History by the Numbers (2021) s01e06 Episode Script

1
(dramatic sting)
- [Narrator] Every once in
a while, there are moments
in history that reshape
the world we live in.
2020 is one of those moments
when our world comes
to a standstill.
(letters trilling)
But ever wonder what happens
after a global pandemic?
(lips smacking)
(man panting)
(woman moans)
- First thing I wanna do
when the pandemic is over is
open mouth kiss everybody.
I mean, open mouth kiss
every consenting adult.
Just wanna make
sure that's clear.
- The post pandemic world,
people are just so
full of (screams).
(people screaming)
Like, you know, from
being cooped up for like,
a year and a half, and we're
just gonna wanna let that out.
- Bet your bottom dollar
people are gonna go nutso.
- Definitely a lotta
babies outta wedlock.
These guys that have
been out of the game
for a while are a
little bit itchy.
I'll tell you that.
- A lotta booze, a lotta
parties, and a lotta orgies,
so mask-off orgies.
(whimsical music)
- [Narrator] Will the
post-pandemic future be full
of wild debauchery?
(intense electronic music)
Sometimes a clue to the future
can be found in the past.
(lively 1920s music)
- The 1920s are an
amazing moment in
terms of world history,
I would say culturally,
as much as anything else.
- [Announcer] The high, wide,
and handsome 1920s brought
undreamed of prosperity.
- It's exciting.
It's exuberant.
It's youthful.
(cork popping)
(flash popping)
- For some people,
it was a big party.
People have a sense of
abandon and freedom.
They feel that now they can
try anything and do anything.
(cars roaring)
- There was this really
strong pull towards the new,
and the modern, and
the fashionable.
- It really is a time of
incredible prosperity.
(lively music)
(people shouting)
For the Wall Street guys,
it's unprecedented in
terms of the wealth,
in terms of what's
happening in this country.
- The pace of change
is so incredibly fast.
People felt that they
were living in the future.
- [Narrator] This is the
history of the roaring 20s
in 501 kisses,
1000 drag queens,
and two and a quarter
billion beers.
(lively music)
(gun firing)
(percussive sounds)
(upbeat music)
(rocket whooshing)
(upbeat music)
(radio murmuring)
(upbeat music)
(old-timey violin music)
What number best sums
up a moment in time?
In the middle of the 1920s,
George Taylor discovers
it's the number 15.
George is a young
college economist.
When he's not studying
his spreadsheets,
he likes to play pool and chess.
- [George] Rack 'em up!
- [Narrator] And he also has
an unusual academic interest
in women's legs.
He's writing his PhD thesis
on the hosiery industry.
- His father was the manager
of a hosiery factory,
so he's very interested
in stockings.
- [Narrator] As part of
his studies, he's measuring
the height of women's
skirts from the ground,
and over the course
of the 1920s,
he's noticed hemlines
have been on the rise.
- [George] Would
you look at that!
- [Narrator] From below the
ankle, then to the calf,
and finally above the knee.
By 1927, they will be a full
15 inches off the ground.
- [George] Amazing!
- [Narrator] And
being an economist,
George puts two
and two together.
He notices that the rise in
hemlines matches the rise
of the Dow Jones index.
- [George] That's
not a coincidence!
- [Narrator] He calls his
theory, the hemline index.
- [Commenter] Super-genius!
- The hemline index is an
economic index that ties
the rise of the economy to
the rise of the hemlines.
So as the economy goes
from slower to faster,
the hemline rises
accordingly up the leg
of the skirt-wearing lady.
(lively 1920s music)
(calendar clicking)
- [Narrator] In August, 1921,
the Dow Jones Industrial index
stands on a low of 63 points.
- [Commenter] Come on!
- [Narrator] By
September, 1929, it rises
to a high of 381 points.
That's a whopping 600% increase.
- [Commenter] Good gravy!
- [Narrator] In the same period,
the number of
advertisements for hosiery
in Vogue Magazine
nearly doubles.
- [Commenter] I love you.
- [Narrator] And the amount
of flesh on display increases
by a staggering 800%.
- [Commenter] Fabulous!
(lively 1920s music)
- Apart from the hemline,
women were also wearing
less clothes, so in
1913, you were wearing
nearly 20 yards of fabric.
By 1925, you're wearing
about seven yards of fabric,
and these lighter, freer
clothes are a reflection
of the new lifestyle
they're leading.
(lively 1920s music)
- It made it much easier
for them to partake
in all of these leisure
activities that were new
and trendy in the 1920s.
They could go bicycle riding.
They could go golfing.
They could do these things
that would have been difficult
to do with the old fashions,
and they could dance.
Gimme that string,
gimme that string ♪
Gimme, gimme, gimme,
gimme, gimme that string ♪
- [Narrator] While women are
liberating their hemlines,
and dancing the Charleston,
(filmstrip clicking)
a Hollywood director is
filming his daughter,
Mildred Unger, 2000
feet in the air.
- There she is dancing the
Charleston on the wings
of the plane, without,
as far as you can see,
any kind of safety
mechanism at all.
