The Flapper Story (1988)

it is the dawn of the 1920s she is about to take flight a social Rebel in a short skirt and rolled stockings a defiant champion of a new Womanhood she will be called a flapper this is the flapper story [Music] she wore clothes a little short a little tight a little fancy she drank she ran around she slept around she had a good time they gathered a great deal of criticism of course from the adult population and there were a great many analyses written in articles about why they why this and so forth it was merely a time a time for things to change the time was the Autumn of 1918 World War I the war to end all war Wars had ended I remember all of the noise and the commotion the day that word came all heck broke loose I think there was sort of a slightly hysterical feeling it wasn't so acute that we were aware of it as young people well as children then really but we knew it was over and we got the sensation of it oh it was wonderful just wonderful the boys would be back again that was the main thing what the international situation we never even thought about [Music] that after World War I there was a great change in the country uh the young men had been overseas they had associated with other countries and they met other people there was a song how you going to keep them down on the farm after they've seen perie and the young women had been given more responsibility they had to do more things for themselves than they had ever done before they never went back to being completely dependent on men as they had been when American men came home they found a new woman who was determined to hang on to the freedom she had gained during the war his fight for equality was nothing new the suffragettes had campaigned for women's rights for over 80 years though they attracted the public Spotlight many people considered the suffragettes to be on lady like I was in high school and I must have been about 14 years old when a woman came to talk to us about the right vote for women I thought she was crazy I felt sorry for her husband to have that kind of a masculine woman to be living with and we felt that we certainly didn't care for votes for women at all the vote was won in 1920 even young women who supported the vote soon disregarded their feminist foremothers I think that probably my generation just simply took for Grant well natur we were going to get the vote you know and these women did the dirty work but we when we came along we'd be able to vote it did work out pretty much that way but they also took advantage of the fact that they had greater freedom of action they weren't so dependent on the nearest male they could earn their own livings they had had jobs away from home during the war some of them worked in factories women in offices my sister had some friends from Maryland who got jobs in the government offices in Washington never in a thousand years would they have done that had there not been an emergency but they kept on with it and they liked it most of them retained the way they look just exactly the same but a lot of them went completely overboard and if you were suddenly out of a corset and out of a lot of tight clothing it was great had a marvelous time spirited worldly wise self-sufficient by 1922 the flapper was ready to come on strong in the 1920s I was still a young girl living at home doing H doing housework for different people around town earning say a dollar a day um housework meant everything from the house to clean the car and clean out the chicken coops things of that sort I was glad to get the dollar a day I suspect that women who had more money the wealthier families had always had a lot more freedom but here were middle class women who had been subject to the middle class morality I suppose you could say suddenly with a lot of freedom this was postwar Prosperity they did have more money they had charge accounts the department stores were apparently very middle class conscious at this point they gave bridge lessons they gave fashion shows they did all they could to attract people who suddenly never before had money but now had it with cold cash and a set of Hot Wheels the flapper was on the go the first order of business was to call attention to herself the term came from the fact that in the middle west we all wore gashes and if you were a flapper you never button the button buckles you went and you flapped flapped fla flapped as you went down the street step by step the flapper confronted constraints of Victorian morality step by step the flapper shocked the Modern [Music] Age it was about 1924 25 and when my friend the lady friend that was with me lit up a cigarette everybody in the place looked at her it just wasn't done to smoke out in public it wasn't considered the nice thing to do at all you know and then Along Came Our Generation and we all wanted to smoke particularly because it wasn't considered the nice thing to do I guess smoking in public was not the only way the flapper announced her independence in her dress and manner she flaunted her Rebellion against a stuffy old-fashioned Victorian Womanhood everybody had long hair of course and it was woman's crowning Glory now that was real Defiance on the part of the flappers cutting it and Mania girl came home to with her hair cut to her family's utter disgust so I kept arguing with my mother until she said one day if you want go have it cut and apparently she didn't mean what she said but I took her face value and I had my hair cut and believe me all hell broke loose there's no other way to put it defiant and daring the flapper delighted in shocking her Elders gone was the good girl who preserved propriety the flapper was one of the [Music] boys and the flapper was bad boldly bravely bad to be or not to be that is not the question I decided a long ago to be with me it's what to be now make me some suggestions good or bad which is the best for me when you're after