Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity & the Women Who Made America Modern

by Joshua Zeitz

  In their never-ending, frenetic attempt to recapture each sight, sound, scent, and sensation of the past, Scott and Zelda seemed to acknowledge that their best years were over. Where did it all go? they wondered. What became of this beautiful flapper and her handsome sheik?

  Zelda may never have known the depth of Scott’s despair. His next novel, Tender Is the Night, met with critical acclaim but lackluster sales. Deep in debt to Scribner’s and to his literary agent, no longer able to trade on his reputation as the flapper king in an age that had little use for flappers, Scott struggled to keep pace with Zelda’s mounting hospital bills. In that fight, he was his own worst enemy. The mid-1930s found him bloodshot and paunchy from sleepless nights and countless binges.

  In 1937, desperate to pay off his debts, Scott moved to Hollywood and worked as a screenwriter for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He considered it dreary and humiliating work, but the money—$1,000 per week, soon raised to $1,250—was excellent, and he couldn’t afford to say no. He received only one screen credit, but MGM kept him on. Everyone knew that he was a vanity hire. Even he knew it.

  In 1938, Scott tried his best to sum up his relationship with Zelda in a brutally honest letter to their daughter, Scottie, who was just about to start college at Vassar. “When I was your age,” he wrote, “I lived with a great dream.4 The dream grew and I learned how to speak of it and make people listen. Then the dream divided one day when I decided to marry your mother after all, even though I knew she was spoiled and meant no good to me. I was sorry immediately I had married her but, being patient in those days, made the best of it and got to love her in another way.… She realized too late that work was dignity … but it was too late and she broke and is broken forever.”

  On his occasional trips back east, Scott visited with Zelda. They even took a few vacations together—to South Carolina in 1937, Virginia in 1938, and Florida in 1939. By then, Scott had found another life partner—a Hollywood gossip columnist named Sheila Graham, who remained his companion until the day he died. Graham never entirely displaced Zelda, whose bond with Scott—in life and in letters—endured even as the couple saw less and less of each other.

  But Zelda was thousands of miles away in December 1940, when her husband died of a heart attack. He was forty-four years old.

  Except for periodic stays with her mother in Montgomery, Zelda spent the remainder of her life at the Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. In 1948, a fire broke out on the top floor of the sanatorium. Zelda perished in the flames.

  It took some time before her charred body could be positively identified. When it was, she was buried beside her husband in Rockville Union Cemetery. In 1975, they were reinterred at the Fitzgerald family plot at St. Mary’s Church, also in Rockville.

  “It is the custom now to look back on ourselves of the boom days with a disapproval that approaches horror,” Scott wrote toward the end of his years.5 “But it had its virtues, that old boom: Life was a great deal larger and gayer for most people, and the stampede to the spartan virtues in times of war and famine shouldn’t make us too dizzy to remember its hilarious glory. There were so many good things. These eyes have been hallowed by watching a man order champagne for his two thousand guests, by listening while a woman ordered a whole staircase from the greatest sculptor in the world, by seeing a man tear up a good check for eight hundred thousand dollars.”

  The days of “hilarious glory” were gone. All that was left were the words in Scott’s books.

  IN EARLY 1928, over a year before the stock market crash, the editorial page of The New York Times boldly declared that there were “No More Flappers.”6 “Who has seen in recent days this creature,” the editors wondered, “described by the [Junior League] as the typical post-war flapper? Her hair was furiously frizzled. Her smoking was overenthusiastic. Her chewing gum was too loud and too large. Her vocabulary was imported directly from the trenches. She was startlingly picturesque—and now she is no more.”

  The Times wasn’t entirely wrong. For the better part of a decade, the flapper—part reality, part invention—had dominated the national imagination. But Americans living through depression, war, and the Red scare could scarcely afford to indulge in the frivolities of the 1920s. So the flapper slipped out of sight and into memory.

  Her influence, however, endures.

