by Joshua Zeitz
30 “adjust length to becomingness”: Joselit, A Perfect Fit, 60.
31 “yearly cry”: New Yorker, October 10, 1925, 32.
CHAPTER 16: INTO THE STREETS
1 “The whole position”: Eleanor Goodman and Jean Nerenberg, “Everywoman’s Jewelry: Early Plastics and Equality in Fashion,” Journal of Popular Culture 13, no. 4 (Spring 1980): 632–33.
2 Alexander Hamilton: Stewart and Elizabeth Ewen, Channels of Desire: Mass Images and the Shaping of American Consciousness (New York: McGraw Hill Publishers, 1982), 160.
3 status quo changed slowly: Ewen and Ewen, Channels of Desire, 166–67.
4 Ellen Curtis Demorest: Milbank, New York Fashion: The Evolution of American Style (New York: Abrams, 1989), 18.
5 “A sketch is given”: Rob Schorman, Selling Style: Clothing and Social Change at the Turn of the Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 53–54.
6 over six yards of forty-eight-inch fabric: Jane Farrell-Beck and Joyce Starr-Johnson, “Remodeling and Renovating Clothes, 1870–1933,” Dress 19 (1992): 39.
7 under three yards of fifty-four-inch wool: Farrell-Beck and Starr-Johnson, “Remodeling and Renovating Clothes,” 43. Between 1870 and 1929, annual sales of factory-made women’s clothes jumped from $12.9 million to $1.6 billion—roughly equivalent to $17.5 billion in current-day money.
8 “The winter openings”: New Yorker, August 28, 1926, 44–46.
9 “Fashion does not exist”: Amy De La Haye and Shelley Tobin, Chanel: The Couturiere at Work (New York: Overlook Press, 1994), 54.
10 Madame Doret: De La Haye and Tobin, Chanel, 54–55.
11 “ ‘Chanel’ Rhinestone Bags”: New York Times, December 23, 1927, 7.
12 “copies of Patou”: New York Times, November 28, 1926, 15.
13 “Paris hats … so exact”: New Yorker, March 12, 1927, 7.
14 even farm girls: Jenna Weissman Joselit, A Perfect Fit: Clothes, Character and the Promise of America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001), 22.
15 Rural free delivery and parcel post: Thomas Schlereth, “Country Stores, County Fairs and Mail-Order Catalogues: Consumption in Rural America,” in Simon J. Bronner, ed., Consuming Visions: Accumulation and Display of Goods in America, 1880–1920 (New York: Norton, 1989), 342–45, 349.
16 “on time”: Ewen and Ewen, Channels of Desire, 65.
17 as little as $8.98: Stella Blum, ed., Everyday Fashions of the Twenties: As Pictures in Sears and Other Catalogs (New York: Dover Publications, 1981).
18 cheap imitation jewelry: Eleanor Gordon and Jean Nerenberg, “Everywoman’s Jewelry: Early Plastics and Equality in Fashion,” Journal of Popular Culture (Spring 1980): 629–44.
19 “Heinz pickle jars”: New Yorker, March 6, 1926, 41.
20 parlor maid and the debutante: Goodman and Nerenberg, “Everywoman’s Jewelry,” 633.
21 “one big shop exclusively”: New Yorker, September 18, 1926, 54.
22 “It is most annoying”: New Yorker, April 3, 1926, 34.
23 “a second clue”: Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1929), 161.
24 “Only a connoisseur”: Ewen and Ewen, Channels of Desire, 177.
25 “Riverside Drive or East 4th Street”: Ewen and Ewen, Channels of Desire, 181.
26 Jane Addams: Joselit, A Perfect Fit, 39.
27 “Let them copy”: Joseph Barry, “ ‘I Am on the Side of Women,’ Said My Friend Chanel,” Smithsonian (1971) 2, no. 2: 30.
28 “Thanks to me”: Marcel Hadrich, Coco Chanel: Her Life, Her Secrets (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 119.
29 “socialized into an average”: Loren H. B. Knox, “Our Lost Individuality,” Atlantic Monthly (Dec. 1909), 820.
30 “torches of freedom”: Stewart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture, rev. ed. 2001 (New York: 1976), 160–61.
