Entertain Me!

The end of World War I (1914–1918) brought the dawning of an era of peace and prosperity. Many Americans’ thoughts turned to more frivolous ideas. The Roaring 20s were filled with new and exciting forms of entertainment. Americans embraced them with gusto.

Radio had been in development since the late 1800s. It was employed by the U.S. military during the war, and it became popular for home use during the 1920s. The first radio networks began broadcasting in the early part of the decade. Soon, radio stations sprang up across the country. The Golden Age of Radio had begun.

Imagine a time before the invention of the personal phone, the iPad, and the personal computer. Now, go back further in history, before big screen movies and television. The radio was Americans’ first source of mechanized entertainment — and Americans enthusiastically embraced the invention.

In the 1920s, entire families gathered around one radio. Together, they listened to broadcasts ranging from comedy and variety shows to news, drama, and sporting events. Children would rush home after school to catch their favorite adventure stories. Young people would roll back the living room rug and dance to the popular music of the day — jazz.

Similar to radio, moving pictures had been in production since the late 1800s, thanks to inventors such as George Eastman and Thomas A. Edison. The earliest films showcased the stars of the day, such as comic actor Charlie Chaplin, “America’s Sweetheart” Mary Pickford, and the dashing Rudolph Valentino. The first moving pictures were silent, although theaters provided orchestras or other music to accompany the action.

The public demand for movies prompted the growth of movie studios in the 1920s. The studios grouped as the “Big Five” owned their own theaters to show their movies. The Big Five included Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Paramount Pictures, RKO Pictures, Warner Brothers, and 20th Century Fox. The “Little Three” — Columbia Pictures, Universal, and United Artists — just made movies. Soon, people were making their way out to southern California to a part of Los Angeles known as Hollywood. They were hoping for a chance to “make it big” in the area’s growing film industry. 

The addition of sound was a major turning point in the production of movies. The first “talkie,” the 1927 movie The Jazz Singer, was actually mostly silent. But it did feature some words and singing by the popular entertainer Al Jolson. The following year, Walt Disney made the first talking animated film, Steamboat Willie. It was the beginning of the long career of one of America’s most beloved characters — Mickey Mouse.

Even as the film industry was thriving, a new idea in home entertainment captured Americans’ interest by the end of the 1920s. Like radio and movies, experiments with television had been performed in the late 1800s. Combining the work and discoveries of many inventors and scientists, the black-and-white picture that the earliest televisions showed was not big or clear. Yet, that “box” eventually would change how Americans viewed entertainment in a way that few living during the Roaring 20s could imagine.