It's absolutely
extraordinary to watch.
(whimsical music)
- What's going on? (laughing)
Oh, she's on top of the plane.
- Is she on top of the plane?
- Where is Children's Services?
That's my number one question.
- Oh, wow.
I wanna do this so badly.
- Whose mother let
her go on a plane?
That's what I wanna know.
- And how did this
conversation go?
Like, "Hey, listen,
this like, your kid?
Oh, come here, we have a
great idea." (chuckles)
Wow.
(whimsical music)
- It shows kind of the
craziness of the period.
She's 10 years old, and
she's 2000 feet in the air,
and she's dancing on
the wing of an airplane.
- [Commenter] You don't
see that every day.
- What it speaks to in the
1920s is this real appetite
for spectacle.
(filmstrip clicking)
- [Narrator] So what
was it about the 20s
that made them roar?
And could what happened
then happened again?
(filmstrip clicking)
It turns out that the 1920s
and the 2020s are linked
by two doctors, separated by
101 years, and 7,218 miles.
(percussive sting)
It's December 31st, 2019.
In the city of Wuhan China,
a young medical doctor
named Li Wenliang notices
a worrying rise in the incidence
of a SARS-like illness.
He sends a message
to his colleagues.
Those first seven
cases are an alarm bell
for what will become the
worldwide coronavirus pandemic.
(drums beating)
(numbers clicking)
101 years earlier, on the
other side of the world,
another doctor has also noticed
something out of the ordinary.
(suspenseful music)
It's January, 1918.
Dr. Loring Miner is
a large, gruff man
with a handlebar mustache,
and an affinity for alcohol.
His practice extends over
hundreds of square miles
across the Kansas prairie.
- [Doctor] Sorry about that.
- [Narrator] On his rounds,
he notices a worrying rise
in the number of
people suffering from
flu-like symptoms.
Their skin turns blue and
purple from the lack of oxygen,
and they have a fever of
104 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Young men are dying,
and this is right next
to one of the main Army bases
where young Americans
are being trained up,
ready to be sent
to Europe to help
in the fight
against the Germans.
(guns firing)
- [Narrator] At the nearby
Camp Funston, a soldier reports
to the medics with
similar symptoms.
A week later, there
are another 100 cases,
and by the end of
the month, 500.
It's the first outbreak of
what history will come to know
as the Spanish flu pandemic.
- This is a time almost
for the first time
in American history where
young Americans are being sent
abroad in large numbers,
and the fact is that
they're carrying a deadly virus.
(explosions)
- [Narrator] During World War I,
10 million soldiers are killed.
No one knows exactly how many
die from the flu pandemic,
but estimates suggest
that one third
of the world's
population is infected,
and up to 100 million
people lose their lives.
- World War I affected
the entire nation,
and so to the Spanish flu.
It didn't spare families,
and it is spread quickly,
and it was frightening.
People wore masks.
Movie theaters and
restaurants shut down,
and there was a lot of
separating of people,
and there was a real
shutdown of the culture.
- [Narrator] In North
America, there are three waves
of the pandemic between spring
1918 and the summer of 1919,
when it finally fizzles out.
(lively music)
So how does a global
catastrophe on this scale end
in a decade-long party?
- History shows us that
following times of sacrifice,
we like to indulge.
We just got out of World War I,
going over the hump
of the Spanish flu,
so that's setting the stage
for some wild, wild partying.
(lively music)
- [Narrator] And who better
to kick off the party,
than the regiment that
sacrificed 1,400 lives,
more than any other us
regimen on the Western front?
The 369th Infantry Regiment
is an African-American unit
recruited largely from Harlem.
When they set out
for the war in 1917,
they were refused permission
to join in the farewell parade
of New York's National Guard,
known as the Rainbow Division.
In the words of the
National Guard's commander,
black is not a color
in the rainbow.
(somber music)
- The notion was
that African-American
men were cowardly,
that they could not fight.
They would be afraid to fight
white people, basically.
And then wherever they went,
they encountered racism
from American troops.
To deal with it, the
United States said,
"You know, let's just
them send overseas."
So they were like, some of the
first troops to go overseas,
and then the U.S. Army didn't
know what to do with them,
so they put them
with the French.
- [Narrator] When they
reach the Western front,
they will spend 191
days on the line,
and are awarded 171
Croix de Guerre,
the French medal for heroism.
The unit becomes
the most decorated
of all serving
American regiments.
So great is their
reputation in combat,
the Germans give them their
nickname, the Hellfighters.
- They were fierce fighters.
They were injured,
they were stabbed,
they were bayoneted,
but they fought,
and fought against
this whole regiment
until they made them retreat.
(triumphant music)
(percussive flash)
- [Narrator] When they return,
they are given pride of place
in the New York
City Victory Parade.
An estimated 5 million people
lined Manhattan's Fifth Avenue
from 23rd Street to 143rd.
3000 surviving Hellfighters
march as heroes
in close formation with
regimental band leader,
James Reese Europe, who's the
first black American officer
to have led troops into combat.
- James Reese Europe was
the foremost musician
of that period.
