Change in social lives

• Attending sporting events

  1. People could now attend sporting events in their thousands

  2. Radio helped to popularise sport even further

  3. Certain teams and personalities achieved celebrity status
• Jazz clubs

  • Jazz originated among the black communities of the 'Deep South'
  • Artists like Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Bessie Smith became huge stars
• Changes in social lives as a result of more free time and disposable income


  • Attending sporting events
  • Visiting jazz clubs
  • Going to the cinema
• Visiting jazz clubs

  1. As more people migrated north and west, they brought jazz music with them

  2. Radio helped to popularise jazz even further
• Going to the cinema

  1. The development of cinema boomed in the 1920s due to increased free time, money, and mobility

  2. Movies were an exciting form of entertainment with genres like Rom-Coms, Epics, and Comedies

  3. 100 million tickets a week were being sold by the end of the decade
• Baseball


  • Certain teams like Boston Red Sox became very popular
  • Personalities like 'Babe' Ruth achieved celebrity status
• Changes resulting from the average wage increase

  • More free time
  • More disposable income
• Participation in sports


  Americans started to take part themselves in activities like tennis, golf, and basketball
• Development of Hollywood studios

  1. Studios like Warner Brothers, Paramount, and 20th Century Fox sprung up in Hollywood to churn out movies at an unprecedented rate

  2. A 'star system' developed where actors were glamorised and publicised
• Cinema genres

  • Rom-Coms: 'The Flapper' (1920)
  • Epics: 'The Sheik' (1921)
  • Comedies: 'The Gold Rush' (1925)
• Boxing

  • In 1927, 60 million Americans listened to Gene Tunney fight Jack Dempsey
  • A temporary wooden stadium for 100,000 spectators had been built for the fight and $2 million was taken in ticket sales
• Americans were entertained by the dramas, thrilled by the sporting events, excited by the jazz music and updated by the news bulletins
• In 1927, movies got even more popular when the technology was developed to add sound to them and the so-called 'talkies were born. The first movie to do this starred Al Jolson and was called, appropriately enough, "The Jazz Singer"
• Millions enjoyed the flexibility of listening to their preferred music at their preferred time
• A common and inexpensive pastime was listening to the various programmes which were broadcast by the growing number of radio stations
• Actors glamorised in the 'star system'

  • Douglas Fairbanks
  • Rudolph Valentino
  • Clara Bow
  • Gloria Swanson
• Many older people and traditionalists, especially in conservatively-minded regions like the Bible Belt, rejected the new music, the new dances and the sexualised movie stars. They believed they were a bad influence on the US's younger generation and were leading to moral decline. Films such as Sex (1920) particularly upset these groups
• Huge numbers became more engaged and more informed as a result
• Many poorer Americans, especially those living in the agricultural communities of the rural Midwest, couldn't afford the new radios and gramophones even if they were readily available. Neither did they have the time available to enjoy them as they were too busy scraping together a living on farms. This meant they were excluded from these developments
• The revolution in entertainment was not embraced by every American
• Jazz singers, and the companies they worked for, were keen to release their music for purchase
• 200,560 tickets a week were being sold
• The developments in home entertainment were not enjoyed by every American
• Studios sprung up in Hollywood (Los Angeles) to churn out movies at an unprecedented rate: Warner Brothers, Paramount and 20th Century Fox
• Mass-produced (and therefore cheap) radios were generally affordable to most Americans
• As a result of the millions of Americans buying these records, a 'boom' occurred in the manufacture of gramophones