Age Of Ballyhoo (edited, 1979)

[Music] Crowds began gathering in midafter afternoon. By evening, 10,000 people jammed the intersection at 7th Avenue, 50th Street in New York. 3,000 were already inside admiring crystal chandeliers, fivetory columns of green marble, and the largest oval rug in the world. My name is Gloria Swanson. I was there, too. It was the opening of the Roxy, the Cathedral of Motion Picture. Charlie Chaplan came and even Texas Gynan was there. Empressia Roxy announced himself quite satisfied. Take a look at this stupendous theater, he said. I'd rather be Roxy than John D. Rockefeller or Henry Ford. In these good old days, movie palaces were our public temples, and our wagers, citizens, young and old, went to them at least two or three times a week. The motion picture which opened the Roxy was mine. The loves of Sonia. I had produced it myself and I was all of 27 years old. You know, we never thought of these movies as time capsules, but in a way they were. No matter what the stories, the films seemed to document the years. The 20s were an age of belly hoop, the jazz age. [Music] [Applause] [Music] The decade was all that, but it was more. This is a look at the 20s through authentic documents, songs, words, and films, and not just motion pictures, but news reels, too. But the camera's eye seemed [Music] everywhere. Oh, it was a great time to be alive. November 1918, the war was over. After a year in France, the troops were coming [Music] home. President Wilson called it a great crusade to make the world safe for democracy. For these men, the war was something else. Trenches, boredom, very little glory. A 100,000 doughboys died. But all that seemed forgotten now as wives and sweethearts, mothers and sons waited to welcome the boys back. They expected to find their world much as they had left it. Parades and celebrations in small towns and villages. Church socials, picnics, and county fairs. The first luxury was, guess what? An automobile. You could buy a brand new Model T for less than $300. It would go 45 m an hour. And as Henry Ford said, it was available in any color so long as it was black. 15 million families bought them by 1927. One farm lady was asked why her family bought a car when they had no bathtub. Well, she explained, "You can't go to town in a bathtub. People gave up walking and cars replaced horses as a principal mode of transportation. Sunday afternoon drives became a family ritual. Of course, dive hearts maintained the course could never be replaced, but some drivers were ready to accept any challenge. As primitive as these cars seem today, people literally fell in love with them. They call them flivers and tin lizies. They made jokes about them, wrote songs about them, thought they could go anywhere. [Music] Cars provided a new mobility, but motorists were often frustrated for the paved road usually ended just beyond the city limits. Travelers crossing Iowa in early spring sometimes had to wait for days. So, we paved the old roads and built new highways, more than 300,000 miles of them in the 20s. [Music] By 1928, a motorist could drive all the way from New York to Kansas on paved roads. Further west, car travel was still a great adventure in the rainy season. Wires followed the roads, bringing electric lights, radios, electric irons, and vacuum cleaners into homes and villages and distant farms. More and more the telephone too tied the country together. You could call Aunt Clara at Christmas, find out what time it was if it was raining in Chicago and what your neighbors were doing simply by picking up the telephone. In the 20s, we spent more money on roads and buildings than on anything else. The filling station became an American institution. And when we all drove downtown, we invented the parking problem. The city changed the country. So did the machine. Mechanization and efficient management revolutionized American industry. Without increasing the labor force, factories doubled production in the 20s. Workers made more money for shorter hours. Profits mounted. Business was booming. Machinery was the new messiah, Henry Ford proclaimed. Lots of people agreed. With new technology came standardization. Breakfast came in [Music] boxes. For the first time, many consumers became conscious of brand names. Postosis went from corntock to table untouched by human hands. From Maine to Mexico, Americans brushed their teeth with soda, killed germs with Listerine. Vic Moxy bought their groceries at the AMP. But not me. To most people, technology meant the moving assembly line, which Henry Ford introduced in 1914. It took the Ford Motor Company 7 years to make 1 million cars. By 1924, they could do it in 132 days. A year later, a Model T rolled off the assembly line every 10 seconds. Detroit became a modern mecca. Businessmen came from around the world to study its techniques. Good luck, Mr. Ford clipped humorous Will Rogers. We won't know for years if you hurt us or you helped us, but you certainly didn't leave us as you found us. Ford himself said, "I will build a motor car for the great multitude, so low in price that every man will be able to own one and enjoy with his family hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces. The car made the country accessible. It was a way for average citizens to return to the woods, visit national parks, and rediscover the joy of Sunday picnics. [Music] We grew up founding our dreams on infinite promises of American advertising, said Zelda [Music] Fitzgerald. And people agreed with Emil Kuay. Every day in every way things were getting better and better. We invested not just in necessities, but in the promises of comfort, convenience, and efficiency. The California gold rush dwindled by contrast to the Florida land boom of 1925. Finding the fountain of youth could not have made John D. Rockefeller more enthusiastic. Day after day for months, William Jenning Bryan preached the gospel of sunshine and saltwater. Miami was the wonder city, the only place, said Brian, where the lie you tell at breakfast can come true by evening. Within a year, 20 million building lots were staked out and sold. Buying and selling land was a principal industry organized on mass production lines. But many who flocked to Florida discovered they had purchased inaccessible swamps. Then in September 1926, the hurricanes came, leaving 50,000 homeless. Promoters insisted the damage could be repaired, but the tropical wind had burst the bubble in the sun. Rum running was another boom business in the 20s. Bootleggers religiously observed the law of supply and demand, but broke some of the others. Assaist EB White suggested that the government nationalized