- [Narrator] And
after seven miles,
they reach Harlem at
last, and James commands
the regimental band to stop
playing marching music,
and instead, they
burst into jazz.
(lively jazz music)
- Jazz music encompasses
the roaring 20s
more than any other music genre.
It is the soundtrack.
(lively jazz music)
- It sets the mood
for the whole decade,
and it spreads all
around the world.
- Jazz music is the
tightest (bleep).
(trumpet playing)
It can be so spiritual, and
it can be like so elemental.
It can be ridiculous at times.
(scatting a tune)
- I love me a good trumpet.
(trumpet playing)
It's like whiskey,
(liquid pouring)
smooth whiskey.
(ice clinking)
- When you listen to jazz, it's
like a mysterious man comes
up to you with a
bouquet of flowers,
and then your mom
magically appears,
and tells you
she's proud of you,
and then your boss says
that you're his boss now,
and you can wear a power suit.
That's what jazz feels like.
It's just a wild ride
from start to finish.
(lively 1920s music)
- The thing that makes jazz
so amazing, first of all,
it's the freedom, the
improvisational nature of it.
(trumpet playing jazz)
It's also something people
had not heard before.
It was a new music.
It was a new way of thinking
about what music could do.
(lively jazz music)
- It's music for
an urban jungle.
(lively jazz music)
It's got that kind of planning
dissonance, in a sense,
that feels very modern.
It's not easy, it's not
harmonic, it's not soothing.
It's jangling, and jarring,
and exciting, and sexy.
(squeaking sting)
(lively jazz music)
- [Narrator] The birth
of jazz coincides
with the first great
migration, where waves
of African-Americans
left the South,
and headed to the urban
centers of the North.
- A million African-Americans
came north from 1914 to 1919,
and that changed the whole
dynamic of what cities would be,
like Chicago, Detroit,
Philadelphia, New York,
where large populations grow.
- There were a lot of
challenges that came with this,
the tremendous overcrowding,
and underemployment,
and poverty,
but an upside that happened
as this flowering of the arts,
and jazz music was
really influential.
(scatting with jazz music)
- It's very much an
African-American art form,
but it's something that
is totally embraced
by the young, white
urban population.
(lively jazz music)
- People thought that they
were edgy, and attractive,
and interesting, and
so jazz music drove
social integration in a way
that hadn't been seen before,
(lively jazz music)
but it also seeded
a lot of anxiety.
- [Announcer] A
secret organization,
the Ku Klux Klan, spread
it poisonous influence
throughout a large
part of the country.
- The 20s were a time
when people came together,
but the 20s were a time when
the KU Klux Klan was rising up,
and becoming really influential,
especially in the first
part of the decade.
By 1924, it is spread to
maybe 2 million members,
and people were overtly
part of the Klan,
and that was a real
demonstrable example
of a group trying to
go backwards in time.
(somber marching music)
(typewriter clicking
and dinging)
There are even a lot of
efforts to suppress freedoms,
and there's this real
trend in the 1920s
where people seem to think
that they could legislate
their way to a moral, just,
peaceful, innocent world.
- [Narrator] January, 1920,
new legislation is passed,
and the 18th amendment is
enshrined in the constitution,
banning the manufacturer and
sale of intoxicating liquor.
- Prohibition is a
movement that happens
in the United States,
and it's actually
started much earlier.
Remember, our roots in this
country are puritanical.
A lot of the early
settlers really think
that drink is wicked.
Drink is the devil's brew.
- [Announcer] To pass
a certain public house,
a tavern of unsavory repute.
(lapping drinks)
- I mortgaged my home,
and my family too.
- It was really born out of
a sense that drinking was
the source of all
kinds of social evils.
So if the drink were
eradicated, then there would be
less trouble, there'd
be less violence,
and it was really seen as
sort of a moral imperative.
- [Announcer] Prohibition,
America's unique attempt
to legislate morality
in an age that wasn't
really interested in it.
(alcohol splashing)
- [Narrator] It's the
beginning of prohibition,
and America officially
goes dry, but unofficially-
- When prohibition is passed,
they hope it's going to improve
society, improve behavior,
make people harder-working,
and more virtuous.
The problem is no one
wants to practice it.
Everybody still wants to drink.
(whimsical music)
- People didn't stop drinking.
They just started supporting
illegal, illicit activities
that would get them drink.
(1920s piano music)
- [Narrator] The 1920s is
the age of the speakeasy,
where alcohol is plentiful for
those who know the password,
and there are plenty who do.
- [Speakeasy Keeper]
Come right on in,
and name your poison.
- [Kate] All you
really needed to open
your own speakeasy was a
couple of bottles of liquor,
and a room to have it in,
and that's exactly
what it was like.
- One of the statistics
about the twenties is that
for every bar that closes,
three speakeasies open.
So that tells you something
about the number of people
that are going, the success
of these kinds of places.
(paper tearing)
(numbers trilling)
- [Narrator] By the end of
the 1920s, New York boasts
32,000 speakeasies.
That's one illegal bar
for every 390 people,
or three times as many
as legal bars today,
and that's only the
ones we know about.
