Flapper

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Alfred A. Knopf: Excerpts from
Lulu in Hollywood
, by Louise Brooks, copyright © 1974, 1982 by Louise Brooks. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Dell Publishing: Excerpt from
Exiles from Paradise
by Sara Mayfield, copyright © 1971 by Sara Mayfield. Reprinted by permission of Dell Publishing, a division of Random House, Inc.

Doubleday: Excerpt from
Silent Star
by Colleen Moore, copyright © 1968 by Colleen Moore. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.

The New Yorker/The Condé Nast Publications Inc.: Excerpts from
The New Yorker—Talk of the Town: Tables for Two
and
On and Off the Avenue
, courtesy of The New Yorker/ The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
www.newyorker.com

Copyright © 2006 by Joshua Zeitz
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

Crown is a trademark and the Crown colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Zeitz, Joshua.
Flapper : a madcap story of sex, style, celebrity, and the women who made America modern / Joshua Zeitz.—1st ed.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. United States—History—1919–1933—Biography. 2. Women—United States—Biography. 3. Celebrities—United States—Biography. 4. Artists—United States—Biography. 5. United States—Social life and customs—1918–1945. 6. Women—United States—Social life and customs—20th century. 7. Sex customs—United States—History—20th century. 8. Sex role—United States—History—20th century. 9. Popular culture—United States—History—20th century. 10. Consumption (Economics)—Social aspects—United States—History—20th century. I. Title.
E784.Z45 2006
813′.52—dc22
[B]
2005024297
eISBN: 978-0-307-52382-2

v3.1_r1

For Juli-anne

The world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts …

—
WILLA CATHER

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

I
NTRODUCTION
: T
ANGO
P
IRATES AND
A
BSINTHE

P
ART
O
NE

  
Chapter 1   T
HE
M
OST
P
OPULAR
G
IRL

  
Chapter 2   S
EX O
’C
LOCK IN
A
MERICA

  
Chapter 3   W
ILL
S
HE
T
HROW
H
ER
A
RMS
A
ROUND
Y
OUR
N
ECK AND
Y
ELL
?

  
Chapter 4   F
LAPPER
K
ING

  
Chapter 5   D
OING
I
T FOR
E
FFECT

  
Chapter 6   I P
REFER
T
HIS
S
ORT OF
G
IRL

  
Chapter 7   S
TRAIGHTEN
O
UT
P
EOPLE

  
Chapter 8   N
EW
Y
ORK
S
OPHISTICATION

  
Chapter 9   M
ISS
J
AZZ
A
GE

Chapter 10 G
IRLISH
D
ELIGHT IN
B
ARROOMS

Chapter 11 T
HESE
M
ODERN
W
OMEN

Chapter 12 T
HE
L
INGERIE
S
HORTAGE IN
T
HIS
C
OUNTRY

P
ART
T
WO

Chapter 13 A M
IND
F
ULL OF
F
ABULATIONS

Chapter 14 A
N
A
THLETIC
K
IND OF
G
IRL

Chapter 15 L
ET
G
O OF THE
W
AISTLINE

Chapter 16 I
NTO THE
S
TREETS

Chapter 17 W
ITHOUT
I
MAGINATION
, N
O
W
ANTS

Chapter 18 10,000,000 F
EMMES
F
ATALES

Chapter 19 A
PPEARANCES
C
OUNT

P
ART
T
HREE

Chapter 20 P
APA
, W
HAT
I
S
B
EER
?

Chapter 21 O
H
, L
ITTLE
G
IRL
, N
EVER
G
ROW
U
P

Chapter 22 T
HE
K
IND OF
G
IRL THE
F
ELLOWS
W
ANT

Chapter 23 A
NOTHER
P
ETULANT
W
AY TO
P
ASS THE
T
IME

Chapter 24 T
HE
D
REAMER
’
S
D
REAM
C
OME
T
RUE

Chapter 25 S
UICIDE ON THE
I
NSTALLMENT
P
LAN

C
ONCLUSION
: U
NAFFORDABLE
E
XCESS

Notes

Photography Credits

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Living life on the edge, two young flappers demonstrate the Charleston on the roof of Chicago’s Sherman Hotel, December 11, 1926.

