Heroes & Ballyhoo: How the Golden Age of the 1920s Transformed

October 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Heroes & Ballyhoo: How the Golden Age of the 1920s Transformed

A handful of star athletes, along with their promoters and journalists, created America’s sports entertainment industry during the 1920s, the Golden Age of American sports. The period had an extraordinary impact, profoundly changing individual sports, establishing the secular religion of sports and sports heroes, and helping bond disparate social and regional sectors of the country. It’s when sports became a cornerstone of modern American life.

Heroes and Ballyhoo profiles the ten most prominent Golden Age heroes and describes their effect on sports and society. Babe Ruth saved baseball after the Black Sox Scandal. Boxer Jack Dempsey made the “sweet science” a respectable sport. Red Grange single-handedly set professional football on a path to eventual success. Knute Rockne helped transform college football from a game to a colossal enterprise. Bobby Jones changed golf into a spectator sport, and Walter Hagen sparked the first national interest in professional golf. Bill Tilden put tennis on the front of the sports section. Tennis player Helen Wills Moody joined swimmer Gertrude Ederle in empowering women athletes. Johnny Weissmuller astonished international swimming before becoming Tarzan.

The book also explores the ballyhoo artists—sportswriters, promoters, and press agents—who hyped the stars to a receptive public. Simultaneously, the spectators established themselves as the focus of popular sports. The personalities and events of the 1920s thus created today’s entertainment conglomerate of heroes, promoters and advertisers, fans, arenas—and money. Sports as a profit center started with the Golden Age’s heroes and PR artists, and the public’s obsessive interest in sports helped shape America’s emerging mass society. Heroes and Ballyhoo tells the story of what was both a symptom and a cause of modern America.

Heroes & Ballyhoo: How the Golden Age of the 1920s Transformed American Sports

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

America In The 1920s (20th-Century America)

August 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment
America In The 1920s (20th-Century America)

What were Americans doing in the 1920s? Dancing the Charleston, listening to jazz music, and watching Rudolph Valentino at the movies. It was illegal to make or sell liquor during the 1920s, but Americans drank anyway. They sneaked into secret nightclubs called speakeasies and cooked up “bathtub gin” at home.

The 1920s were a time of prosperity in the United States. Americans bought new devices such as radios and refrigerators. They watched as the stock market rose higher and higher. But the decade ended tragically when the stock market crashed in late 1929, ushering in the Great Depression.

The decade’s newsmakers included President Calvin Coolidge, writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, silent film star Greta Garbo, and bandleader Duke Ellington. They helped set the tone for a decade of celebration, wealth, and excitement. From flappers to Frigidaires, from bootleggers to Babe Ruth, read about this fascinating decade from start to finish.

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

The Golden Twenties

August 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment
The Golden Twenties

The Twenties was one of the liveliest decades of the 20th century. Vintage newsreels and movie clips take you on an amazing journey from the end of World War I to the start of the Great Depression.

See breakthroughs in aviation, the start of Prohibition (and the rise of speakeasies), the Scopes “Monkey” Trial, the sexual liberation of the flappers, the advent of radio and the triumph of the automobile.

See famous personalities such as Charles Lindbergh, Harry Houdini, Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino, Babe Ruth, Knute Rockne, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. Most of all, see what made the Roaring Twenties ROAR!

THE REMARKABLE 20TH CENTURY: THE 1920s

From the acclaimed documentary series The Remarkable 20th Century comes a look at the Twenties through archival newsreels, movie clips and exclusive interviews.

Prohibition was the law; bootlegging the national pastime. Women got the vote. Industry boomed. Hollywood found its voice. And jazz drove flappers wild. In 1929, the boom market went bust and the Great Depression began.

Filed Under: Movies Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Cleveland Indians: The Cleveland Press Years, 1920-1982

July 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment
The Cleveland Indians: The Cleveland Press Years, 1920-1982

The Cleveland Indians came into existence along with the American League in 1901, and their rich and fascinating history has been well documented in photographs. Many prints from the Cleveland Press archive, dating from 1920 until the newspaper’s closure in 1982, are reproduced in this book, along with a brief history of the team’s successes and failures in each decade. Most of these classic photographs, which include great Indians players like Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller and slugger Rocky Colavito, a fan favorite, have not been seen in print for decades. You will also see baseball legends Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Hank Greenberg, and Joe DiMaggio as they compete with the Tribe.

