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

by Joshua Zeitz

  4 “the farmer’s daughter”: Meyerowitz, Women Adrift, 9, 19.

  5 “money for clothes”: Meyerowitz, Women Adrift, 18–19.

  6 “up to that time”: Meyerowitz, Women Adrift, 18–19. Italics added for emphasis.

  7 “mysteries of darkness”: David Nasaw, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 6.

  8 Across America: Nasaw, Going Out, 1–9.

  9 more money and more time: Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers & Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870–1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 179–180. Thanks to mechanization, the work week of the average urban blue-collar worker plummeted from 55.9 hours in 1900 to 44.2 in 1929; at the same time, real wages adjusted for inflation rose 25 percent in the first two decades of the new century.

  10 “throw her arms”: Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), 134–35.

  11 Louisa: Peiss, Cheap Amusements, 70.

  12 “one of the women”: Peiss, Cheap Amusements, 70–1, 99, 108–09.

  13 Ina Smith … and John Marean: Ellen K. Rothman, Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship in America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 204–05.

  14 “walking under the trees”: Rothman, Hands and Hearts, 207.

  15 Otto Follin and Laura Grant: Rothman, Hands and Hearts, 206.

  16 Marian Curtis and Lawrence Gerritson: Rothman, Hands and Hearts, 223–35.

  17 “going out motoring”: Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1929), 257, 524.

  18 Muncie’s high school students: Lynd and Lynd, Middletown, 257, 524.

  19 “off and away”: Rothman, Hands and Hearts, 294–95.

  20 By 1925 … in Muncie: Lynd and Lynd, Middletown, 258.

  21 the old order: Beth L. Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 16–17.

  22 “I’ll be patient”: Rothman, Hands and Hearts, 230.

  23 “If I get much hungrier”: Rothman, Hands and Hearts, 230.

  24 This new system: Meyerowitz, Women Adrift, 35–36, 69.

  25 crude double standard: Peiss, Cheap Amusements, 68.

  26 “If they didn’t take me”: Peiss, Cheap Amusements, 54.

  27 “If I did not have a man”: Meyerowitz, Women Adrift, 102.

  28 Consumer’s League report: Peiss, Cheap Amusements, 55.

  29 MAN GETTING $18: Meyerowitz, Women Adrift, 102–03.

  30 Clara Laughlin: Peiss, Cheap Amusements, 112.

  31 coed at Ohio State: Paula S. Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 307.

  CHAPTER 4: FLAPPER KING

  1 “recognized spokesman”: Frederick James Smith, “Fitzgerald, Flappers and Fame,” Shadowland 3 (January 1921): 39, 75, reprinted in Matthew J. Bruccoli and Judith S. Baughman, eds., Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald (Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 2004), 6.

  2 “originated the flapper”: “Novelist Loved Atlanta Girl’s Picture,” undated news clip, source unknown, F. Scott Fitzgerald Papers, Firestone Library, Princeton University [hereafter FSF MS], Scrapbook III.

  3 “Flapperdom’s Fiction Ace”: Bart Fulton, “Flapperdom’s Fiction Ace,” undated clip [ca. 1922], FSF MS, Scrapbook III.

  4 “ ‘eternal feminine’ ”: “The Expert on Flappers,” undated news clip [ca. 1921–1922], Minneapolis Tribune, FSF MS, Scrapbook III.

  5 “To Scott Fitzgerald”: Undated, untitled clip, source unknown, FSF MS, Scrapbook II.

  6 “Transformation of a Rose”: “The Parliament of Fools,” The Wellesley [?] undated clip, FSF MS, Scrapbook II.

  7 “popular daughter”: F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920), 58.

  8 “saw girls doing things”: Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, 59.

  9 “Mother, it’s done”: Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, 59–60, 178.

  10 forty thousand copies: “The Bookman’s Monthly Score,” undated clip [ca. 1920], FSF MS, Scrapbook II.