The number that go
under the radar is
probably double that
again, upwards of 100,000.
- [Michael] You don't
see that every day.
- Another revealing statistic is
how many policemen were
able to amass large savings,
even when their salaries
were quite modest.
(lively jazz music)
(knocking on door)
- [Speakeasy Keeper]
What's the password?
- [Patron] Stinky food.
- [Narrator] In Boston,
there are four operational
speakeasies on the same street
as the Boston Police Department.
- [Police] I dunno, Captain,
everybody seems drunk
in this neighborhood.
- [Narrator] And in
1927, the prosecution
of a San Francisco hotel clerk,
accused of selling liquor,
has to be abandoned.
- [Commenter] Maybe he could
be innocent and guilty.
- [Narrator] When nine
members of the jury are caught
drinking the evidence.
(drinker laughing)
(alcohol pouring)
- Honestly, if
alcohol was banned,
if I learned anything
in the pandemic,
that I can't go a
week without it,
I would just make it myself.
- (slurping) Yeah!
- Maybe I'd just make
my own moonshine,
just in my basement
or something,
like how people were
doing sourdough bread
during the pandemic, just
start making my own booze.
- I'll ferment everything.
I'd ferment alcohol in my
bathtub and just bathe in it.
(water splashing and pouring)
- Boys in prison
have figured it out.
They're making
they own the hooch
in these toilet balls out here.
(liquid pouring)
I'm sure I am just as creative
as your average inmate,
so (chuckling) I can
definitely work something out.
- If alcohol was banned, I would
still find a way to get it,
as long as it was safe.
Just wanna make sure
I don't get like,
moonshine that blinds me.
(slurping)
- [Narrator] Between
1920 and 1929,
up to 9 million gallons of
pure alcohol were consumed.
That's the equivalent of two
and a quarter billion
standard-size beers.
(lively jazz music)
But booze is only
part of the story.
The speakeasy is where
Americans come to drink,
listen to music, and to dance,
but to dance, you
also need a partner,
and what the number 18 did
for jazz and black musicians,
the number 19 will do for women.
(percussive trilling)
August, 1920, the 19th amendment
to the United States
Constitution is ratified.
- [Announcer] The ladies
appeared at the polls
on election day by the
hundreds of thousands.
They had won their
right to vote.
- [Narrator] It's
the culmination
of a decades-long struggle,
finally granting women
the right to vote.
- For so many years,
American men did not want
women to vote.
For instance, Woodrow Wilson
was against women voting
in 1913, but by 1918, after
having gone through World War I,
he had a whole
different attitude.
He said, "You know,
women have sacrificed.
They've created a
whole mobilization
to help the war effort."
- During the war, women go
to work while men are away.
The fact that they get
the vote very quickly
after the war is a
reflection, I think,
of the contribution they've
made to society in that time.
- But their suffrage was not
experienced the same way.
While white women had much
more opportunities to vote,
African-American women did not.
Women in other
minorities did not.
- Many women had to wait
for decades more to be given
their right to vote,
but for the first time,
women become equal participants
in American society,
equal citizens.
- [Narrator] The 19th
amendment gives the vote
to 26 million women.
In the next decade,
The number of women
in the workplace will rise
from 8.3 to 11 million.
Corset sales will decline by
two thirds, and the number
of women buying cigarettes
will more than double.
- For the first time, they
can go out into the world,
and in the 1920s, you see
so many amazing female role
models, from movie stars,
to anthropologists, to
writers, to doctors.
This is a time when
women really understand,
and properly begin
to live the idea
that they don't just have
to be wives and mothers.
(triumphant music)
(filmstrip clicking)
- [Narrator] For
one young woman,
it proves to be a
particularly dramatic shift,
which in her case is
marked by the number one.
Her best friend
calls her pie-face,
because she likes apple pie.
She's an unfashionable,
wannabe dancer and actress.
- [Louise] I got an idea!
- [Narrator] She
escapes the Midwest,
and comes to the Big Apple
in pursuit of a dream,
and expensive clothes.
(lively 1920s music)
- She ends up dancing
in the Ziegfeld Follies,
which is scantily clad ladies
doing high kicks on stage.
It was a pretty
established route to go
into the movies from.
- [Boss] You're fired!
- [Louise] Oh, booger.
- [Narrator] When she's
fired from the stage,
her best friend decides
she's in need of a make-over.
(whimsical music)
- She's very down in the dumps.
She loses a job.
She doesn't get a
job she hoped for,
and her friend takes her
off to have a haircut.
- [Barber] Come on in.
- [Narrator] But instead
of a woman's hairdresser,
their destination
is a barber shop.
- [Barber] A little
here, a little there.
- [Narrator] The barber
shortens her bangs
in a line above her eyebrows.
- [Louise] Terrific!
- [Narrator] He shapes
the sides into points
at her cheekbones, and
at the nape of her neck,
he uses a number one razor.
- [Barber] Voilà!
- [Narrator] It's the
world's first shingle bob.
- [Louise] That's great!