The Cleveland Indians: The Cleveland Press Years, 1920-1982 (OH) (Images of Baseball)

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Under Pallor, Under Shadow: The 1920 American League Pennant

April 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Under Pallor, Under Shadow: The 1920 American League Pennant

Babe Ruth, in his first season with the Yankees in 1920, was on pace to break the single-season home run record. In August Indians shortstop Ray Chapman was beaned by a pitch thrown by the Yankees’ Carl Mays during a game in New York and died the next day. In September a grand jury convened in Chicago, and four White Sox players were called to testify about fixing the 1919 World Series.
 
Focusing on the Cleveland Indians, the Chicago White Sox, and the New York Yankees, this book takes us back to a pivotal season when baseball was shaken by tragedy and scandal and when power shifted irretrievably from the teams’ owners to a single commissioner. The struggle for the soul of baseball, both on the field and off, is the story of how the entire American League structure changed. Following the fortunes of baseball’s stars of 1920, Under Pallor, Under Shadow shows us how a unique opportunity for reform was squandered and how the result was the transfer of authority from one powerful dictator (Ban Johnson) to another (Judge K. M. Landis). The first book to tie together the disparate elements of the 1920 pennant race, Under Pallor, Under Shadow shows us America’s pastime at a critical moment in the nation’s cultural history.
(20110120)

Under Pallor, Under Shadow: The 1920 American League Pennant Race That Rattled and Rebuilt Baseball

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Blackball, the Black Sox, and the Babe: Baseball’s Crucial 1920

February 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Blackball, the Black Sox, and the Babe: Baseball's Crucial 1920

Nineteen-twenty was a crucial year not just for the Chicago White Sox but for the game of baseball, in the aftermath of the 1919 World Series scandal. This work is both a collective biography of four individuals whose careers in baseball were forever altered in 1920 and an examination of the 1920 baseball season as a whole. It highlights four legendary personalities-Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the longtime commissioner of Major League Baseball; Babe Ruth, the great pitcher and slugger who changed the game forever; Buck Weaver, the true lone innocent among the Black Sox players who threw the 1919 World Series; and Rube Foster, the fine pitcher, imaginative manager, and great administrator of blackball who founded the Negro National League. Key events that affected the season and the history of baseball are discussed. Nineteen-twenty was the year that Ruth shattered his own home run record and began a hitting spree that brought in record numbers of fans to the ballparks. It was the year that Rube found a way for large numbers of African-Americans to play the game meaningfully, before loyal crowds, despite Jim Crow laws that kept them out of the majors and minors.

Blackball, the Black Sox, and the Babe: Baseball’s Crucial 1920 Season

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Heroes & Ballyhoo: How the Golden Age of the 1920s Transformed

December 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Heroes & Ballyhoo: How the Golden Age of the 1920s Transformed

A handful of star athletes, along with their promoters and journalists, created America’s sports entertainment industry during the 1920s, the Golden Age of American sports. The period had an extraordinary impact, profoundly changing individual sports, establishing the secular religion of sports and sports heroes, and helping bond disparate social and regional sectors of the country. It’s when sports became a cornerstone of modern American life.

Heroes and Ballyhoo profiles the ten most prominent Golden Age heroes and describes their effect on sports and society. Babe Ruth saved baseball after the Black Sox Scandal. Boxer Jack Dempsey made the “sweet science” a respectable sport. Red Grange single-handedly set professional football on a path to eventual success. Knute Rockne helped transform college football from a game to a colossal enterprise. Bobby Jones changed golf into a spectator sport, and Walter Hagen sparked the first national interest in professional golf. Bill Tilden put tennis on the front of the sports section. Tennis player Helen Wills Moody joined swimmer Gertrude Ederle in empowering women athletes. Johnny Weissmuller astonished international swimming before becoming Tarzan.

