Local history: Flapper culture (and all that jazz) gripped Akron in 1920s

What’s wrong with today’s youth? The question has puzzled adults since the dawn of time. Parents forget what it’s like to be young, and young people don’t think they’ll ever get old.

In the 1920s, America faced a gathering menace that threatened to rip apart the very fabric of society. Young women, namely flappers, were out to have fun.

They bobbed their hair, applied colorful makeup, wore short dresses, rolled down their stockings, chewed gum, swigged gin and even smoked cigarettes. Worst of all, they listened to jazz and danced. Oh, how they danced.

“The modern dance is a carnival of death because it rips from the shoulders of womanhood of this land her only mantle of protection,” evangelist E.G. Sawyer preached in 1925 at United Brethren Church on South Arlington Street in Akron. “… Out of the 230,000 fallen women in the United States, statistics show that seven-tenths of them went by way of the modern dance.”

Dance hall days

Flappers enthusiastically performed the Charleston at East Market Gardens and short-lived venues such as South Main Gardens, Arlington Terrace, Winton Dance Palace, Zigler Dance Hall, the Red Mill, Lockney’s Pavilion and Workingman’s Dance. When the Charleston’s popularity faded, flappers switched to the Black Bottom, a scandalous dance that involved wriggling, waving, strutting and overall cavorting.

“They call it Black Bottom, a new twister,” Annette Hanshaw sang in a popular tune of the day. “Sure, got ’em. Oh, sister!”

Yes, it sure did get ’em. When Clyde McElroy of Barberton filed for divorce from his wife, Thelma, he told a judge that she spent all her time dancing. After he pleaded with her to return home, Thelma reportedly replied: “No one is going to chain down my Charleston and Black Bottom dancing.”

The Miles Royal Theater sponsored Black Bottom contests. Burlesque star Flossie DeVere starred in the vaudeville show Parisian Flappers at the Grand Theater.

Flappers flocked to Akron movie theaters such as the Dreamland, Orpheum, Waldorf, Liberty, Allen and Strand to see such titles at The Perfect Flapper, The Exalted Flapper, The Painted Flapper, Flapper Wives and Twin Flappers. Silent-film actresses Louise Brooks, Clara Bow and Colleen Moore became screen icons whose youthful looks, stylish clothes and carefree spirit were emulated by flappers.

When Bow’s 1927 romantic comedy titled It made her the original “It girl,” the Orpheum advertised: “Flippant flapper, trim and dapper, naughty, haughty, chic man-trapper. All together now, boys, ‘Has she got IT? Well, I guess. Clara! Clara! Yes! Yes! Yes!’ ”

For those wishing to dress like the stars, O’Neil’s, Polsky’s, Federman’s, Yeager’s and other Akron department stores sold the finest in flapper dresses, flapper hats, flapper shoes, flapper coats, flapper hose, flapper purses, flapper umbrellas and flapper teddies.

For flappers in training, Akron Dry Goods offered a fascinating assortment of flapper dolls with bobbed hair. Want to bet that someone just took a pair of shears to long-haired dolls and put up a new sign?

Critics blamed flappers for many of society’s ills, including juvenile delinquency, truancy, immorality and social diseases.

Akron newspapers were filled with articles about girls gone astray:

• “Akron’s flapper rum runner, Irene Moore, pretty, bobbed haired and 22, was fined $500 and costs by Judge Gordon Davies after she had pleaded guilty to transporting liquor late Thursday.”

• “A flapper bandit, described as about 23 and pretty, pointed a pistol at a salesgirl in a downtown department store and made away with four dresses.”

• Vivian Gingram, 25, the “flapper bandit” of Toledo, slid down a rain spout after midnight and escaped from the women’s reformatory in Marysville.

Perhaps the biggest outrage was over flappers’ rising hemlines. “Nobody would be agitated about the way flappers dress if they only would,” one wag noted.

Exposed legs

In 1927, a man identified only as “West Side Reader” wrote a letter to the Beacon Journal about “the boldest and must vulgar young girl I ever saw.” He said he was riding a streetcar on West Market Street when two flappers, bound for a dance hall, boarded the car and sat across the aisle from him.

“The larger and apparently the older of the two insisted on crossing one leg over the other and I was convinced it was not done for comfort,” he wrote. “This girl was at least 20 years old, if not 25. By crossing one leg over the other she exposed at least 12 inches of her bare leg above the knee.

“I mean the leg that was under. I could not help but notice it because she was nearly direct across from me. Once she caught my eye and she stuck out her tongue and turned up her nose at me. I was just looking natural at her, but I did not feel natural.”

In counterpoint, another letter writer using the pseudonym “I. Likum” confessed: “I, for one, do not object to seeing the naked and comely shanks of flappers on the streetcars.” He criticized “pathetic greybeards” and “old fossils” for raising a fuss, and proposed a solution:

“Why not have the girls paint on their thighs chaste and moral mottoes? These might be used: ‘Evil to Him Who Evil Thinks.’ ‘He Who Looks and Runs Away May Live to Look Another Day.’ ‘A Boy’s Best Friend is His Mother.’ ‘Beauty is Only Skin Deep.’ ”

In a 1927 column in the Beacon Journal, Dorothy Dix chided middle-aged women for bobbing their hair, saying it was a “fatal folly” to invite comparison to flappers.

“The boyish bob is the exclusive prerogative of sweet and 20,” she wrote. “It calls for a slim, thin, flat little figure; a peaches-and-cream complexion; shining young eyes. And when fat old grandma brings her grizzled gray locks in competition with her, it makes you realize what an awful thing times does to women. You wouldn’t have noticed it if grandma had enough sense to keep her hair on.”

The Black Bottom couldn’t be danced forever. The flapper era flamed out in the early 1930s as the Great Depression gripped the nation. Those daring young women grew up, got married, had children and eventually became grandmothers and great-grandmothers.

What’s wrong with today’s youth? Nothing that a few decades won’t change.

Mark J. Price can be reached at 330-996-3850 or mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.