  Though hemlines would continue to rise and fall over the century, the sexual and romantic revolutions in which the flapper was a starring player never really subsided. The sharp rise in sexual experimentation that had begun even before World War I continued over the course of the ensuing decades, aided by the social and demographic upheavals of World War II and by new forms of birth control like “the pill,” which was licensed by the Food and Drug Administration in 1960 and became extremely popular among single women by the late 1960s. In the aftermath of World War II, when he scandalized the nation with his two-volume study, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), research scientist Alfred Kinsey was only reminding Americans that the flapper and her boyfriend enjoyed sex even as they matured into middle age.

  Moralists of the cold war era blamed the “sexual revolution” on a variety of social ills, among them technology (the pill), politics (feminism and communism), and culture (pornography). They even tried to shoot the messenger by blaming Kinsey. But the same trends that had converged earlier in the century to produce a vast change in morals and manners—the migration from country to cities, the mass entry of women into the workforce and classroom, the expansion of the middle class, the shift from an industrial and agricultural economy to a service economy, the emergence of a youth culture—continued in the cold war years to undermine the already shaky basis of Victorian-era morality.

  Today, as Americans debate the question of same-sex marriage, they are in effect picking up where the flapper left off. In the 1920s, she attracted scorn for suggesting that romance was an individual prerogative and that there was an important place for sex outside of procreation. Eighty years later, gays and lesbians are extending the logic of this argument in asserting the legitimacy of their own bonds.

  In the same way, today’s debate over consumerism hearkens back to the flapper and her era. Mass production and mass purchasing power first came under serious public scrutiny in the 1920s. Arriving on the scene when she did, the flapper brought into sharp relief the new American propensity to speak of rights in material terms—as so many items bought and consumed—and to regard freedom as a function of marketplace choice. Even as most Americans grew more distant from political and economic elites, they came to regard access to fashionable dresses, lipstick, and jewelry as a “democratization” of everyday life.

  As in the 1920s, Americans today are living amid rising economic inequality and a widespread feeling of alienation from the corridors of government. Even so, many people cling to the notion that consumption—purchasing a bigger house, a fancier car, a designer dress, or an expensive suit, even at the cost of deep household debt—is the great social leveler.

  If the sexual and consumer revolutions of the 1920s continue to play themselves out today, so does the curious cycle of celebrity and style. It was never clear whether Scott Fitzgerald “invented” the flapper, “discovered” her, or exploited her. Can anyone today pinpoint the moment, or the reason, that Paris Hilton became famous? As in the twenties, a small but influential group of media and advertising professionals continues to wield a great deal of influence over the images we see, the celebrities we idolize, and the fashions we embrace.

  Writing in the 1920s, Loren Knox, a culture critic for The Atlantic Monthly, lamented that “though we, the people of the United States, boast of our individuality, we are regarded to-day by those who cater to our wants as an absorbent mass, rather than as discriminating units.7 Great agencies of supply give us a range of selection, it is true. But each differentiation is the standard choice of so large a number that it becomes a class itself.…

  “In foo
ds, we are shipped train loads of ready-to-eat, sometimes predigested, breakfast foods, biscuits, meats, soups and desserts,” he continued. “In clothes, all of us who are not museum freaks are offered ready-to-wear, uniformly designed suits, shirts, underwear, collars, hosiery, and shoes.… In music, the ready-to-grind phonographs and pianolas have given the art of the few to the mob.… All, all, is ready prepared.”

  Knox’s eulogy for the American individual, though surely an overstatement, is as important today as in the 1920s. Then, as now, ordinary people struggled to carve out their own identities in an increasingly impersonal, prefabricated world. Millions of flappers embraced a controversial lifestyle in a spirited attempt at self-definition. But they did so in concert, buying the same brands of clothing, makeup, and cigarettes, emulating Clara Bow and Colleen Moore, and adopting the same jargon ripped from the pages of Scott Fitzgerald’s latest short story. Eighty years later, their great-granddaughters struggle with the same dilemma.

  The flapper was, in effect, the first thoroughly modern American.

  Notes

  INTRODUCTION: TANGO PIRATES AND ABSINTHE

  1 On May 22, 1915: For a review of the Eugenia Kelly affair, see New York Times, May 23, 1915, C5; May 25, 1915, 8; May 26, 1915, 8; May 30, 1915, SM16; August 8, 1915, 7; October 1, 1915, 5; November 18, 1915; and Lewis A. Erenberg, Steppin’ Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture, 1890–1930 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981), 77–85.

