The Kings and Queens of Broadway

Broadway is a beautiful lit jewel that never sleeps. In the 1920's, the jewel was new, still a novelty to the patrons and denizens of "Big Street."

Broadway shows and New York City as a whole, from Harlem to Tin Pan Alley, created a new reality and lauded it's own heroes. Beautiful Broadway Heroines like Louise Brooks and Clara Bow were courted by the stylish Broadway princes, Babe Ruth or Jack "Legs" Diamond.

A Sense of Realness

Without knowing the history of the Cotton Club, one would assume it's location (Harlem was 70% black) and performers (all black) indicate black ownership. Yet the appearance was merely a facade. Charyn writes, "The Cotton Club was a 'jungle' where whites could go dream of a 'primitive' sexuality, like good little voyeurs."

In the same way, Broadway lends a pretty, entertaining face while covering an underbelly of debauchery, excess, and bad deeds.

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This smelly underbelly lends itself to the romance of Broadway. It points to the action andentrepreneurship that marks the early years of the 20th century. Broadway is the core of the Big Apple; it is the place where you go to be "somebody," "if you can make it there you can make it anywhere."

Depending upon who you are, Broadway is either "easy street" or it's the "boulevard of broken dreams."

The Rotten Apple: Broadway and The American Dream

Many of New York City's adopted children are examples of the 1920's redefinition of the American Dream: Babe Ruth, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flo Ziegfeld, Louise Brooks, Charlie Chaplin, and Al Capone.

Many high school essays have been written about Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby; essays held up about the novel's themes of the death of the American dream. Perhaps this is what Fitzgerald meant when he wrote the novel. Yet Broadway shows New York tell a different tale. The 1920's marks a shift away from the rural American dream of owning a farm and raising some kids in the country.

The spectacles of Broadway Shows New York changed how America saw the world. The world was shrinking, and in much the same way prohibition created the famous gangster businessman, Broadway ushered in a celebrity culture--a reinvention of the American Dream. Broadway boiled down the fringes of American society to it’s essence.

Gangsters, hustlers, and murderers became princes while gold diggers, vapid beauties, prostitutes and madams became Queens.

The dividing line between one's involvement on Broadway was not your immutable class station, but your ability to become part of the show.

What could you add to the spectacle of Broadway?

The 1920's drove home the point: America was divided. Broadway shows New York city nightlife became the famous bastard children of a nation too scared to accept it's own desire for celebrity, vitality, and essence.