  11 “Before he started”: Untitled, undated clipping [ca. 1921–1922], FSF MS, Scrapbook III.

  12 2.75 million: Matthew J. Bruccoli, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, rev. ed. 1993 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 125.

  13 Main Street: Bruccoli, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, 158.

  14 Ardita: F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Offshore Pirate,” Saturday Evening Post, May 29, 1920.

  15 Myra admits: F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Myra Meets His Family,” Saturday Evening Post, March 20, 1920.

  16 one in every five households: Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1929), 239.

  17 more popular interest: Paula S. Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 29.

  18 number of children borne: Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life (New York: Free Press, 1988), 51; Linda Gordon, Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America, rev. ed. 1977 (New York: Grossman, 1976), 48. The average birthrate fell from 7.04 children in 1800 to 3.17 children in 1920.

  19 birthrates fell across the board: Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful, 61.

  20 Smaller families: Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful, 58–59; Howard P. Chudacoff, How Old Are You?: Age Consciousness in American Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 92–116. The average household size fell from 4.7 persons in 1900 to 4.3 in 1920.

  21 college enrollments … high school attendance: Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful, 124; John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 257.

  22 the Lynds observed: Lynd and Lynd, Middletown, 211.

  23 “that generation’s sex life”: Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful, 21.

  24 “rather a joke”: Lynd and Lynd, Middletown, 138.

  25 “petting parties”: Lynd and Lynd, Middletown, 138.

  26 177 college women: Geraldine Frances Smith, “Certain Aspects of the Sex Life of the Adolescent Girl,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology (September 1924): 348–49.

  27 “Girls aren’t so modest”: Lynd and Lynd, Middletown, 141.

  28 Mrs. George Rose: Mary Murphy, “ ‘ … And All That Jazz’: Changing Manners and Morals in Butte After World War I,” Montana 46, no. 4 (Winter 1996): 55.

  29 “A Novel About Flappers”: Promotional advertisement, FSF MS, Scrapbook II.

  30 “timelessness”: FSF to Maxwell Perkins, May 11, 1922, in Andrew Turnbull, ed., The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald (New York: Scribner, 1963), 158.

  31 “Fitzgerald, Flappers and Fame”: Smith, “Fitzgerald, Flappers and Fame,” 39, 75; “This Is What Happens to Naughty Flappers,” Detroit Free Press, undated clip [ca. 1922], FSF MS, Scrapbook III.

  32 “worth hearing”: B. F. Wilson, “F. Scott Fitzgerald Says: ‘All Women Over Thirty-Five Should Be Murdered,’ ” Metropolitan Magazine 58 (November 1923): 34, 75–76, reprinted in Matthew J. Bruccoli and Judith S. Baugham, eds., Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald (Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 2004).

  33 “I sometimes wonder”: “Fitzgerald and Flappers,” undated clipping [ca. 1922], unidentified Philadelphia newspaper, FSF MS, Scrapbook III.

  34 “a variety of subjects”: F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crackup (New York: New Directions, 1945), 25–27.

  35 “I wish to state”: “Scott Fitzgerald Speaks at Home,” undated clip [ca. 1922], source unknown, FSF MS, Scrapbook II.

  36 “flapper is growing stronger”: B. F. Wilson, “F. Scott Fitz
gerald Says: ‘All Women over Thirty-Five Should Be Murdered,’ ” Metropolitan Magazine 58 (November 1923): 34, 75–76.

  37 “broad moral views”: Smith, “Fitzgerald, Flappers and Fame,” 39, 75.

  38 Parker’s whimsical poem: Dorothy Parker, “The Flapper,” Life, undated clip [ca. 1922], FSF MS, Scrapbook III.

  CHAPTER 5: DOING IT FOR EFFECT

  1 “toploftiness”: F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crackup (New York: New Directions, 1945), 86.

  2 “all for taking a chance”: Matthew J. Bruccoli, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, rev. ed. 1993 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 119.