  2 $10 million: Eugenia Kelly was due to inherit $600,000 on her twenty-first birthday. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis’s consumer price index calculator, in 2003 dollars that sum equals just over $10 million.

  3 1920s fashion writer: Kenneth A. Yellis, “Prosperity’s Child: Some Thoughts on the Flapper,” American Quarterly 21, no. 2 (Spring 1969): 49.

  4 Webster’s: Gerald E. Critoph, “The Flapper and Her Critics,” in Carol V. R. George, ed., “Remember the Ladies”: New Perspectives on Women in American History (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1975), 145.

  5 “flappers don’t like”: Critoph, “The Flapper and Her Critics,” 145.

  6 “Concern—and consternation”: New York Times, April 16, 1922, 49.

  7 “flippancy of the … flapper”: New York Times, October 1, 1922, 20.

  8 “lowest degree of intelligence”: New York Times, July 6, 1922, 8.

  9 Florida State Legislature: New York Times, April 4, 1929, 22.

  10 It wasn’t until 1929: William E. Leuchtenberg, The Perils of Prosperity: 1914–1932, rev. ed. 1993 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 158.

  11 fourteen-year-old: New York Times, June 4, 1923, 7.

  12 “Flapper Jane”: Bruce Bliven, “Flapper Jane,” New Republic, September 9, 1925, 65–67.

  CHAPTER 1: THE MOST POPULAR GIRL

  1 “brown-shingled building”: Sara Mayfield, Exiles from Paradise: Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald (New York: Delacorte Press, 1971), 1.

  2 “sophisticated for her age”: Mayfield, Exiles, 1–2.

  3 climbed to the roof: James R. Mellow, Invented Lives: F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984), 5.

  4 Stutz Bearcat: Mayfield, Exiles, 24.

  5 “most popular girl”: Mayfield, Exiles, 24.

  6 pear trees: Nancy Milford, Zelda: A Biography (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 9.

  7 cut school: Milford, Zelda, 22.

  8 “I do love my Charlie so”: Milford, Zelda, 12.

  9 “the last to deny”: Mayfield, Exiles, 22–23.

  10 During the summer: Milford, Zelda, 16.

  11 legendary Christmas bop: Matthew J. Bruccoli, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, rev. ed, 1993 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 104.

  12 “I never let them down”: Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Last Waltz, in Matthew J. Bruccoli and Mary Gordon, eds., Zelda Fitzgerald: The Collected Writings (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1991), 32.

  13 “the agreeable countenance”: Thomas Alexander Boyd, “Scott Fitzgerald Here on Vacation: ‘Rests’ by Outlining New Novels,” St. Paul Daily News, August 28, 1921, E6; also reprinted in Matthew J. Bruccoli and Judith S. Baugham, eds., Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald (Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 2004), 3.

  14 leave from the army: Bruccoli, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, 96–97.

  15 most eligible debutantes: Mayfield, Exiles, 1.

  16 “great animal magnetism”: Mellow, Invented Lives, 7.

  17 “two kinds of girls”: Milford, Zelda, 17.

  18 “late dates with fast workers”: Mayfield, Exiles, 2–3.

  19 “the handsomest boy”: Mayfield, Exiles, 3.

  20 “like new goods”: Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Last Waltz, in Bruccoli and Gordon, eds., Zelda Fitzgerald: The Collected Writings, 39.

  21 “break up the stag lines”: Mayfield, Exiles, 45.

  22 Zelda’s attention: Milford, Zelda, 22.

  23 passed their days: Milford, Zelda, 33–34.

  24 “this dusty time”: ZSF to FSF, undated [summer 1935], in Jackson R. Bryer and Cathy W. Barks, eds., Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002), 214–15.

  25 An entry from 1935: Bruccoli, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, 106.

  CHAPTER 2: SEX o’CLOCK IN AMERICA

  1 “ ‘no ladies’ ”: Sara Mayfield, Exiles from Paradise: Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald (New York: Delacorte Press, 1971), 11–12.

