German Shepherd that looks like Rin Tin Tin but is old and feeble. But he’s still going to save the day in the end, just like Rinty! 

Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend

Historically, dogs were workers, bred to function as guards, hunters, shepherds, trackers, and beasts of burden. Surprisingly–to me, at least–the concept of a dog as a pet didn’t evolve until the early twentieth century. The canine star, Rin Tin Tin, is a fascinating case in point. I just read Susan Orlean’s book, Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend, and recommend it highly for anyone interested in dogs or in the Roaring Twenties. 

The German Shepherd was a “new” dog in the Twenties–the breed had been developed only a couple decades earlier (guess where) and introduced into the United States after World War I. American soldiers came home with stories about this smart, brave, and loyal breed, and a few of them, like Lee Duncan, brought one home with them.

Lee Duncan (center) with Rinty

Duncan found a puppy in a ruined German kennel, named him Rin Tin Tin (Rinty for short), and took him home in 1919. Astounded at how smart the dog was, Duncan trained him and then shopped him around to the Hollywood studios until one–Warner Brothers–signed Rinty up for a movie. He acted so well in small parts in two 1922 films that he was given his first starring role in a 1923 feature film, “Where the North Begins.” After that, he cranked out features until he died in 1932 at the age of fourteen. 

Jack Warner had been leery of animal actors ever since he’d been bitten by a monkey, but he quickly came around after Rinty’s phenomenal success. Daryl Zanuck wrote the screenplays. Warner paid Rinty $1,000 a week at a time when human actors made $150. Someone figured that in eight years, Warner paid Rin Tin Tin’s owner the equivalent of $5 million. There is little doubt that Rin Tin Tin movies kept Warner Bros. Studios from going under. In fact, Jack Warner called the dog his Mortgage Lifter.

But Rinty was not a pet in these films. He was a a companion, a co-worker. He was rarely shown indoors. He wasn’t playing a role; he was playing himself. (Later, the many different male collies that played Lassie were portraying a fictional female dog made popular in the novel, Lassie Come Home.)

Rin Tin Tin astonished audiences with his physical feats. He climbed a tree, he leaped 12-foot walls, he fought bears. And he “acted.” His expressions showed sorrow, anger, and happiness as well as any human actor, and in silent movies, his lack of speech wasn’t a disadvantage. Soon, German Shepherds were the most sought after breed in America, and Rinty’s pups started at $250, the rough equivalent of $3,000 today. 

 

The Lure of Absinthe

This green alcoholic beverage has had a colorful career since its debut in the late 18th century. Flavored with wormwood, fennel, anise, and other herbs, the beverage has a bitter, licorice flavor and a high alcoholic content. Drinking it was supposed to bring on hallucinations. 

 

Absinthe reached the pinnacle of its popularity in the Roaring Twenties in Paris, where the bohemian population of writers and artists made it their trademark beverage in spite of it being illegal. Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, and Ernest Hemingway are associated with absinthe. 

There were several ways to consume the drink, but the most famous one involves placing a sugar lump on a slotted spoon held over a glass of absinthe, then pouring ice water over the sugar cube. The beverage turns milky. 

Many countries banned the production of absinthe in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries because it was believed to be more dangerous than other alcoholic beverages. After this was disproved–it has no hallucinogenic effects after all–it gradually became legal. In 2007, it became legal in the United States, so you can buy it if you like. Personally, I can’t stand licorice-flavored drinks like pastis, ouzo, pernod, or anisette, so I’ll pass. 

“The Artist” : a Silent Film Revival

What a marvelous movie! I saw “The Artist” at a theater yesterday and was thoroughly entertained. I suspect this will lead to a lot more interest in the large number of genuine silent movies that still exist. I’ve watched several myself through Netflix and see one occasionally on television. 

Do see “The Artist” if you haven’t yet. The acting is great fun–the laughs and gasps of surprise are there too.

The story is simple, a romance where one character’s career is rising and the other’s is falling. The main character, George Valentin, is Hollywood’s most popular leading man who, when talkies come, plummets from riches to rags. As his career tanks, that of young Peppy Miller skyrockets, turning her from aspiring extra to leading lady.