  3 “Terms, etc.”: FSF to Maxwell Perkins, September 18, 1919, in Andrew Turnbull, ed., The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald (New York: Scribner, 1963), 139.

  4 “summer of despair”: Fitzgerald, The Crackup, 77.

  5 “mighty glad you’re coming”: ZSF to FSF, undated [October 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), 32–33.

  6 “so be-au-ti-ful”: ZSF to FSF, undated [February 1920] in Bryer and Barks, eds., Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda, 43–44.

  7 “wild, pleasure loving girl”: FSF to Isabelle Amorous, February 26, 1920, in Matthew J. Bruccoli and Margaret M. Duggan, eds., Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald (New York: Random House, 1980), 53.

  8 “Called on Scott Fitz”: Nancy Milford, Zelda: A Biography (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 67.

  9 “not above reproach”: FSF to Isabelle Amorous, February 26, 1920, in Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald, 53.

  10 “He’s going to leave”: Nathan Miller, New World Coming: The 1920s and the Making of Modern America (New York: Scribner, 2003), 211.

  11 “they were the twenties”: Mayfield, Exiles, 84.

  12 Between 1921 and 1924: Miller, New World Coming, 149–50. Between 1921 and 1924, America’s gross national product rose from $69 billion to $93 billion; aggregate wages rose from roughly $36.4 billion to $51.5 billion.

  13 Philadelphia banking family: Irving Bernstein, The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker, 1920–1933, rev. ed. 1966 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), 47.

  14 Lynds visited Muncie: Bernstein, The Lean Years, 54–59.

  15 Brookings Institution: Bernstein, The Lean Years, 63.

  16 “spent your summer canning”: Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1929), 156–57.

  17 smaller portion of their wages: Andrew Heinze, Adapting to Abundance: Jewish Immigrants, Mass Consumption and the Search for American Identity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 23; Daniel Horowitz, The Morality of Spending: Attitudes Toward Consumer Society in America, 1875–1940 (Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1992), Appendix A.

  18 money left over for nonessentials: Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 103–04; Horowitz, The Morality of Spending, chap. 7–8, Appendix A.

  19 fifty million tickets: Cohen, Making a New Deal, 125.

  20 tempted by credit: Miller, New World Coming, 152.

  21 mah-jongg … flagpole sitting: Miller, New World Coming, 127–29.

  22 cult of self-examination: William E. Leuchtenberg, The Perils of Prosperity: 1914–1932, rev. ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 164–68.

  23 Emile Coué: Lynn Dumenil, Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 87–88.

  24 Lawton Campbell strolled: Milford, Zelda, 68.

  25 “not doing it for effect”: Mayfield, Exiles, 59–60.

  26 basked in publicity: Mayfield, Exiles, 65.

  27 “The remarkable thing”: Bruccoli, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, 156–59.

  28 Dorothy Parker: Milford, Zelda, 67.

  29 Scott’s old eating club: Bruccoli, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, 166–67.

  30 “Mama and Daddy”: Mayfield, Exiles from Paradise, 58.

  31 “Within a few months”: Milford, Zelda, 67.

  CHAPTER 6: I PREFER THIS SORT OF GIRL

  1 average number of profiles: Leo Lowenthal, “The Triumph of Mass Idols,” in Literature, Popular Culture and Society (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1961), 111.

  2 “To write it, three months”: Heywood Broun, “Books,” New-York Tribune, May 7, 1920, 14, FSF MS, Scrapbook II.

  3 “prefer this sort of girl”: Smith, “Fitzgerald, Flappers and Fame,” 39, 75, reprinted in Matthew J. Bruccoli and Judith S. Baughman, eds., Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald (Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 2004), 6.

  4 “I love Scott’s books”: “What a ‘Flapper Novelist’ Thinks of His Wife,” Louisville Courier-Journal, September 30, 1923, 112, reprinted in Bruccoli and Baughman, eds., Conversations, 47.

