Author: David Rosen Publisher: History Press ISBN: 9781540245380 Category : Languages : en Pages : 194
Book Description
Texas Guinan was the queen of New York's speakeasies in the Roaring Twenties. Her clubs were backed by leading gangsters and welcomed some of the city's biggest sharks and swankest swells. Movie stars, flappers, madams, musicians and more flocked to midtown's Wet Zone, Greenwich Village and Harlem for inebriated entertainment. Patrons threw cultural norms aside as free-flowing hooch lubricated the jazz joints, sex circuses and drag balls that fueled the era's insurgent spirit. At the center of the party was Texas with her trademark catchphrases and guarantee to have a good time. Author David Rosen recounts Texas's adventurous life alongside tales of Gotham's nightlife when abstinence was the law of the land and breaking the law an all-American indulgence.
Author: David Rosen Publisher: Arcadia Publishing ISBN: 1467146412 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 192
Book Description
"Texas Guinan was the queen of New York's speakeasies in the Roaring Twenties. Her clubs were backed by leading gangsters and welcomed some of the city's biggest sharks and swankest swells. Movie stars, flappers, madams, musicians and more flocked to midtown's "Wet Zone," Greenwich Village and Harlem for inebriated entertainment... Author David Rosen recounts Texas's adventurous life alongside tales of Gotham's nightlife when abstinence was the law of the land and breaking the law an all-American indulgence."--Back cover.
Author: John T. Aquino Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 1476689741 Category : True Crime Languages : en Pages : 186
Book Description
In the midst of gangland activities during the Roaring Twenties, a thief plagued the New York City area by breaking into people's homes and stealing radios, possibly the costliest thing a family could own. Not only did the crimes deprive families of property and security, but they also resulted in the injuries of three NYPD officers and the death of officer Arthur Kenney. Based on interviews and trial transcripts, this book documents the search for the Radio Burglar, which turned into a wide-spread manhunt. Initially perplexed by the case, authorities eventually overcame great odds to achieve a conviction that has received praise in the following decades. But nine years later, the devastating effect on his family and friends of Arthur Kenney's loss was prolonged when they were involved in a second murder trial that riveted the attention of the city and country.
Author: Joseph Gustaitis Publisher: Arcadia Publishing ISBN: 1439674361 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 176
Book Description
When people imagine 1920s Chicago, they usually (and justifiably) think of Al Capone, speakeasies, gang wars, flappers and flivvers. Yet this narrative overlooks the crucial role the Windy City played in the modernization of America. The city's incredible ethnic variety and massive building boom gave it unparalleled creative space, as design trends from Art Deco skyscrapers to streamlined household appliances reflected Chicago's unmistakable style. The emergence of mass media in the 1920s helped make professional sports a national obsession, even as Chicago radio stations were inventing the sitcom and the soap opera. Join Joseph Gustaitis as he chases the beat of America's Jazz Age back to its jazz capital.
Author: James Fisher Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 153811335X Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 691
Book Description
Historical Dictionary of Vaudeville contains a chronology, an introduction, an extensive bibliography, and the dictionary section has more than 1,000 cross-referenced entries on performing artists, managers and agents, theatre facilities, and the terminology central to the history of vaudeville.
Author: Louise Berliner Publisher: ISBN: Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 264
Book Description
"Hello, Suckers!" Every night she flung that greeting at the Jazz Age flappers and gents who crowded in to see the "Queen of the Nightclubs" work her magic. They came to laugh and drink and forget the world outside - and Texas Guinan kept the party going. She was the wittiest nightclub hostess in New York, and her clubs had the best floor shows, the most elegant decor, and all the bootleg liquor that furtively exchanged dollars could buy. Here is the story of Texas Guinan - nightclub hostess, theater and vaudeville actress, and star of silent westerns. Louise Berliner, a granddaughter of the lawyer who defended Guinan at her notorious "public nuisance" trial in 1929, follows the whole course of Guinan's life (1884-1933), from her childhood in a devout Catholic home in Waco, Texas, to her celebrity funeral and burial with diamonds in one hand and a rosary in the other. Like a female Gatsby, Texas Guinan invented a past appropriate for the character she became. Berliner explores this fascinating process of self-creation, separating fact from the fictions that Guinan wove about her life. In so doing, she illuminates the era of early musical comedies in New York and on the vaudeville circuit, the two-reeler silent westerns in which Guinan starred as a lady gunslinger, and the New York club life that Guinan promoted as "an essential and basic industry". Texas Guinan seemed to know everyone in the Roaring Twenties - the Prince of Wales, Ruby Keeler, George Raft, Rudolph Valentino, Walter Winchell, Mae West, Aimee Semple MacPherson, and even President Harding - and Berliner offers intriguing views of Guinan's relationship with many of these varied personalities. This timely book, the firstfully documented study of Guinan's life, will be important for everyone interested in popular culture, the Jazz Age, and women's studies. It brings to life a woman of amazing vitality and surprising contradictions, as captivating as any character imagined by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Author: David Rosen Publisher: Key Publishing House ISBN: 9780981160665 Category : Celebrities Languages : en Pages : 232
Book Description
Sex Scandal America is a comprehensive history of sexual scandals in America from colonial times (including Pocahontas and the Puritans) to today (few know about this part of George W. Bush's dubious past). The book exposes the scandals of national political figures (presidents, congress-folk, governors) and those of celebrities (e.g., entertainers and tycoons). It ties these scandals to the deeper changes in sexual culture occurring during the various phases of the country's social evolution. Most importantly, it assesses the role of political scandals as a form of public shaming. The book shows how, over the last four centuries, scandals have changed as a ritualized spectacle, evolving from a morality tale to an entertainment distraction.