It will be instantly obvious to those who know about Hollywood in the Twenties that Valentin’s character is based on Douglas Fairbanks. First of all, he looks exactly like Fairbanks. He performs exactly the same sort of roles, and at one point, when the date says 1931, Valentin is shown reminiscing with his own old movies and the scenes they show come from Fairbanks’ 1920 movie, “Mark of Zorro.” (I recognized those scenes right away–the jump over the wall followed by a swarm of soldiers, the leaping somersault over the fence, and the jumps from rooftop to rooftop.) Fairbanks, too, failed to make the change from silents to talkies, although in his case it was more because of his age than ability. Valentin’s story also mirrors Fairbanks’ struggle with alcohol as his popularity wanes.

 The character of Peppy Miller, enthusiastically played by Berenice Bejo, could be any one of several actresses who rose from obscurity to fame due to their looks, talent, and silver screen charisma.  And I’d be remiss if I didn’t praise the superb acting skills of the little dog! I guess he won’t be nominated for an Oscar. 

The Smithsonian website carried an interesting article about this film.  See www.smithsonian.com/silentfilm

What Was America’s Fifth Largest Industry in the Twenties?

I don’t know what the fifth largest industry in the U.S. is today, but in 1920, at the start of Prohibition, it was alcohol. When you tallied up all the breweries, distilleries, and wineries in the United States, and all the support industries like barrel makers and glass bottle manufacturers, and threw in all the bars, saloons, private clubs, and caterers who served the stuff, you come up with the fifth largest industry in the country. Think of the jobs lost when Prohibition went into effect! Think of the family businesses destroyed . . . like this one:

Christian-Moerlein, one of the countries largest breweries until Prohibition (Cincinnati)

Of course, not all liquor, beer, and wine producers went out of business. Some wineries made grape juice and Communion wine, the only wine still allowed for religious reasons.  (The demand for Communion wine skyrocketed, but an even better way to get it legally was with a prescription for medical reasons, which also skyrocketed.) Some saloons turned into restaurants; others became speakeasies and sold alcohol illegally. Some breweries produced malt extract, a legal product that could be used in the home to make beer; others hung on by selling nonalcoholic beverages. But thousands and thousands of jobs and businesses disappeared. Sure, some started up again after this stupid law was repealed, but it was too late for most. 

Prohibition didn’t prohibit consumption of alcohol.

What’s the difference between the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act? I used to think they were the same thing, but the amendment is very short, only 3 sentences. It is the Volstead Act that explained how prohibition was to be enforced and which alcoholic beverages were included. The amendment simply prohibits “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States.”

Notice what it doesn’t prohibit–the drinking of alcoholic beverages. Drinking the stuff was not illegal. So private clubs and individuals could–and did–stock up on liquor in the months before Prohibition was to take effect, so they would be assured of having drinks for a long while. Supposedly the Yale Club had stocked enough to last 14 years–a prescient move, if it’s true, since Prohibition lasted 13 years, from 1920 to 1933.  

The Volstead Act defined intoxicating beverages as any beverage that contained more than 1/2 % alcohol. It made exceptions for doctors who could prescribe whiskey, for churches that could continue to use sacramental wine, and for scientists doing research. It also exempted rubbing alcohol, necessary in hospitals. Not surprisingly, these exemptions were abused, as doctors began writing prescriptions for friends, as hospital supply clerks began ordering railroad cars full of alcohol that they used to buy by the case, and bogus churches sprang up to claim the religious exemption. The law could never succeed with such a large portion of the population willing to skirt it. The majority fundamentally believed that the government had no business interfering with an individual’s choice in this matter. 

Where Does the Word “Bootlegger” Come From?

The word first appeared in the 1850s in Maine and of course it refers to smuggling liquor. But this seemed odd to me because Prohibition didn’t start until almost 70 years later. That is, except in Maine, the first dry state, where it became illegal to manufacture or consume liquor in 1851. Because Maine shares a border with Canada, the law was easily flouted. Ordinary folks wanting to smuggle liquor into the country could hide a couple bottles in their pants legs in Canada and walk into the United States. 

(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.)

“Midnight in Paris” – A Review

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.

The Return of the Cloche Hat

The NY Times has reported several times in the past few months on the fashion trend toward cloche hats. Today another article appeared, so I thought I’d share it.

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.