speak easys, assuring citizens liquor of uniformly high quality. That way, he said, the enormous cost of dry enforcement could be met by profits from the sale of drinks. Federal agents would occasionally raid a still or seize a spectacular cargo of scotch, but 2,000 treasury men were no match for 18,000 mi of coastline and the underworld. The noble experiment failed and was repealed in 1933. Prohibition spawned its own celebrities. Waxy Gordon, Legs Diamond, and Scarface El Capone. Organized crime was synonymous with big cities. Fearful, the country organized its own groups to uphold the Constitution, the Bible, and the flag. The Klutz clan with 5 million members proclaimed itself guardian of native values, defending white against black, gentile against Jew, Protestant against Catholic. On August 8th, 1925, 40,000 clansmen carrying Bibles marched down Pennsylvania Avenue singing the national anthem. Offscreen, Rudolfph Valentino was charming and modest. In his films, he was a sheep bringing Latin love to millions of American women. They dreamed of being carried across a desert in his arms, struggling virtuously but not too violently. When at the age of 31, Rudy died suddenly, 30,000 people, among them Polengra, came to pay their last respects to the symbol of a perfect lover. It was the golden age of sports. The flying final became a public hero. Soon it seemed everyone was running, handwriting the paved streets of cities seemed an invitation to a 100 kids on [Music] bikes. 30,000 bowling alleys were built in the 1920s and women too found time to play. Tilden Johnson, Helen Wills drew crowds through courts at Forest Hills. Bobby Jones inspired two million Americans to buy Woods and Irons. Keep your eye on the ball. And in the 20s, everybody did. It became an age of watching sports as well as taking part in them. People paid $4.5 million to watch Jack Dempsey and Jean Tunny in 1926 and 27. Red Grains joined the Chicago Bears. The Meers nominated him for Congress. N Rochney and the four horsemen made college football big business. Yale University sold a million dollars worth of football tickets one season alone. On Saturday afternoon, thousands packed the stadiums to watch the Cowboys meet the Indians of the Giants Battle of Bears as Graeme McName gave playbyplay descriptions to minions at home by their radios. In 1923, New Yorkers built Yankee Stadium as a monument to baseball. On opening day, 74,000 people packed the place to cheer the babe. Few sports figures of any era achieved the fame and fortune of George Herman [Music] Roof. Fans bought Eskimo pies, tons of Cracker Jackack, and hot dogs. Al Smith threw out the first ball. In their adulation, enthusiastic sport riders could not overpraise Babe Booth. During the 1927 season alone, he hit more than 60 home runs, setting a record to be unbroken for a generation. Babe Ruth and the New York Yankees were real heroes to us then. But the hero of heroes was Charles Lindberg, who with the spirit of St. Louis formed the team he called we. At Curtisfield on Long Island, the 25-year-old Lindberg, Commander Richard E. Bird, and veteran pilot Clarence Chamberlain were among aviators from all over the world competing for a $25,000 prize offered to the first who would fly the Atlantic nonstop. Anxious after a week of rain, Lindberg made his move. Early in the morning, he had his plane towed to Roosevelt Field. The weather was breaking over the ocean, and just after dawn on the 20th of May 1927, Charles A. Lindberg, carrying a few sandwiches and some letters of introduction, climbed into his plane and took off for France. [Applause] The New York Herald Trabune reported that Lindberg seemed to lift the overloaded plane into the sky by his indomitable will alone. [Applause] In 33 hours and 30 minutes, he flew into legend. [Music] In the cold gray dawn, when the stars were gone in a mighty arrow flame, flew a boy in search of pain. Far across the bounding, like a bird on high out to do or die on his journey over there. Many million hearts beat for him and the whole world said a prayer for Lindberg. Oh, what a blind fool was he. Lindberg his name will live in history. Over the ocean he flew all alone. Gambling with fate and with dangers unknown. Fathers may take that trip across the sea. upon some fur. But take your hats off to Fluffy Lucky Lindberg, the eagle of the USA. Others may make a trip across the sea upon some good day, but take your hat and go to lucky lucky Lindberg off the US. When asked if he intended to fly back to New York, Lindbrook said, "I don't think I shall try that." So, President Culage sent the cruiser Memphis and brought the hero home. We thought he was more important than the end of World War I. The New York Times devoted more space to his return than it did to the armistice. Technology had transformed our lives, and we wondered if machinery really was the new messiah, as Henry Ford had told us. "Lindberg seen proof that machines could enoble rather than confine." "You fellas have not said enough about that wonderful motor," he told reporters. He never let us forget that man and machine that we had made the flight together. In an age of so little poetry and so much uncertainty, Lindberg seemed a modern Galahad. And we shouted ourselves course in celebration, not because he had flown the Atlantic, not even because he was an American, but because of his bravery, his dignity, and his modesty. Lindberg reminded us of all we thought best in ourselves. An uncommon man in an age of baloo. All alone in the race to obsess. Through the cold and fleet you carried on without a buddy or word of cheer. You brave the danger alone. Great is the ride of Paul Rivere. Your name goes down in history. Lindberg, a hero to do and dare. Dauntless, fearless, victorious. And while you were flying high in the sky, you flew into the heart of the world. While we were praying, we knew you'd come through. Now the flag of your victory is unfurled. The spirit of youth carried you on and the mother's prayer did it. with God on his throne leading you across the [Music] home. Like an angel you flew into part. [Music] This photograph holds a precious place among my memories because this great American gentleman has never lowered his standards. Something for youngsters to look up to. That decade did change us. But American leaders left our mark all over the world. It can still be seen by those who look around and understand the years when we were young and the world held promise of 10,000 bright tomorrows. [Applause] Oh, give me something to remember you by when you are far away from me, dear. So give me something to remember you by when you are far away from me. [Music]