I
NTRODUCTION
T
ANGO
P
IRATES AND
A
BSINTHE

O
N
M
AY
22, 1915, amid a flurry of cameras and a battery of outstretched hands, most bearing autograph books and pens, Eugenia Kelly, the young heiress to a sizable New York banking fortune, pushed past waves of idle celebrity watchers and slowly wound her way up the marble staircase at the Yorkville Magistrate’s Court, on Manhattan’s fashionable Upper East Side.
¹

Walking beside her lawyer, nineteen-year-old Eugenia impressed bystanders as unexpectedly well poised and confident. She sported “a green shade Norfolk suit,” one courtroom observer reported, “a white silk shirt waist with a loose, rolling collar, and a bright red necktie. Her wavy hair was covered by a tri-cornered brimless hat of black straw, decorated with yellow and a rosette.”

Eugenia couldn’t have struck a sharper contrast with her mother, Helen Kelly, a matronly widow of ambiguous middle age who arrived at the magistrate’s building just moments after her daughter. Mrs. Kelly was clad in an old-fashioned, long-necked black dress whose severity found only the slightest relief from the touch of white lace that wrapped around her collar. As she took her seat in the courtroom, Mrs. Kelly fixed her gaze nervously on Eugenia, who refused to acknowledge her mother.

And no wonder. Just two nights earlier, Mrs. Kelly had sworn out an arrest warrant against Eugenia and asked that a judge commit her to a correctional institution. After hearing Mrs. Kelly’s woeful tale, a local
magistrate immediately consented to the request. That evening, without warning, two plainclothes detectives confronted and arrested Eugenia inside a restaurant at Pennsylvania Station. She spent several late hours in lockup until her older sister arrived with bail money.

Eugenia, it seemed, had turned overnight from a sweet young society belle into an irredeemable wild child. By her mother’s estimation, she was even “likely to become depraved.”

For months, Eugenia had been frequenting the dance halls on Broadway, where she acquired an insatiable appetite for jazz, cigarettes, absinthe, and brandy. She was also keeping company with an older married man, Al Davis, whom authorities described as a “tango pirate”—a confidence man who preyed on unsuspecting rich girls.

Though money was the primary motive driving Mrs. Kelly’s concern—Eugenia would inherit $10 million on her twenty-first birthday, and the family was hell-bent on stopping her from squandering her bequest on a miscreant like Al Davis—she shrewdly justified her case by highlighting Eugenia’s antisocial behavior.
²

What to do with a young woman who stayed out until three or four in the morning? Every night. With the exception of her lawyer, all parties concerned, including the state magistrate, seemed to agree that Eugenia was out of control. Maybe even criminally wayward.

“Why, if I didn’t go to at least six cabarets a night,” she allegedly told her mother, “I would lose my social standing.”

The weepy-eyed Mrs. Kelly had tried everything: increasing Eugenia’s allowance, docking her allowance, begging her to stay home, ordering her to stay home. She had even tried locking the front door of her East Side town house after midnight, in the hope that Eugenia wouldn’t risk spending a long, cold night on the front porch stoop. No use. Eugenia had smashed out the glass window above the brass handle and unlocked the door from the inside.

In vain, Eugenia’s lawyer, Frank Crocker, asked that the charges against his client be dismissed. She was nineteen years old, after all—an adult, legally entitled to make her own mistakes. This motion only infuriated the magistrate, who dressed down Crocker in no uncertain terms. “The issue is plain,” he bellowed, “as to whether the defendant is
disobedient to the reasonable commandment of her mother, who is her natural and legal guardian; whether she associates with vicious and depraved people; and whether she is liable to become morally depraved.” The trial would proceed.

To the public’s delight, Eugenia was in fine form the next day when she took the witness stand.

“You are too nice a girl, Eugenia,” said John McIntyre, counsel to Mrs. Kelly, “to be hauled into court this way, and to have your name daily blemished by this notoriety. You are breaking your mother’s heart. If you will promise now to go home to her, to cut out this Broadway crowd, to eliminate this man Al Davis from your mind, I will drop this thing right now.”