31 prominent advertising guru: Ewen, Captains of Consciousness, 31.
CHAPTER 17: WITHOUT IMAGINATION, NO WANTS
1 “Fisher Body Girl”: Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1985), 180.
2 curious publishing phenomena: Richard M. Fried, “Introduction,” in Bruce Barton, The Man Nobody Knows, rev. ed. (Chicago: I.R. Dee, 2000; Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1925), vii–x.
3 he urged readers: T. J. Jackson Lears, “From Salvation to Self-Realization: Advertising and the Therapeutic Roots of the Consumer Culture, 1880–1930,” in T. J. Jackson Lears and Richard Wightman Fox, The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880–1980 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), 32.
4 “the great advertiser”: Barton, The Man Nobody Knows, 60, 65–72.
5 As recently as the 1890s: Stephen Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators (New York: Morrow, 1984), chap. 1.
6 “goods must be moved”: Susan Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), 22–25.
7 “Without imagination”: William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 36–37.
8 Nashville Ad Club: Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed, 27.
9 typical advertising expert: Rob Schorman, Selling Style: Clothing and Social Change at the Turn of the Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 144.
10 Helen Woodward: Stewart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture, rev. ed. 2001 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), 86.
11 “feel life intensely”: Lears, “From Salvation to Self-Realization,” 15. Italics added for emphasis.
12 “let yourself go”: Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1929), 265.
13 Denys Thompson: Ewen, Captains of Consciousness, 87.
14 “Joan Crawford Hats”: Stella Blum, ed., Everyday Fashions of the Twenties: As Pictures in Sears and Other Catalogs (New York: Dover Publications, 1981), 95, 127.
15 American Tobacco Company: Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed, 47.
16 grocers in Chicago: L. R. Geissler, “Association-Reactions Applied to Ideas of Commercial Brands of Familiar Articles,” Journal of Applied Psychology 1 (September 1917): 218.
17 invention of modern photography: Neil Harris, “Iconography and Intellectual History: The Halftone Effect,” in Neil Harris, Cultural Excursions: Marketing Appetites and Cultural Tastes in Modern America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 304–17.
18 new printing techniques: Richard Ohmann, “Where Did Mass Culture Come From?: The Case for Magazines,” Berkshire Review 16 (1981): 99–100.
19 Laura Ingalls Wilder: Ellen Gruber Garvey, The Adman in the Parlor: Magazines and the Gendering of Consumer Culture, 1880s to 1910s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 21.
20 remote mountain towns: Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 99–100.
21 Artemas Ward: Leach, Land of Desire, 43–45.
22 annual consumer advertising: Vincent Vinikas, Soft Soap, Hard Sell: American Hygiene in an Age of Advertisement (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1992), 34.
23 magazine circulation: Vinikas, Soft Soap, Hard Sell, 9–13; Richard Ohmann, “Where Did Mass Culture Come From?” 85–90. The most popular magazines reached between 10 percent and 50 percent of middle-class homes, but only 5 percent of working-class homes.
24 one-third of all magazine ad revenues: Mary Ellen Waller-Zuckerman, “ ‘Old Homes, in a City of Perpetual Change’: Women’s Magazines, 1890–1916,” Business History Review 63, no. 4 (Winter 1989): 726–35; Vinikas, Soft Soap, Hard Sell, 98.
CHAPTER 18: 10,000,000 FEMMES FATALES
1 “10,000,000 housewi
ves”: Raye Virginia Allen, Gordon Conway: Fashioning a New Woman (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1997), ix.
2 “as graceful as a fawn”: Allen, Gordon Conway, 20.
3 recorded her thoughts: Allen, Gordon Conway, 23.
4 John Held: see Shelley Armitage, John Held, Jr.: Illustrator of the Jazz Age (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1987).
5 “no method”: Armitage, John Held, 19.
6 “two kinds of crackers”: Margaret A. Lowe, “From Robust Appetites to Calorie Counting: The Emergence of Dieting Among Smith College Students in the 1920s,” Journal of Women’s History 7, no. 4 (Winter 1995): 39–40.
7 “Don’t consider it necessary”: Lowe, “From Robust Appetites to Calorie Counting,” 40.
