1. ENTERTAINMENT
a. Films
- movie actors such as Charlie Chaplin, Rudolf Valentino and became 'stars'.
- in 1927,The starring Al Jolson, was the first 'talkie'.
- a well-known early two-colour film was The Toll of the Sea (1922) and two-colour films were common by the end of the 1920s; after 1932, films were produced in three-colour .
- Mickey Mouse was created by Walt Disney in 1928 (who released Snow White in colour in 1937).
- by 1930, Americans went to the movies every week
- companies like United Artists and MGM produced hundreds of films a year.
- films taught people new fashions (e.g. ) and new ways to behave – many girls wanted to be like 'It' girl, .

b. Jazz
- Jazz was first played in New Orleans by black musicians such as Louis Armstrong and . After 1917, racist violence forced many of them to leave New Orleans, so they went north to play in the night clubs of towns like Chicago and New York.
- The invention of radio and the (record player) made it available in people's homes. The first jazz record was made in 1917 by the Dixieland Jazz Band. They were called 'race records', because they were recorded by black musicians.
- Because it was often played in speakeasies, by black musicians, it was seen as wild and exciting - which soon made it very popular.
- Jazz music contributed to many of the social developments of the age – baggy trousers and short skirts, wild dancing such as the Black Bottom, and a new kind of convention-free poetry called ' (poets such as TS Eliot and ee cummings). It was part of the , and the growth of black pride

c. Dances
- The Charleston was a fast dance developed in Black communities which was adopted by flappers, who danced it alone to challenge the 'drys' who wouldn't go out to clubs. (Both Joan Crawford and began their movie careers by winning Charleston competitions.)
- The ' was first recorded by Jelly Roll Morton and named after Black Bottom – a Black neighbourhood in Detroit. After 1926 it became the most popular dance.
- The dances scandalised many Americans, who thought they were immoral.

2. PROHIBITION
In 1919 - as the result of a long and powerful campaign – the to the Constitution made the manufacture, transport or sale of alcoholic drinks illegal. The Volstead Act, passed at the same time, declared any drink more than 5% proof 'alcoholic'.

In some ways, Prohibition was a failure [DAMAGE]
a. Drinking continued: impossible to enforce (not enough police – only agents, many of whom were sacked for taking bribes).
b. Available: the liquor trade just 'went underground'. (illegal bars), (illegally-made alcohol), (smuggling alcohol to sell). It is sometimes asserted that there were more speakeasies than there had been saloons (not true, but there were 200,000 speakeasies in 1933).
c. Made criminals of ordinary people.
d. Adverse effects: moonshine was poor quality and sometimes killed people. 'Jackass brandy' caused internal bleeding, 'Soda Pop Moon' contained poisonous alcoho.
e. Gangsterism flourished running the illegal trade: It became hugely profitable, and led to a growth of violence, protection rackets etc. associated with the illegal trade. The general flouting brought the rule of law in general into disrepute as police 'turned a blind eye. Corruption grew.
f. End: in 1933 the abolished Prohibition.

In other ways, Prohibition was a success [ALE]
a. Amount of alcohol destroyed: in 1929, litres of illegal alcohol were discovered and destroyed.
b. Legacy: the actual consumption of alcohol fell, not just during prohibition, but for many years after – did not reach pre-1914 levels until .
c. Eliot Ness and the : became famous as examples of the high standards police SHOULD achieve.

3. ORGANISED CRIME
Organised crime stepped in to take over from the breweries and spirits manufacturers:
a. They ran the speakeasies, and bootlegging.
b. They also ran , prostitution and drug-running.
c. They bribed trade union leaders, police, lawyers, judges and even Senators.
d. The most famous gangster was Al Capone, who earned $100,000 a year from beer sales alone, ran a private army of more than mobsters, and is thought to have murdered more than 200 opponents.
e. They fought with each other for control of their 'territory' – the most famous incident was the St Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, when ' from Capone's gang shot dead 7 members of Bugs Moran's gang.