- [Narrator] Her name
is Louise Brooks,
and it's not long
after she steps
off the barber's swivel
chair that she will see
her name in lights in Hollywood.
- [Louise] Thank you very much!
- The independence of the
1920s is kind of encapsulated
by this one haircut
that Louise Brooks has,
and she becomes the
archetypal flapper.
- [Narrator] She
also becomes one
of the biggest Hollywood
stars of the silent movie era,
inspiring a whole generation
of young female imitators.
At one point it's said
that in New York alone,
2000 women a day are
getting the shingle.
- All over America in the
20s, girls are getting
their hair shingled or shorn.
They have them
with a marcel wave.
Ironically, of course, they're
quite hard to maintain.
You have to go to the
hairdresser more often,
and it's part of the
explosion in the cosmetics
and beauty industry that
happens in the 1920s as well.
Women are suddenly the
object of marketing then.
(lively 1920s music)
- [Narrator] In 1920, there are
only 5,000 hairdressing
salons in the United States.
Just four years later,
there are 21,000.
At the start of the decade,
makeup was for women
of doubtful reputation,
and there was no such thing
as getting a facial
at a beauty salon.
But by the end of the decade,
there are 18,000
salons nationwide,
offering 1,300 brands and
shades of face powder.
- [Commenter] Woo!
- [Narrator] 350 rouges.
- [Commenter] Terrific!
- [Narrator] And a
hundred red lipsticks.
- [Commenter] Fabulous!
- [Narrator] Female
beauty has become
a $52 million industry.
(commenter laughing)
- [Announcer] Free at last,
she not only dressed freely,
but was lavished with
makeup, chewed gum,
and even smoked in public.
- [Narrator] And the
one place these coiffed
and confident young women
can go to is the speakeasy.
- Yes, I know,
knock three times,
and tell them you're
friends with Charlie.
- Speakeasies are a place where,
almost for the first time,
women are able to
go and have a drink.
I think the fact that
you get music and dancing
quite often in a
speakeasy makes it a place
that's very attractive to women.
- [Kate] And part
of what happened
in speakeasies was dating.
Dating was new in
the United States.
- They can now go out
without a chaperone.
They can go on dates
with fellas. (chuckles)
They can neck, they can
flirt, and it doesn't destroy
their reputations,
because in some ways,
the best way to say it
is everybody's doing it.
(lively 1920s music)
- [Narrator] Only 14% of
women born before 1900 said
they had premarital sex
before the age of 25.
By the 1920s, that number
has more than doubled to 34%.
In the course of the decade,
the birth rate actually drops
by 20%, which may be
explained by the fact
that during the same
period, condom sales double.
(lively 1920s music)
But how many times do you
have to kiss a boy to change
the course of history?
For Lottie Gee, that
number proves to be 501.
It's 1921.
(lively 1920s music)
A new show opens on Broadway
called Shuffle Along.
It's the first Broadway
musical with a book, music,
dance, and cast created
wholly by African-Americans,
including Noble Sissle,
a veteran of the
Harlem Hellfighters
who, with Eubie Blake,
wrote the music.
- Shuffle Along was the
music sensation of 1921,
and it never should have
made it to Broadway,
but it changed Broadway.
- [Narrator] It's essentially
your old-fashioned,
boy-meets-girl, musical romance,
only in this case, it's
portraying black romance
on par with white,
which is a gamble.
- Before this period, the
notion of a black love scene
on stage is considered
anathema to white audiences.
They cannot stand the idea
of black people
loving each other.
So Sissle and Blake, of course,
write a number of
love scenes into this,
'cause it's about black life,
and black culture, black joy.
We love each other,
but they're terrified
that the audience is
going to stampede out.
- [Announcer] Ladies
and gentlemen.
- [Narrator] It's
May 23rd, 1921,
opening night at the
Daly's 63rd Street Theater.
Onstage in the limelight,
the young lovers,
Lottie Gee and Roger
Matthews are about to sing
their duet, Love
Will Find a Way.
Backstage, the composer,
Noble Sissle can
hardly bear to watch.
He stands by the stage door,
one foot inside the theater,
the other on the street
pointing north toward Harlem,
afraid that if the song bombs,
they'll be run out of town.
The song is received in silence,
until suddenly, Sissle hears
wild applause break out,
and an encore is called for.
Shuffle Along will run for
another 501 performances,
becoming one of the
longest-running musical shows
of the decade.
- Shuffle Along is a phenomenon.
It creates a desire to see
African-American music,
and culture, and it leads
people to go up to Harlem
who've never been before.
- [Announcer] Harlem at
night has been a symbol
the world over for
jazz and cabaret life.
- It's at a time when,
as Langston Hughes
famously puts it,
the Negro was in Vogue,
(lively jazz music)
and suddenly what they are
creating is seen as valuable,
and important, and
part of American life.
It's seen as integral to
it for the first time.
(lively jazz music)
- [Narrator] Harlem becomes
the cultural Mecca of Manhattan,
That's how it is ♪
That's how it is ♪
and the underground subculture
comes out of the closet,
dressed in sequined
gowns, and white tuxedos.