fun and laughter that aggravate you say of await you if it's naughty to Ru your lips shake your shoulders shake your hips let a lady confess I want to be [Music] bad if it's naughty to them men sleep each morning after 10 then the answer is yes I want to be B this thing of being a good little goodie is all very well what can you do when you're loaded with plenty of hell and biger when you're learning what lips are for and it's naughty to ask for more let a lady confess I want to be [Applause] by the 1920s standards of feminine modesty had changed and then all at one time the skirts got up to the knee and once a year at College we gave a gymnasium exhibit and the whole town came up to it because it was like the Folly Brier they saw legs which in the long skirt you didn't see but now with the flappers they could see legs all the time it was a flask stuck in the top of your rolled stocking and hats that looked like flower pots and came down over your head your clothes were so slight that you couldn't possibly wear a girdle some women wore canvas bras to flatten out their chests the clothes were very straight and very slim and they were to the older generation they were called very fast and they held up their hands in horor that no good was going to come of these women oh they thought it was terrible just all awful those rolled socks and there was many a mother that made a girl go to the dance wearing a girdle or a corset as they used to call it and of course it cover and the girl the first thing she did was take off the girdle park it in the in the dressing room with her coat or wrap whatever she was wearing and because boys didn't want to dance with girls that had stays that held them in they like the soft squashy feeling that they could we're experiencing for the first time now if it's wrong to let someone face Just a Little Kiss by mistake let a lady confess I to [Music] be by the mid-20s breaking taboos was a national Pastime oh yes I remember prohibition very well I can remember all the discussion that led to it and then the horror went when it happened up until the time of prohibition it was not considered good manners to to get drunk at a party could get drunk any place but after Pro aition it was a kind that was a kind of dare and everybody got drunk and it was how drunk you got that was whether you had had a good time good time Whoopi was easy to find the underground Speak Easy kept the flapper spiff ligated on Hooch giggle water bathtub gin always going into the speak easys I always took a bottle of liquor along that was given to me by a boot leer and I would put it up my sleeve I had big Bell sleeves on the fur coat and I would stick it up my sleeve and carry it in and nobody see it why all these men that were from the legislature would say now come on let's get down to Joe's Place or let's go here let's go there we go upstairs some place and knock on a door and then pretty soon there's a little sloted open in the door and then they let us all in one time one of the assemblymen from San Francisco said to me we make the laws in the daytime we break them at night the urban flapper who broke loose at the Speak Easy came in contact with the sizzling sound of jazz Black jazz the urban nightclub black performers played for white audiences but the flapper gave racial matters little serious thought she came only to see what was hot what was new what was it the black style seemed dazzling exotic the flapper returned to her Lily white world but she had not forgotten what she had seen the the Jazz Age had arrived and the flapper had one thing only on her mind I love to dance so I went every time I never turned down a dance invitation that was what I cared to do more than anything else greetings ladies and gentlemen from Anson weeks and his orchestra who play nightly at the hotel Mark Hopkins San Francisco quick Anson good fellow some music in keeping with the scene there were some very famous musicians that played in San Francisco it was quite a town as it is now and then there was many fraternity and sorority dances there was just no end to dances you could go all the time night after night we've always is not we should be taught to dance right here at Tate we're up to date we teach a great new dance don't think that I brag I speak of the drag why should a she learn how to speak Latin and Greek badly give him aat M complete say it with feet gladly first lesson right now you love it and how you love it here is the drag see how it goes down on the heels up on the toes that's a way to do the varsity drag hotter hot newer than new meaner than mean bler than blue gets as much Applause as w a flag you can pass many a class whether you're dumb or wise if you all answer the call when your professor cries everybody down on the heels up on the toes stay after school and learn how it goes everybody foot loose and fancy free the flapper lived for the moment I didn't have any goal let's say put it that way I didn't have a goal in mind for anything when I was a little girl I wanted to be a missionary and go and go to India or China or some Far Away place and uh I outgrew that very quickly and then uh well I don't know there was a I can't really say that there was anyone especially that I admired we had adire the movie actresses of course a great deal though we knew we could never be like them Hollywood in the 20s provided Role Models [Music] Galore every flapper had her favorite there was greata Garbo was mentioned and there was poag and theera The Vamps The Vamps came in with their eyes all made up and and just lying around sensually what was a vamp a vampire a vampire was a woman that could suck the life out of a man practically destroy him and that's what these women did as they played the part of Cleopatra destroying Mark Anthony and so on gorus Swanson I thought she was the last word and of course Rudolph Valentino all the women were crazy about him he was just a