From Prohibition and Flappers to New Dealers and the Lunatic Fringe: Wolfsonian Library Collection Highlights
Over the course of the semester, students enrolled in my Florida International University course, America & Movies, have been watching films and reading primary and secondary sources that illuminate topics of U.S. history between the wars, 1919 through 1939. Recently, that class had the opportunity to come to The Wolfsonian–FIU on Miami Beach to peruse some historical artifacts from the era. Each student was enjoined to pick an item or two from the materials on display, and to deconstruct, critically analyze, and historicize them. What follows is a selection of some of their choices and conclusions.
Several students focused on materials related to U.S. Prohibition. The Wolfsonian Library has several sheet music covers published in anticipation, or in the immediate wake of, the enforcement of the law prohibiting the manufacture, sale, and distribution of alcohol in the United States. At least a couple of these song sheets include cover illustrations that hint at the need for such laws to curb public drunkenness and disorder.
The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca
The vast majority of the sheet music covers in the collection, however, bemoan the closing down of bars and drinking establishments catering to male “tipplers.” Many of the cover illustrations and song lyrics satirized the new moral order being imposed on them by the anti-Saloon League, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and other moral reformers and advocates of the “sweet dry and dry.”
The Wolfsonian–FIU, gifts of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca
At least one student was interested in the connection between Prohibition enforcement and the spectacular rise to power of bootlegging and rum-running gangsters.
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Seeing the money to be made supplying the now illegal demand for “hooch,” “giggle water,” “moonshine,” or “bathtub gin,” organized crime assumed control over the booze business. They racked in so much “moolah” (money) that they could afford to bribe municipal officials, prohibition agents, and cops on the beat to ignore their “blind pig” or “gin-joint” clubs. In New York City alone, between 30,00 to 100,000 “speakeasies” sprouted up by 1925 to flout the anti-liquor law.
The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift made in honor of Mitchell Wolfson, Jr.’s 80th birthday
Several of the students whose families hailed from Cuba were taken with a series of postcards printed by Bacardí, the largest homegrown family business operating in Cuba in the era. The Cuban government encouraged Americans to escape the Prohibition desert by hopping a steamship and vacationing down in Havana. They promised that the rum still flowed like water in the island nation that lay just 90 miles beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. Prohibition laws.
The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Collection
Some American barmen decided to move their operations to Havana to avoid the hassles of Prohibition altogether. Some 7,000 bars in Havana catered to the first great wave of thirsty American tourists arriving in the 1920s and early 1930s. The drinking habits of the tourists is also reflected in the comedy, Havana Widows, released in theaters the same year that Congress repealed the unpopular Prohibition law.
The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection
While some students were enthralled by cultural artifacts from the era of Prohibition, others were drawn to the “new woman” or “flapper” ideal also associated with the Roaring Twenties. Liberated by the automobile from the courtship rituals of chaperoned visits in the family parlor, these socially and sexually liberated girls “bobbed” their hair, drank, smoked cigarettes, and flouted the stifling Victorian conventions of the older generation.
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Some memorable illustrations capturing the flapper look were penned by the Cuban artist, publisher, and caricaturist, Conrado Walter Massaguer. Inspired by the fame achieved by Charles Gibson in picturing the late Victorian debutant or “Gibson Girl,” Massaguer decided to link his name to his illustrations of the young and care-free women of the 1920s. He published his “Massa-girls” on the covers, inside pages, and even in the advertisements of his Social and Carteles magazines.
The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi promised gifts
Still, other students were attracted less to the glitter and glamour of the Jazz Age than to the Depression decade, when the global economy took a nosedive and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced an alphabet soup of federal relief projects and programs. Several students were captivated by the N.R.A.—no, not the organization dedicated to rifles—but rather the National Recovery Administration intended to help put big business back on its feet and get unemployed industrial workers back into the factories. The NRA had many promoters and detractors in the day; those in favor of government intervention in the economic sphere through the imposition of voluntary industry codes used patriotic colors (red, white, and blue) and symbols (Uncle Sam and the NRA eagle) to mobilize support for the program on everything from price lists, stickers, to sheet music covers.
The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection
The Wolfsonian–FIU, The Christopher DeNoon Collection for the Study of New Deal Culture
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Industries and business leaders who resisted NRA regulation might be depicted as unpatriotic rugged individualists who endangered Roosevelt’s recovery efforts.
The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi promised gift
On the other side of the fence, ideologues on both the left and the right criticized the NRA program, and visually lampooned its blue eagle symbol. Communist and socialist critics depicted the thunder bird with bayonet wingtips or pictured it as a capitalist bird of prey with industry and labor clutched in its talons.
The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca
The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection
Even as the New Dealers squared off with their critics over programs and policies, songwriters were advocating laughter as the most simple and effective way of dispelling the Depression.
The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca
Some in the Administration must have been listening. By 1935, President Roosevelt had shifted gears from top-down bureaucratic solutions like the NRA and created bottom-up programs like the Work Projects Administration (WPA). The WPA provide government-paid work for the unemployed, and government-funded art projects to restore the nation’s morale and keep culture alive in hard times. The musical film, Stand Up and Cheer (1934) imagined the president creating a Department of Entertainment for such a purpose, foreshadowing FDR’s Federal One (Federal Theatre, Federal Music, and Federal Art, and Federal Writers’ projects). The movie includes a scene encouraging depression-weary citizen to laugh and sing their blues away.
One of the students in attendance focused on several Federal Art Project announcements and programs printed for the community art center established in Chicago’s south side. African Americans had been particularly hard hit by the Great Depression, experiencing rates of unemployment at double the national average. In establishing a Negro Unit of the Federal Theatre Project in New York City, overnight the federal government became the largest single employer in Harlem. Similarly, the federally funded art center in the south side of Chicago provided that beleaguered community with a stimulus to art and culture unseen since the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s.
The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection
Programs that positively impacted the lives of African Americans, and the fact the First Lady visited and lent her endorsement to such projects, helps explain why African American voters began shifting their allegiance from the party of the Great Emancipator to the Democratic Party over the course of the Depression decade.
The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection
Finally, a couple of students gravitated towards some caricatures and cartoons lampooning some of the “lunatic fringe” that coalesced in opposition to the Roosevelt Administration towards the middle and end of the thirties. The library holds works by and about Huey P. Long of Louisiana. Senator Long planned on challenging the incumbent president in the 1936 elections on a Bible-based “share the wealth” political platform. While the populist demagogue’s campaign song promised to make “Every Man a King,” a Communist Party artist, Hugo Gellert, penned a cartoon that hinted that the poor could expect nothing better than crowns of thorns under a Long presidency.
The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca
When an assassin’s bullet took Senator Long out of the running, it was left to spoilers such as the Reverend Gerald L. K. Smith, the “Radio Priest” Father Charles Coughlin, and the old age pension promoter, Francis Townsend to capitalize on his legacy, and for cartoonists to satirize their efforts.
The Wolfsonian–FIU, gifts of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca
By the time Roosevelt decided to make an unprecedented run for a third term in office in 1940, some who opposed him used similar tactics as were used against Upton Sinclair when he ran for governor of California in 1934. In that election, the conservative movie studios paid performers to act as indigent and ignorant Sinclair supporters, and glamorous silent screen actresses to pose as educated anti-Sinclair voters. A postcard circulated in advance of the 1940 elections deployed the same tactic, reproducing a popular image of the “new boy” (a gap-toothed imbecile) to imply that only an ignorant “hayseed” would support Roosevelt for a third term in office.
The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca
Decades later, the publishers of Mad magazine would recycle, revive, and adopt “Alfred E. Neuman” as its mascot.
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