The 1920s movie stars, Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplin, and Rudolph Valentino gave meaning to the words “matinee idol”. Aviation heroes Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart drew huge crowds and even larger news coverage. Notables included Babe Ruth in sports-legendary on and off the baseball field. Media accelerated American culture through its news with sensationalism and romance as the lead. The wonder of “moving” pictures elevated public entertainment to a whole new level. Mass production introduced affordable lifestyle amenities such as automobiles, radios, and telephones. There was more of everything-and people had the resources to buy it. The prosperity of the Roaring Twenties invited consumer excess. The 1920s: An Era of Fame and Excessįollowing World War One, the United States enjoyed a decade of economic growth as it moved into peacetime. This defiant and rebellious culture of the Roaring Twenties was one by-product of Prohibition. The new law resulted in a large portion of the American public becoming minor criminals, ignoring the law and partaking of illegal alcohol. Saloons closed down when Prohibition went into effect on January 17, 1920-making the sale, production, import, and transport of alcohol illegal (though Barrington made the same decision to ban alcohol earlier, in 1908). The anti-alcohol Temperance Movement won its 100-year long battle to ban booze in America. America had inherited a serious drinking problem. The jails were full of inebriated bad actors. Wives and children were abandoned and left penniless. There was no police or legal protection for the increasing domestic violence leveled by drunkards. It took time for the culture to realize that the effect of consuming large quantities of grain-based booze was detrimental to one’s health, behavior, and family. The two-percent, low-alcohol beer served liberally throughout the day (including breakfast) was eventually replaced, in the same quantity and frequency, with distilled grain beverages that carried a significantly Colonial America’s consumption of alcohol progressed from a standard, oft-daily routine to a chronic national health hazard by the late 1800s.
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