handsome Arab Clara B was really something because she represented sex Wild As far as I was concerned oh she was somebody they called her the it girl and she could project that sex of feel right out there in front of God and everybody Joan Crawford made a film called dancing daughters and which it was a there was a lot more smooching and and uh and touching than there in all the previous films a kiss at one time was considered well that was just about to live an end when you had a final kiss in a movie and to have people who touched each other all the time was really revolutionary we had gone to the movie and it was my birthday and he took my hand and without realizing he had slipped a diamond ring on my finger I was trying and think what movie we saw but I don't remember the movie but it was a fun movie a happy movie so that's when I got my engagement [Music] [Music] ring liberate sophisticated Carefree the flapper soared high in her new found Enlightenment or did she well even in my generation there was no talk of sex at all and that was a something I I don't know how you absorbed it but some or other things occurred and no one ever explained to me about menstration it just happened H certainly I didn't really was very vague about uh except the theory about the sperm meets the egg but how the sperm and the egg ever got together that I really didn't know and suddenly there got to be a great deal more frankness about things into um free love well that became the great big discussion of the day and all the Articles and all the criticisms of it and then all the freethinking young women were practicing free love now they weren't all prag in birth control cuz there wasn't that much known about it there are great many theories I was a talker more than I was an actor in that my mother had brought me up with the idea that boys would try and kiss you and hug you and so on but that was only done for two reasons for the pleasure it gave them and so they could go and vast to the other boys what they had accomplished and she said they'll always exaggerate it don't give them any opportunity and that's the way I was but it's the same double standard as today men could go out and we use the Expression hell around but women were not supposed to that same old double standard well the bad girls were notorious and frequently popular and at least had lots of men and dates it was perfectly possible he good have a of a good time but the so-called bad girls were the ones who were noticeable they were colorful and they were certainly doing things that women had not done before not going to nightclubs women had not gotten drunk in public and they were very interesting for the newspapers but they're very small segment of society most of the women the mothers were women who stayed at home the working women just went along their merry way they were just a bunch of hardworking [Music] women I could have been a teacher a librarian a secretary a nurse and those were the only things that were open to you you did that until you got married and then when you were married there was no furthering of the and they weren't counted as careers they were counted as Jobs something you did until you turn enough money and until you got married I dreamed of getting married always dreamed of getting married I still feel that marriage is very very important I did then and I still feel that way well you know that was the last thing in my mind getting married I guess and my mother said to me one time Marie when are you going to get married I said I don't know I'm in no hurry and I wasn't i l my freedom [Music] by 1929 the flapper was on her way out her story was drawing to a close she accepted her momentos and cast her Legacy [Music] [Music] what became of the flapper depended on circumstance our first year reunion of my class from Smith and it was I understood it was true from most of the other schools too about seven out of 10 went into social work because we were the depression kids we came out into a big depression boy and a job was a job even a flapper who traded her freedom for Economic Security could not be assured of a safe return on her investment and when I got married everybody that knew us said I can't imagine Marie getting married to Norman hunt because he doesn't like to dance and I don't can't imagine how they're going to get along when we first got married I didn't have to work but the depression came along then I had to go to work we work day and night both of us my husband and I sometimes it was an unexpected complication that made later life difficult oo how I became a nurse goes way back to this is a sad story but it's the whole story my f husband walked out on the children and I I had four children because he had gotten a woman in Texas pregnant and I had been a housewife for 20 years raising children and I hadn't worked since I'd been at the drug store sometimes after a marriage broke up the flapper realized there were other Pursuits for which she was better suited now I was lucky because I had a profession to go back to too I was not a good Homemaker I think I did it but I think for myself that I prefer the office world and sometimes it was merely historic events that prevented the Flapper from becoming all she might have become then after my second child was born I went back and began work on a PhD I was admitted to Stanford the war came along however and there was no transportation and I was inv involved in volunteer War work so I never went out and I'm very sorry I didn't the suffragette had hoped that her successors would continue the fight for political Freedom instead the flapper chose to change society through stylish rebellion and personal gain it would be another day before the personal and the political would be United for the moment Freedom was a fashion a fad a contest a party and when the party was over it was time to go home [Music] no [Music] the [Applause] [Music] n for