  2 sexual habits: Alfred Kinsey, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1953), 298, 339. In his study of one hundred married men and one hundred married women who were born before 1900, G. V. Hamilton found that 67 percent of women born between 1886 and 1890 but only 30 percent of women born between 1891 and 1900 were virgins at marriage. Hamilton’s study is probably skewed by its small sample size and by the unusually active sex lives of its participants. See G. V. Hamilton, A Research in Marriage (New York: A. & C. Boni, Inc., 1929), 43–44.

  3 “Sex o’clock”: “Sex o’Clock in America,” Current Opinion 55 (August 1913): 113–14; Agnes Repplier, “The Repeal of Reticence,” Atlantic Monthly 113 (March 1914): 297–304.

  4 noted with disapproval: James R. McGovern, “The American Woman’s Pre–World War I Freedom in Manners and Morals,” Journal of American History 55, no. 2 (September 1968): 326.

  5 “Where Is Your Daughter”: McGovern, “The American Woman’s Pre–World War I Freedom,” 324.

  6 magazine exposé: Page Smith, Redeeming the Time: A People’s History of the 1920s and the New Deal (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987), 9, 49.

  7 “You dare me”: McGovern, “The American Woman’s Pre–World War I Freedom,” 323.

  8 “Take It from Me!”: McGovern, “The American Woman’s Pre–World War I Freedom,” 323.

  9 “I DO NOT DOUBT YOU”: FSF to ZSF, February 21, 1919, in Jackson R. Bryer and Cathy W. Barks, eds., Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002), 11.

  10 “DARLING HEART”: FSF to ZSF, February 22, 1919, in Bryer and Barks, eds., Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda, 12.

  11 dust from the Auburn incident: Mayfield, Exiles, 46–47.

  12 “soft, warm nights”: ZSF to FSF, undated [March 1919], in Bryer and Barks, eds., Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda, 13.

  13 “don’t be so depressed”: ZSF to FSF, undated [March 1919], in Bryer and Barks, eds., Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda, 15.

  14 122 rejection letters: Matthew J. Bruccoli, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, rev. ed. 1993 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 111.

  15 “about as much control”: F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crackup (New York: New Directions, 1945), 25.

  16 “I must leave now”: ZSF to FSF, undated [March 1919], Bryer and Barks, eds., Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda, 21.

  17 “Bill LeGrand and I”: ZSF to FSF, undated [April 1919],
in Bryer and Barks, eds., Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda, 24.

  18 “ ‘Red’ said”: ZSF to FSF, undated [May 1919], in Bryer and Barks, eds., Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda, 31–32.

  19 “awfully silly”: ZSF to FSF, undated [April 1919], in Bryer and Barks, eds., Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda, 24.

  20 “Please please”: ZSF to FSF, undated [late May 1919], in Bryer and Barks, eds., Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda, 32–33.

  21 “Is that all …?”: Mayfield, Exiles, 75.

  22 “added whiskey”: Minnie Sayre to ZSF, enclosed in ZSF to FSF, undated [April 1919], in Bryer and Barks, eds., Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda, 28.

  23 “asked me not to write”: ZSF to FSF, undated [June 1919], in Bryer and Barks, eds., Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda, 37.

  24 Victrola records: Nancy Milford, Zelda: A Biography (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 51.

  25 “While my friends”: Fitzgerald, The Crackup, 25–26.

  CHAPTER 3: WILL SHE THROW HER ARMS AROUND YOUR NECK AND YELL?

  1 economic and demographic forces: Lynn Dumenil, Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 112–18; Joanne J. Meyerowitz, Women Adrift: Independent Wage-Earners in Chicago, 1880–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 4–5.

  2 real money … real freedom: Paula S. Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 24.

  3 industrialization and urbanization: Howard P. Chudacoff and Judith E. Smith, The Evolution of American Urban Society (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1995), 69–70, 111–12; William E. Leuchtenberg, The Perils of Prosperity: 1914–1932, rev. ed. (New York: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 225; James T. Patterson, America in the Twentieth Century: A History (New York: Harcourt College Publishers, 2000), 146.