8 TO DIET OR NOT: Lowe, “From Robust Appetites to Calorie Counting,” 36.
9 “most of the Negro girls”: New Yorker, December 12, 1925, 51.
10 “The entertainer there”: New Yorker, December 12, 1925, 52.
11 “the REAL Charleston”: New Yorker, December 26, 1925, 32–33.
12 The same message: Grace Elizabeth Hale, “ ‘For Colored’ and ‘For White’: Segregating Consumption in the South,” in Jane Dailey, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, and Bryant Simon, eds., Jumpin’ Jim Crow: Southern Politics from Civil War to Civil Rights (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 162–82; David Nasaw, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 93, 80–95.
CHAPTER 19: APPEARANCES COUNT
1 seconded by Walter Lippmann: Stuart Ewen, PR!: A Social History of Spin (New York: Basic Books, 1996), 65–75, 106–08.
2 CPI: Ewen, PR!, 106–08; David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 59–78.
3 Typical CPI posters: Ewen, PR!, 115–17.
4 “power of propaganda”: Ewen, PR!, 131.
5 George Phelps: Stewart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture, rev. ed. 2001 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), 83.
6 Ivy Lee: Ewen, PR!, 132.
7 “Mass psychology”: Ewen, Captains of Consciousness, 83–84.
8 “governed by reason”: Ewen, PR!, 138.
9 “Critical eyes”: Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1985), 213.
10 “It ruins romance”: Vincent Vinikas, Soft Soap, Hard Sell: American Hygiene in an Age of Advertisement (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1992), 32.
11 “You will be amazed”: Ewen, Captains of Consciousness, 38.
12 “Once a bridesmaid”: Ewen, Captains of Consciousness, 44.
13 “A few years ago”: Vinikas, Soft Soap, Hard Sell, 28–30.
14 annual sales of toiletries: Vinikas, Soft Soap, Hard Sell, xii; Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998), 97.
15 Magazine ads: Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 142, 184.
16 cloudy representations: Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 45.
17 Hangtown Gals: Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 27.
18 “a perfectly transparent character”: Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1836–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 52.
19 “the skin’s power”: Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women, 63, 88.
20 “The mask of fashion”: Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women, 66.
21 “as others see you”: Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 144.
22 Vogue’s Book of Beauty: Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 155–56.
23 Ingram’s Milkwood Cream: Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 155–56.
24 industry analysts claimed: Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 123–24, 168–73, 186, 190; Vincent Vinikas, Soft Soap, Hard Sell, 59.
25 “appearances count”: Rob Schorman, Selling Style: Clothing and Social Change at the Turn of the Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 137.
26 “innocent yet men talked”: Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 155.
27 Dorothy Dix warning: Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1929), 162
28 “dresses girls wear”: Lynd and Lynd, Middletown, 162
29 budget of $1,363: Lynd and Lynd, Middletown, 163.
30 Lynds recognized: Lynd and Lynd, Middletown, 164–65.
CHAPTER 20: PAPA, WHAT IS BEER?
1 “Intriguingly risqué”: Film Review of Flaming Youth, undated [ca. 1923], Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles, Colleen Moore Scrapbook #2.
2 “the way Scott Fitzgerald writes”: New York Exhibitors’ Trade Review, December 1, 1923, Colleen Moore Scrapbook #2.
3 “so carried away”: Colleen Moore, Silent Star (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1968), 16–18.
4 Lucky for Kathleen Morrison: Moore, Silent Star, 11–18.
5 “Dear baby”: Moore, Silent Star, 24–25.
6 “gained a new movie star”: Moore, Silent Star, 26; “ ‘The Close-Up’: Colleen Moore,” undated clipping [ca. 1927], source unknown, Colleen Moore Clippings File, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills [hereafter CM Clippings].
7 standing five feet three and three-quarter inches: Biographical information, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation of New York, August 11, 1921, CM Clippings.
8 “Papa, what is beer?”: Moore, Silent Star, 43.
9 motley assortment of characters: Moore, Silent Star, 50.
10 “I was the spark”: “Colleen Moore: The Original Flapper in Bel-Air,” Architectural Digest (April 1996): 216–21, 294.