The book also explores the ballyhoo artists—sportswriters, promoters, and press agents—who hyped the stars to a receptive public. Simultaneously, the spectators established themselves as the focus of popular sports. The personalities and events of the 1920s thus created today’s entertainment conglomerate of heroes, promoters and advertisers, fans, arenas—and money. Sports as a profit center started with the Golden Age’s heroes and PR artists, and the public’s obsessive interest in sports helped shape America’s emerging mass society. Heroes and Ballyhoo tells the story of what was both a symptom and a cause of modern America.

Heroes & Ballyhoo: How the Golden Age of the 1920s Transformed American Sports

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

New York, Empire City: 1920-1945

November 17, 2010 By Leave a Comment
New York, Empire City: 1920-1945

New York between the wars: the city of Babe Ruth, Checker cabs, and Zelda Fitzgerald’s infamous dip in the fountain at the Plaza Hotel. That is the city that comes gloriously to life in this fascinating collection of 100 historical photographs of New York’s notable streetscapes and landmarks. Discovered serendipitously by author David Stravitz when he was on a hunt for used camera equipment, these rare photographs of the city are accompanied here by informative captions and an insightful essay by architectural historian Christopher Gray.

Not only are these photographs being published for the first time, but the clarity and detail of the images, taken with a large-format camera, are astonishing. One can read the signage on the sides of buildings, examine the items in store windows, and see how people on the streets and sidewalks are dressed. From Trinity Church to Harlem, from Coney Island to Yankee Stadium, these images transport the reader into the heart of a vanished era, when men wore fedoras and the Empire City sparkled with promise. AUTHOR BIO: David Stravitz is a professional photographer, an industrial design consultant and product creator for many Fortune 500 companies, and the author of The Chrysler Building: Creating a New York Icon Day by Day. Christopher Gray, the author of Abrams’ New York Streetscapes and other books on New York City architecture, has written the “Streetscapes” column in The New York Times since 1987. Both authors live in New York City.

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The 1920s (American Popular Culture Through History)

October 30, 2010 By
The 1920s (American Popular Culture Through History)

The American 1920s era was known by many names: the Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age, the Dry Decade, and the Flapper generation. Whatever the moniker, these years saw the birth of modern America. This volume shows the many colorful ways the decade altered America, its people, and its future. American Popular Culture Through History volumes include a timeline, cost comparisons, chapter bibliographies, and a subject index.

Writers as diverse as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Damon Runyon presented distinct literary visions of the world. Jazz, blues, and country music erupted onto the airwaves. The exploits of Babe Ruth and Murderers’ Row helped save baseball from its scandals, while such players as Red Grange and Notre Dame’s Four Horsemen brought football to national prominence. Yo-yos, crossword puzzles, and erector sets appeared, along with fads like dance marathons and flagpole sitting. Rudolph Valentino, talkies, and Clara Bow’s It girl appeared on the silver screen. Prohibition indirectly led to bootlegging and speakeasies, while the growing rebelliousness of teenagers highlighted an increasing generation gap.

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

New World Coming: The 1920s And The Making Of Modern America

October 30, 2010 By
New World Coming: The 1920s And The Making Of Modern America

The images of the 1920s have been indelibly imprinted on the American imagination-from jazz, bootleggers, flappers, talkies, the Model T Ford, Babe Ruth, and Charles Lindbergh to the fight for women’s right to vote, racial injustice, and the birth of organized crime. Nathan Miller has penned the ultimate introduction to the era. Publishers Weekly calls it “an excellent chronicle of that turbulent, troubled, and tempestuous decade,” and Jonathan Yardley’s Washington Post review proclaimed this the new classic history of the 1920s, replacing Frederick Lewis Allen’s celebrated account. Using the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald as a backdrop, Miller describes the world of Calvin Coolidge, H. L. Mencken, Woodrow Wilson, and the Red Scare in extraordinarily accessible (and frequently witty) writing, New World Coming is destined to become the book we all turn to, to recall one of the most beloved eras in American history.

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
« Older Posts