Author: Ellen NicKenzie Lawson Publisher: SUNY Press ISBN: 1438448163 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 176
Book Description
Uses previously unstudied Coast Guard records for New York City and environs to examine the development of Rum Row and smuggling in New York City during Prohibition. With the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, drying up New York City promised to be the greatest triumph of the proponents of Prohibition. Instead, the city remained the nations greatest liquor market. Smugglers, Bootleggers, and Scofflaws focuses on liquor smuggling to tell the story of Prohibition in New York City. Using previously unstudied Coast Guard records from 1920 to 1933 for New York City and environs, Ellen NicKenzie Lawson examines the development of Rum Row and smuggling via the coasts of Long Island, the Long Island Sound, the Jersey shore, and along the Hudson and East Rivers. Lawson demonstrates how smuggling syndicates on the Lower East Side, the West Side, and Little Italy contributed to the emergence of the Broadway Mob. She also explores New York Citys scofflaw populationpatrons of thirty thousand speakeasies and five hundred nightclubsas well as how politicians Fiorello La Guardia, James Jimmy Walker, Nicholas Murray Butler, Pauline Morton Sabin, and Al Smith articulated their views on Prohibition to the nation. Lawson argues that in their assertion of the freedom to drink alcohol for enjoyment, New Yorks smugglers, bootleggers, and scofflaws belong in the American tradition of defending liberty. The result was the historically unprecedented step of repeal of a constitutional amendment with passage of the Twenty-first Amendment in 1933.
Author: David M. Rosen Publisher: Grove Press ISBN: 9780802131874 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 326
Book Description
Provides information on how to make and distribute independent productions, and gives examples of different styles, budgets, and financial arrangements used
Author: Irving Lewis Allen Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190282452 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
The American urban scene, and in particular New York's, has given us a rich cultural legacy of slang words and phrases, a bonanza of popular speech. Hot dog, rush hour, butter-and-egg man, gold digger, shyster, buttinsky, smart aleck, sidewalk superintendent, yellow journalism, breadline, straphanger, tar beach, the Tenderloin, the Great White Way, to do a Brodie--these are just a few of the hundreds of popular words and phrases that were born or took on new meaning in the streets of New York. In The City in Slang, Irving Lewis Allen traces this flowering of popular expressions that accompanied the emergence of the New York metropolis from the early nineteenth century down to the present. This unique account of the cultural and social history of America's greatest city provides in effect a lexicon of popular speech about city life. With many stories Allen shows how this vocabulary arose from city streets, often interplaying with vaudeville, radio, movies, comics, and the popular songs of Tin Pan Alley. Some terms of great pertinence to city people today have unexpectedly old pedigrees. Rush hour was coined by 1890, for instance, and rubberneck dates to the late 1890s and became popular in New York to describe the busloads of tourists who craned their necks to see the tall buildings and the sights of the Bowery and Chinatown. The Big Apple itself (since 1971 the official nickname of New York) appeared in the 1920s, though first in reference to the city's top racetracks and to Broadway bookings as pinnacles of professional endeavor. Allen also tells fascinating stories behind once-popular slang that is no longer in use. Spielers, for example, were the little girls in tenement districts who danced ecstatically on the sidewalks to the music of the hurdy-gurdy men and, when they were old enough, frequented the dance halls of the Lower East Side. Following the trail of these words and phrases into the city's East Side, West Side, and all around the town, from Harlem to Wall Street, and into the haunts of its high and low life, The City in Slang is a fascinating look at the rich cultural heritage of language about city life.
Author: David Rosen
Author: David Rosen
Author: John T. Aquino
Author: Joseph Gustaitis
Author: James Fisher
Author: Louise Berliner
Author: David Rosen
Author: Ellen NicKenzie Lawson
Author: David M. Rosen
Author: Irving Lewis Allen