- One of the things
that Harlem is known for
in the twenties is not
just the great music,
and the sort of great nightlife.
It's also a place where gender
and sexual roles
can be transgressed,
and played with a little bit.
(filmstrip clicking)
(smoky jazz music)
- [Narrator] The Stonewall riot
in 1969 is often considered
the beginning of the
gay rights movement,
but more than 50 years earlier,
Harlem's famous drag balls
are part of a flourishing,
highly visible LGBTQ nightlife.
(whimsical music)
It's February 26th, 1926,
the biggest night of
Harry Walter's life.
Outside, two feet of
snow blankets the ground.
- [Announcer] Ladies
and gentlemen.
- [Narrator] But
inside, the heat is on
at the Renaissance Ballroom
and Casino in Harlem
for the 58th Annual
Hamilton Lodge Ball.
1000 of New York's finest,
dressed in tuxedos,
and gorgeous ball gowns
crowd the dance floor,
and as midnight strikes,
it's time for the grand
parade in front of the judges.
- [Judge] And the
rest costume is-
- [Narrator] First
prize goes to Harry,
best dressed drag
queen of them all.
- [Harry] Thank you very much.
- What's really interesting
about these drag balls,
these fairy balls, is
that they weren't just
for an underground subculture.
They were for everyone.
They're reported about
in the popular media,
and the popular press.
(lively jazz music)
A lot of the attendees
are straight,
and they're just going
to be part of this world.
There's nothing strange in it.
- Drag shows, drag balls,
parties that happen
in queer spaces and
queer parties are like,
just the best parties.
- Glitz and glam,
it's always a party.
- Lots of sequins,
lots of bright lights,
lot of Whitney Houston covers.
- There's just so
much flair, and color,
and people are voguing.
- The swag of it all, like,
there's a level of confidence
that it takes, I don't have it.
I don't do well with eyeshadow.
- I'm envious of
drag queens in balls.
I wanna look as good as
they do, like (bleep).
(wolf whistle)
- In the 1920s, the LGBTQ
community was much more open
than many of us might realize.
- People describe going to
Harlem, and going into a bar,
or a speakeasy, and seeing
a table where you've got
two black boys, two white boys,
and they're all
dressed as women,
and up on the dance
floor are two girls,
dressed in tuxedos,
dancing together.
Identity is fluid,
gender is fluid,
and it feels quite modern.
- That isn't to
say that there was
widespread acceptance
everywhere.
Although they were
allowed to exist,
they were also
really complicated,
and problematic for a
mainstream culture as well.
- [Narrator] Gene Malin is
six feet tall and 200 pounds,
and one of new York's most
famous female impersonators
who wins prizes for wearing
costumes made up entirely
of pink and gold feathers.
One night, he wanders
into a Greenwich cafe
in full drag wig and makeup.
(patron laughing)
Four rough birds
begin to heckle him,
and as he shimmies
by their table,
they throw a pitcher
of water on him.
- [Patron] What's
the matter with you?
- [Narrator] Gene barely
bats a false eyelash
before fighting back.
(banging)
Three of them he
beats to a pulp.
(banging and grunting)
The fights spills
out onto the street,
and the fourth heckler
is only saved from Malin
by two passing taxi drivers.
- [Driver] What the hell
you doing over there?
- [Narrator] Afterwards,
Malin had tears in his eyes.
When asked why, he pointed
out that during the fight,
he had ripped his gowns.
(Malin sobbing)
(lively jazz music)
Gene Malin is exactly
12 pounds heavier
than boxing champion,
Jack Dempsey,
but unlike Malin's punch,
Dempsey's right hook will be
heard right across America.
(loud punching)
- [Announcer] After a great
deal of pre-fight ballyhoo,
the two men met at historic
Boyle's Thirty Acres
in New Jersey.
- [Narrator] It's called
the fight of the century,
Dempsey versus George Carpentier
for the world heavyweight title.
- [Announcer] 80,000
people filled every inch
of Boyle's Thirty Acres.
- [Narrator] But these
spectators are only a fraction
of what will be the largest
audience so far in history,
because this is the first
sporting event ever broadcast
to a mass audience on the radio.
(triumphant music)
- [Announcer] It's the top
and Jack Dempsey is flying
against Georges Carpentier,
a truly great fighter.
Round four
(indistinct) freshman,
who's virtually helpless
in the hands of Dempsey,
but Carpentier rises
again with fighting hard.
- [Narrator] It's
estimated that commentary
of Dempsey's fourth round
knockout punch is heard
by more than 300,000
people in 61 cities
across Atlantic America.
(triumphant music)
- [Announcer] Radio,
originally a feeble means
of communication, grew
from this small shack,
the first commercial
station in America
to a gigantic proportion.
- One of the great technological
and cultural developments
of the 1920s is the radio.
People use it for
listening to news.
They listen to music.
They listen most of
all to sporting events.
(upbeat music)
- Radio transformed sport,
because it allowed people
to experience games in real
time as they were happening,
so you didn't have
to read about them
in the paper the next day.