  5 syndicated review of the book: “Mrs. F. Scott Fitzgerald Reviews ‘The Beautiful and Damned,’ Friend Husband’s Latest,” New-York Tribune, April 2, 1922.

  6 “I’m deadly curious”: FSF to Maxwell Perkins, undated [ca. January 10, 1920], in Andrew Turnbull, ed., The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald (New York: Scribner, 1963), 141–42.

  7“The girl is excellent”: FSF to Maxwell Perkins, ca. January 31, 1922, in Turnbull, ed., Letters, 152–53; Andrew Turnball, Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography (New York: Scribner, 1962), 130.

  8 “She is quite unprincipled”: F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920), 170–71, 175, 181.

  9 “the flapper has grown up”: “Fitzgerald’s Flapper Grows Up,” Columbus Dispatch, undated clip [ca. 1922], FSF MS, Scrapbook III.

  10 “started the flapper movement”: “Family of Noted Author,” Washington Herald, undated clip [ca. 1922]; advertisement, Heart’s International, May 1923, both in FSF MS, Scrapbook III.

  11 Midnight Flappers: Matthew J. Bruccoli, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, rev. ed. 1993 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 187.

  12 “Eulogy on the Flapper”: Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, “Eulogy on the Flapper,” Metropolitan Magazine, June 1922, in Matthew J. Bruccoli and Mary Gordon, eds., Zelda Fitzgerald: The Collected Writings (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1991), 39.

  13 the good life: Warren I. Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), xx–xxvi; 271–77.

  14 nature of work had changed: Steven J. Diner, A Very Different Age: Americans of the Progressive Era (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998), 50–59.

  15 adman coolly explained: Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 24.

  16 “Sell them their dreams”: William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 298.

  17 “Road of Happiness”: Lynn Dumenil, Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 89–90.

  18 “same old story”: Dumenil, Modern Temper, 89–90.

  19 “Why should all life”: Nancy Milford, Zelda: A Biography (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 27.

  20 Margaret Sanger: David M. Kennedy, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 131.

  21 erstwhile socialist organizer: Kennedy, Birth Control in America, 10–11.

  22 “birth strike”: Ellen Chesler, Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 86–88.

  23 “for the enemy—Capitalism”: Kennedy, Birth Control in America, 110.

  24 “love demands”: Chesler, Woman of Valor, 196–97.

  25 “liberation and human development”: Chesler, Woman of Valor, 209.

  26 “flirted because it was fun”: Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, “Eulogy on t
he Flapper.”

  27 young woman in Columbus: Paula S. Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 307.

  28 “little town of Somerset”: New York Times, August 25, 1923, 7.

  29 “Personal liberty”: Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful, 76.

  30 Chicago Tribune’s remark: Nancy F. Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 172.

  31 “personal liberties and individual rights”: Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful, 37. Italics added for emphasis.

  CHAPTER 7: STRAIGHTEN OUT PEOPLE

  1 Founded in 1866: Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), chap. 9.

  2 written by the losers: Joshua Michael Zeitz, “Rebel Redemption Redux,” Dissent (Winter 2001): 70–77.

  3 group of Georgians: On the Klan revival, see David M. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan (New York: 1965), chap. 3–4.

  4 five hundred thousand women: Kathleen M. Blee, Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1991), 2.

  5 man from Timson: Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 39–48.

  6 “straighten out our people”: Blee, Women of the Klan, 83.

  7 “the revolting spectacle”: Blee, Women of the Klan, 87.

  8 William Wilson: William E. Wilson, “That Long Hot Summer in Indiana,” American Heritage 16, no. 5 (May 1965): 56–64.

  9 burned down dance halls: Blee, Women of the Klan, 85–86.

  10 members from cities: On the character and makeup of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, see Kenneth T. Jackson, The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915–1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), parts 1, 5.

  11 Lyman Abbott: Edwin Gaustad and Leigh Schmidt, The Religious History of America (New York: Harper & Row, 2002), 304.

  12 five theological “fundamentals”: On the early history of fundamentalism, see George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).