THE ROARING T W E N T I E S

Hemlines fell as fast as the stock market with the Crash of 1929- a new age of decadence was dawning.

The decade of prosperity and peace between two world wars was marked by rapid advances in technology, new musical and art forms, and widespread moral, sexual and political challenges to the social code. During the twenties, innovations in recording and broadcast technology, air and automobile travel, and sound synchronisation with image ("talking pictures") allowed a more mobile and faster-paced life. What had been novelties became essential and commonplace. Radio broadcasts, phonograph records, and films let people at great geographic distances enjoy the same entertainment simultaneously, and this instantaneous sharing led to hits, crazes, stars and fads. Recognisable brand-name products were created: Band-Aid, Scotch tape, Trojan, Kleenex, and Maidenform. The fashions were provocative, the dancing was uninhibited, and in the US alcohol was forbidden, which gave rise to speakeasies, gangster culture, and a widespread sense of reckless, lawless anti-authoritarianism, culminating in the American decade ending with a crash-of the stock market in 1929. The twenties was the decade of feminism and of suffrage, finally allowing women the vote. Vocal, articulate women advocated birth control and workplace equality. Dr. Marie Stopes bravely opened Britain's first birth control clinic in London and a few years later she daringly wrote a series of sex manuals for women-emancipation had truly begun. Women's behaviour and dress broke so many taboos that church and society traditionalists resorted to censorship, edicts and frequent lamentations at the breakdown in decorum and social order. Even literature was pushing back the boundaries- D.H. Lawrence shook respectable English society with his audacious novels of erotic love such as Women in Love. But this was nothing compared to the reception the explicit Lady Chatterley's Lover received. Needless to say, it was promptly banned. But forces other than literature, fashion and loose morals were challenging old assumptions. The powerful new ideas of Freud and Darwin rocked the very foundations of human identity. Artists, from filmmakers to writers, were breaking the confines of traditional form. Isadora Duncan danced barefoot and corsetless in flowing Grecian dress. European surrealists drew on dream imagery and the unconscious. And jazz, the first indigenous American art form, arose out of African-American blues and spiritual traditions. Music was the harbinger of a larger social change. African-American musicians and singers became the first of their race to receive respect and societal acclaim. Although bands and venues were strictly segregated, black entertainers often performed for all-white audiences. Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Bessie Smith all came of age in the twenties. The great orator and defence attorney Clarence Darrow was involved in two sensational trials-the Scopes Monkey Trial, a test case for the teaching of the theory of evolution, and the Leopold and Loeb murder trial, over the "thrill kill" of a schoolboy by two very rich young Jewish men. Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart flew the Atlantic and became heroes. Al Capone and his gang ran Chicago's prostitution, gambling and bootleg liquor underworld. Songwriting was in its heyday, from New York's Tin Pan Alley and Broadway to blues, ragtime, folk and jazz innovators. Some of the most enduring songs of modern time came from the twenties, from "Ain't She Sweet," to "Downhearted Blues" and song titles like "I Need Some Petting" and "Makin' Whoopie" reflected the decade's mood of naughty abandon.

THE SILVER SCREEN

Garbo, Chaplin, Keaton, Valentino, Louise Brooks and Clara Bow-the stars of the silent screen-vamped, clowned and smouldered. Exotic locales, World War I, and the ceaseless tortures and delights of love were perennial subjects. From Nosferatu to The Jazz Singer, great directing, acting and increasingly sophisticated camera techniques and effects created lasting works of art and cultural time capsules.

BETWEEN THE PAGES

Hemingway, Woolf, Mencken, Wharton, Faulkner and Fitzgerald dazzled with titillating accounts of nightlife debauchery and tell-alls about the fast crowd. Bisexual French literary genius Colette penned her most scandalous novel, Cheri, based on her incestuous affair with her stepson.

PEOPLE

Margaret Sanger tirelessly lobbied for the