(crowd cheering)
Baseball, boxing,
and horse racing,
you sat by your radio, you
could hear the Yankees play,
even if you didn't go
to the game in person.
- The great sportsmen of the
1920s become household names,
because radio brings them
into everybody's household.
- Babe Ruth, Babe Ruth
was the biggest celebrity,
the most famous
person in America,
more so than the president.
- [Announcer] Break it now,
with only two games left.
(upbeat music)
(bat knocking)
(crowd cheering)
- He did interviews, and
he was in the movies,
and so he had this
multidimensional
presence in media,
and it was just really exciting,
and we couldn't have had
celebrities like this before
without all the technologies
that brought them
into our homes.
(whimsical music)
(calendar clicking)
- [Narrator] In 1921, the year
the first sporting
event was broadcast,
there are only five radio
stations across the U.S.
By the end of the
decade, there are 606.
- [Announcer] The ensuing
program is and all-star-
- [Narrator] Annual radio
sales increased from 60 million
to $843 million, and by
the end of the decade,
20 million households
have a radio receiver.
That's nearly 40% of
all American families.
(lively music)
This is the era of innovation,
and it's not just radio
that's transforming lives.
- The 1920s sees extraordinary
technological advances,
which benefit people's lives.
In the house, we have all
sorts of domestic appliances
which we never had before,
the vacuum cleaner, the
dishwasher, the toaster,
but also you have
the transformation
from a coal-based economy
and a steam based economy
into a petrol and oil-based
economy, and this means cars.
- [Announcer] The
20th century has raced
again to a new era, the era
of the Tin Lizzy, the Model T.
- Henry Ford had 10,000
dealerships in this country,
and there were 13
million cars on the road,
incredible mobility happening.
- [Announcer] It is Henry
Ford's own invention
that is placing a nation
behind the wheels of adventure.
- Two generations ago, you
might've never really left
the county where you were born,
and with an automobile, your
range increased tremendously.
- [Announcer] Now the
whole family could get away
from the noise and
the heat of the city.
- The idea that you
could buy a car,
which would then let you drive
around the entire country
independently becomes
something to aspire towards,
and that really transformed
American society,
because it brings with it
a network of roads, motels,
and petrol stations, and people
can get into cities to work.
It transformed every single
aspect of American society.
- [Narrator] Technology
will not only transform
day to day life, it will
make the most unlikely
of dreams come true.
(plane engine roaring)
When Bessie Coleman is
six years old in 1898,
no one has yet flown
in an airplane.
The 10th child of
a Cherokee father
and African-American mother
from Waxahachie, Texas,
she walks four miles each day to
and from her one-room,
segregated school,
and works in the cotton
fields at harvest time.
After the great war, she
can only afford one semester
at college, but then
she hears the stories
of Air Force pilots
returning from France,
and her dream is born.
- As a Young girl, she decides
she wants to learn to fly.
- But she can't get flying
lessons in the United States
to get qualified as a pilot,
'cause she's a person of color.
- [Narrator] So she decides to
learn French at night school,
and then travels to
Paris to learn to fly.
- [Parisian] Bon jour.
- [Narrator] Where she earns
her pilot's license in 1921,
two years before Amelia Earhart.
When she returns to the states,
she becomes a
barnstorming stunt flier.
She wows crowds across
America, and becomes
an instant media sensation,
and her favorite stunts?
The loop-di-loop, and the
highly dangerous figure eight.
- [Bessie] I'm flying!
(airplane buzzing)
- Bessie Coleman is the
first American woman
of African-American and
Native American descent both
to have a pilot's license,
and to actually fly,
and perform as a stunt
pilot in America.
It's absolutely extraordinary.
(airplane running)
(lighthearted music)
- There was a notion in the
20s that Bessie caught onto
that she could become
who she wanted to be.
To have this sense of incredible
freedom of possibility,
whether you're a woman
or man, black or white,
and Bessie Coleman
is the epitome of,
"I'm gonna fly into my dream."
- [Narrator] Bessie
Coleman is the pioneer
of what will become
a brand new industry,
commercial air travel.
(lively music)
The first international
passenger flights
from Key West, Florida to
Havana, Cuba take off in 1920.
In 1926, the total number
of airline passengers
in the United States
is less than 6,000.
But by the end of the decade,
that number leaps for 173,000.
(numbers trilling)
- Air travel makes
anything possible.
Think about it this way.
In 1903, the Wright brothers
made their first flight.
In 1969, we land on the moon.
Within literally 66
years, we went from flying
to flying to space.
Traveling in air in the
1920s gave us that feeling
that nothing's impossible,
you know, the sky's the limit.
That's why we say that.
(triumphant music)
Let's make lots of money ♪
- [Narrator] The
1920s is the decade
where the sky does
seem limitless,
as the number of shares traded
on the New York
stock exchange grows
from 200 million
to over a billion.
It is knocking at your door ♪
- American society in
the 20s is propelled
by this huge sense of optimism.
Business is gonna be the
answer to all our problems.
Salesmen are the kind of
angels of American society,
and people are
making so much money
on things like
stocks and shares.
