Fads, Fashions, and American Influences

• • Fads: a craze, a popular activity during certain time period
• • Fads introduced cuz they wanted to escape from painful memories of war
  • Dance, fashion, games, sports
  • We are influenced by US – media, radio, newspaper, magazines, billboards
• • Mah-jong was a big fad
  • Rise of mah-jong came from the 18th century obsession with Chinioserie 
  • Longs races, kissing, eating, goldfish eating, flagpole sitting, dancing marathons
• • Charlie Chapin
  • In Canada, until 1927, films were silent
  • Charlie Chaplin  didn't need words, he had comic routines
  • Filmmaker
• • Rudolph Valentino
  • 1920s pop icon and sexism
  • Born in Italy, known for American silent films
• Bensley Kerr

  • Infamous rum runner of Hamilton, ONT
  • Canada became one of the world’s leading producers of distilled spirits
  • His boat was armed with a machine gun, operated all around Lake ONT
  • He died 
• The film industry

  • Silent films were predominate in the 1920s
  • Called talkies
• Mary Pickford

  • Canadian-born motion picture actress, co-founder of United Artists
  • OG 36 founders of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
  • “America’s Sweetheart”, “Little Mary”, “The girl with the curls”
  • Silent films most important performer and producer
  • American Film Institute named Pickford 24th among the greatest female stars of all time

   
• Robert Nathaniel Dett: Successful black composer

  Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington: composer, pianist, musician

  Louis Daniel Armstrong: American jazz trumpeter and singer

  Radios: first broadcast in February 1924