Lesbian affairs, all-night sex and cocaine..: Wild lives of Gatsby-era flappers

UK Daily Mail ^ | May 14, 2013 | Deni Kirkova and Martha De Lacey

[C19fan]

Money flowed, jazz music rang out, and fashionable young women in 1920s London, Paris and New York set aside behaviour previously deemed 'appropriate' in favour of high spirits, short skirts, hedonism and social liberation. These giddy, creative, enthusiastic women of the Roaring Twenties' were named 'flappers' because of their effervescent personalities. They were writers, actresses, painters, society heiresses, and they were a new breed of women typified by newly bobbed hair, thick make-up and predilections for smoking, drinking, dancing the Charleston... and then some. As Baz Luhrmann's new cinematic remake of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby prepares for release, global interest in the era is piquing.

[count-your-change]

Indeed but coming out of horrific war even a house of cards provided opportunities for fortunes to be made. and lost.

The “Great War”, “The War to End All Wars” was quite a blow to the comfortable moral assumptions of people. Toss out the old morality, in with the new amorality.

[agere_contra]

WW2 was caused by the rise of totalitarian ideology.

This was attractive to Germans because their middle class and their solid morality had been hollowed out by the actions of their government in 1923 - i.e. the printing of bales of money which caused hyperinflation and the destruction of the German people’s wealth and common prudence.

[timeflies]

I hate most of these “period” movies because most people think this is the way it was for America as a whole. No it was not. “Gone With The Wind” had people thinking all white farmers in the south owned huge plantations and slaves. You never hear of poor white farmers who picked and hoed cotton. I think “Paper Moon” was a better movie of that era.

[Lou Budvis]

“

The 1920s were, in part, a reaction against the Progressive Era. Republicans were in charge — Harding and Coolidge — and they largely tried to give a smaller role to government. Let the people live their lives. Of course, there were exceptions — the Democrats had forced through things like Prohibition, Income Tax, and Jim Crow laws — so government was still somethign to be reckoned with, but the feds tried to have a smaller footprint after Wilson was finished.
It was a pretty happy time.

And I would submit that the crash in 1929 wouldn’t have been such a big deal if Hoover hadn’t tried to “solve” everythign with government action. And when his intrusions were deemed “insufficient”, the people elected FDR who tried MUCH harder to “solve” everything. And that’s how Great Depressions happen.”

Bingo! Calvin Coolidge was a great Conservative president. People also got into all kinds of hijinx in the 80s. When you have good economic times - that tends to happen.

[PieterCasparzen]

Could start by reading up on IG Farben, Dillon Read, Standard Oil.

Question to ask is which countries and companies fared well during and after the war.

[NFHale]

“....onerous armistice terms forced on Germany after WWI are the primary cause of WWII...”

And WWI - at least the portion of it between the Frenchies and the Germans - was inevitable because of the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian war. The Germans kicked the hell out of the Frenchies in that conflict; the French, being French, had very long and hostile memories and taught “Revanche!!!” to every French student for 45 years afterwards.

The Germans, being Germans, rubbed THEIR noses in it by taking Alsace-Lorraine and reminding them of Teutonic Superiority over Gallic ineptitude at every opportunity...

There was a long history of outright hatred there.

Check out a really excellent book by Sir Alistair Horne called “The Price of Glory”. It’s a good read and documents the battle of Verdun mainly, but also all of the pre WWI hostility between the two European giants.

Great book, written in 1961, when many of the participants were still alive to be interviewed. Check it out if you get a chance. If you enjoy history, it’s a good read.

Off topic, I know... sorry!

[Lockbar]

Kind of hard to imagine donna Shalala, Hillary, and Janet Reno as Flappers.

[Jack Hammer]

One might be forgiven, I think, for arguing that no one fared well during or after the war.

Of course, that would require placing certain moral, spritual and/or emotional issues before considerations of profit.

[kabumpo]

The book is set in Long Island, not Newport.

[kabumpo]

Yes, it was. Prohibition led to huge overindulgence in drinking.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

” Lesbian affairs, all-night sex and cocaine..: Wild lives of Gatsby-era flappers”

Sounds like a grand time was had by all.

[dfwgator]

Sounds like a grand time was had by all.

And then the bill came due.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

It usually does.

[kabumpo]

Ella Fitzgerald has nothing to do with that period. The novel is set in the 1920s. She wasn’t born until 1917, and didn’t begin her singing career until 1934, in the Great Depression.
The 1920s Saw the birth of jazz, but there weren’t really female jazz vocalists. There were great black blues singers like Bessie Smith, but the white vocalists of time - Ruth Etting, Helen Morgan - were singing popular music, jazz per se.

[jimt]

“rap music” is an oxymoronic phrase.

(C)rap isn’t music.

[PieterCasparzen]

Of course, I’m not referring to human feelings, wounds, deaths, etc.

If one thinks along the lines of a businessman or politician, it’s a different picture.

US financial, political interests reigned supreme. United Nations, UN, IMF, World Bank, a number of large/global businesses, investment banks, etc., etc., just some of the many interests that came out of WWII either new or improved. The rebuilding after a war is always an enormous opportunity for profit for those who are in the rebuilding business, either from the operational or finance side. Also, USSR gained much territory and emerged a superpower. Far too many changes to list here, certainly.

A whole new world emerged out of WWII when you think about it. Us poor “little people” tend to focus on the emotional, however; it can be a real eye-opening for us to see the big picture.

[Tax-chick]

I know, but the movie was filmed in Newport, and Newport is cooler. Some of my parents’ Navy friends were extras.

[x]

It was called “The Jazz Age”. Using rap or hip-hop music is anachronistic. Will they be using iPhones to communicate also?

There weren't cars or guns or television sets in Elizabethan England or Renaissance Italy, but Luhrmann's "Romeo + Juliet" has all those things.

For better or for worse it's commonplace now to produce Shakespeare in anything but the dress of his own period or the times he wrote about. There's nothing wrong in principle about resetting an adaptation in a different era than the original work.

The film could be a real turkey (knowing Baz's work, that's to be expected), but a straight recreation of the 1920s probably would have been a a yawn-fest, especially since the 1974 film tried to do just that, and largely succeeded.

The funny thing, though ...

... is that what survived of the actual lost 1926 film doesn't look much like the stereotypical 1920s.

[william clark]

Well, you have to remember that this is the guy who made “Moulin Rouge,” which I have always maintained seems like the result of Tim Burton and Ken Russell going out and getting really drunk together, then making a film before sobering up.

[Bratch]

Yes, it was. Prohibition led to huge overindulgence in drinking.

That's because, as today, the elite didn't conform to any rules or laws.