Let's make lots of money ♪
That's what they all said ♪
- The stock market is
soaring like never before,
and people don't
really understand,
but the stock market
is like a horse race.
It's a gamble, and so
at a certain point,
your horse is not gonna win.
- They can't believe that
something that's been going
so well for a decade
could tumble off a cliff,
just like that.
- [Narrator] One man
who does believe it is
an investor on Wall Street.
After making a bundle
in the bull market,
the story goes that
he decides to get
his Oxford brogues polished up.
- [Shoe Shiner]
Tobacco's doing good.
- [Narrator] But when the shoe
shine boy begins to give him
stock tips, it's not so
much a light bulb moment.
It's an alarm bell.
(alarm ringing)
He realizes that if a shoe
shiner has an opinion on stocks,
they are becoming
dangerously popular,
and it's time to get out.
He does exactly that,
returns to his office,
unloads his stocks, and
withdraws from the market.
His name is Joe Kennedy, father
of the future President JFK.
He's one of the few lucky
ones to save his fortune.
- [Announcer] The New York
stock exchange was in a turmoil.
Frantic investors had
scrambled to unload
their securities at any price.
(words trilling)
- [Narrator] On
October 24th, 1929,
newspaper headlines announced
the end of the roaring 20s.
- The line can't always
go up on the graph,
and when it came down,
it came down fast,
and it came down hard.
The great bubble had
burst of the 1920s.
- [Narrator] It goes down in
history as Black Thursday,
when the Dow Jones
index falls by 11%.
On Black Monday, it
loses another 12.82%.
On Black Tuesday, yet
another 11.7, 3% disappears,
which represents $14
billion in losses,
the equivalent of
$213 billion today,
and the slide will continue
until July 8th, 1932,
when the index bottoms
out after losing
a whopping 89.2% of its value.
- [Announcer] A feeling
of apprehension,
even fear replaces
the unchecked optimism
Americans once felt.
- That's the end of the 20s.
We have the great crash,
and we're leading to
the great depression.
Millions and millions of
people were out of work.
They didn't understand why.
- [Announcer] Common
terms, food, clothing,
shelter take on
a new importance.
- [Commenter] They were shacks
where people had to live,
and they had to have food
lines, and soup lines,
and soup kitchens to feed them,
because they were going hungry.
- [Narrator] By
1933, nearly half
of America's banks have failed,
and unemployment approaches
15 million people, or
30% of the workforce.
And just as the hemline
provided an index of growth
in better times, the rise of
the shoe shine is an index
of the great depression.
(upbeat music)
Before the crash, the
New York Times reported
there were only a
handful of shoe shines
on the streets of New York.
By 1932, the New York
Police Department reports
there are now more than 7,000
desperately trying to earn
a living on the streets.
In a single block
on West 43rd Street,
the newspaper now counts 19
shoe shines plying their trade.
- [Customer] Nice
job, here you go.
(coin clinking)
- [Narrator] In better times,
the going rate was a dime
with a nickel tip,
and now they're happy if
they get a single nickel.
- [Customer] Sorry,
that's all I got.
- [Narrator] And before,
the shoeshine boy used to be
under the age of 17.
Now it's common to
see men over 70.
- No one was unscathed
by the effects
of the Great Depression.
The culture changed,
entertainment
industries changed,
fashions changed, music changed,
and it didn't all
happen overnight,
but you can see the
beginnings of the end.
- [Narrator] At the
start of the 1930s,
prohibition is repealed.
Bars and nightclubs are
once more regulated.
The LGBTQ community
is pushed underground.
Hollywood is censured,
and women's skirt
lengths plunge downward.
The roaring 20s have come
to an inauspicious end.
(dramatic music)
(intense electronic music)
So we move into the 2020s,
will we see history
repeat itself?
Will this be the decade
of the roaring 20s, 2.0?
- Will the 2020s be like 1920s?
Absolutely.
- The idea of unbridled
prosperity, pandemics,
racial strife, all these
elements are back in play,
and so it makes you feel
like there's a cycle.
- History shows us
that following war,
we always want peace.
- [Demonstrators]
Black lives matter!
- [Nicholas] Following
sacrifice in solitude,
we always want celebration
and indulgence.
(glasses clinking)
- Maybe we'll get our
own version of the 1920s,
a hundred years later.
The young taking center stage,
the sense of freedom
and excitement, a
sense of modernity,
I think we can expect
all those things
in the decade to come.
- I think we're gonna party
like it's 1920, literally,
just now we're gonna
see it on social media.
(lively 1920s music)
- Hopefully we're heading
towards a roaring twenties.
I have my flapper dresses
ready, like, I really do.
(laughing)
- Smog all the time, and
floods, and typhoons,
and wealth inequality
is gonna get worse,
but that's going to make
people want to party more
when we can, so those
are going to be nuts.
- Billionaires are trying to
leave the Earth right now.
(chuckles) When the richest
people on the planet are trying
to get off of it, it's
probably not a good sign.
- If we're not heading
into another roaring 20s,
I will shave my head.