CHAPTER 21: OH, LITTLE GIRL, NEVER GROW UP
1 first two decades: On early film, see Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies (New York: Random House, 1975).
2 The Birth of a Nation: Larry May, Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 76.
3 “taint of scandal”: May, Screening Out the Past, 75–76.
4 “a great beauty doctor”: May, Screening Out the Past, 75.
5 Early movies: Leslie Fishbein, “The Demise of the Cult of True Womanhood in Early American Film, 1900–1930,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 12, no. 2 (Summer 1984): 68.
6 Linda Arvidson Griffith: Mary P. Ryan, “The Projection of a New Womanhood: The Movie Moderns in the 1920s,” in Jean E. Friedman and William G. Shade, eds., Our American Sisters: Women in American Life and Thought (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1976), 502.
7 Irving Thalberg: May, Screening Out the Past, 200.
8 Mary Pickford: May, Screening Out the Past, 125–26.
9 Samuel Goldwyn: May, Screening Out the Past, 171.
CHAPTER 22: THE KIND OF GIRL THE FELLOWS WANT
1 “define the title”: Sara Ross, “Banking the Flames of Youth: The Hollywood Flapper, 1920–1930,” unpublished PhD, dissertation, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2000, 48.
2 “wickedest face”: Mary P. Ryan, “The Projection of a New Womanhood: The Movie Moderns in the 1920s,” in Jean E. Friedman and William G. Shade, eds., Our American Sisters: Women in American Life and Thought (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1976), 502.
3 “apostle of domesticity”: Leslie Fishbein, “The Demise of the Cult of True Womanhood in Early American Film, 1900–1930,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 12, no. 2 (Summer 1984): 67–68.
4 The Flapper: Ross, “Banking the Flames of Youth,” 66.
5 “looks the part”: Untitled photo caption, Photoplay Magazine (Chicago), March 1924, Colleen Moore Scrapbook #2.
6 “very apotheosis”: “Daily Movie Review,” Muskegon (Mich.) Chronicle, January 21, 1924, Colleen Moore Scrapbook #2.
7 “brilliant young flapper”: “Player with ‘Sex Appeal’ Is Like a Rocket,” Unknown Source (New O
rleans), June 15, 1924, Colleen Moore Scrapbook #11.
8 “kind of girl the fellows want”: “How Girls Should Act Told by Screen Star,” Screen News, Sacramento, March 8, 1924, Colleen Moore Scrapbook #2.
9 “It’s such fun”: “ ‘I Love to Ask My Husband for Money,’ Says Colleen Moore,” Movie Weekly, undated, Colleen Moore Scrapbook #11.
10 “Nobody wanted me”: David Stein, Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 5.
11 Sands Street in Brooklyn: Stein, Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild, 8.
12 “I have known hunger”: Stein, Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild, 11.
13 “worst-lookin’ kid”: Stein, Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild, 11–12.
14 Bennett would live to eat his words: On Clara Bow’s early years in film, see Stein, Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild.
15 “the only time”: Colleen Moore, Silent Star (New York: Doubleday, 1968), 147–48.
16 “We all loved her”: Stein, Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild, 50.
17 “Golly, Mr. Schulberg”: Budd Schulberg, Moving Pictures: Memories of a Hollywood Prince (New York: Stein and Day, 1981), 157–66.
18 “I liked her”: Stein, Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild, 43.
19 “an easy winner”: Schulberg, Moving Pictures, 158.
20 Sam Jaffe: Stein, Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild, 51.
21 easy to dismiss: Jeanine Basinger, Silent Stars (New York: Knopf, 1999), 411–50.
22 “She has eyes”: Stein, Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild, 55.
23 Clarence Badger: Stein, Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild, 83.
24 “It, hell”: Stein, Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild, 81.
25 $5,000 per week: Stein, Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild, 71.
CHAPTER 23: ANOTHER PETULANT WAY TO PASS THE TIME
1 “drink and fuck”: Ann Douglas, Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1995), 48.
2 “modest 10 a year”: Louise Brooks to Tom Dardis, October 26, 1977, Louise Brooks Vertical File, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills [hereafter LB Vertical File].
