During the era of the 1890s to the 1940s, the US experienced many major pushes for social reform as well as plenty of economic changes. While the actual stories behind shows and movies created during this time weren’t necessarily very reflective of these changes, events within the entertainment industry were. Additionally, though the entertainment industry often overlooked social issues, it embraced new cultural changes during this era. On Broadway, actors formed the Actors’ Equity Association while putting on shows influenced by the Harlem Renaissance and the resulting Jazz Age. Meanwhile, Hollywood had just begun to form, growing rapidly as more took interest in the new, exciting method of entertainment.
BROADWAY
ACTORS' EQUITY
In the 1910s, one of the biggest changes that took place on Broadway was the establishment of the Actors’ Equity Association. All across America, workers had been taking a stand against poor working conditions and low wages, and actors and actresses on Broadway continued these efforts. In 1919, many actors began going on strike, demanding pay for rehearsal time and transportation for any shows or rehearsals out of town, as well as for costumes to be provided for them. Once musicians and stagehands joined them, producers gave in, and Actors’ Equity was formed.
A photo from the massive strike on Broadway in 1919. Protestors were fighting against the extensive expenses they were forced to pay to keep up with their productions and an inability to pay them due to extremely low salaries.
Another photo from the strike in 1919. Many shows were forced to be cancelled during the strike due to too many cast members being on strike - in fact, on the first day of the strike, 12 shows were cancelled.
A photo from a meeting in 1913 in which 112 actors met to form the Actor's Equity Association. In this meeting, they adopted a constitution and elected comedian Frances Wilson as president of the organization.
SUCCESS OF THE 20S
The 1920s were a huge time for Broadway, with the economic boom providing Americans with more money to spend on entertainment and leisure. In 1927 alone, over 250 shows debuted on Broadway, with over 50 of them being musicals. 20 million people attended shows that year, which is twice as much as now. The music from these shows was especially popular, and many people owned music books with popular show tunes at home.
SHOWBOAT
One of the most popular shows of the 20s and the biggest change in Broadway at the time was “Showboat”, which was the first “integrated musical”(where the plot and music were integrated, not race). Music was used to move the plot forward instead of just being entertaining, which was a change that was the basis of the popular “book musical” style of show that became prominent in later decades. The show’s subject was also very unique - it focused on the topic of miscegenation, or the mixing of races through marriage. This was a very hot topic at the time - it was still illegal in the 20s, and there was plenty of both political and social tension surrounding it. The show displayed the issue and this tension without shying away from it, and it became one of the most popular shows of the decade.
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This show’s unique, advanced style combined with its subject matter marked the beginning of a huge change in the entertainment industry that would only continue to advance. The integration of plot and music allowed the story to be deeper and more meaningful rather than solely focused on being entertaining, and the subject matter forced audiences to face a prominent social issue of the time, something that not many shows had done before then.
hollywood
The beginning of film
The late 1800s marked the beginning of the film industry, with the invention of the motion picture first occurring in 1872, and the creation of the first film for motion picture occurring in 1885. As time progressed, the new technology continued to develop, with new advancements and methods such as editing, backdrops, and visual flow allowing aspiring filmmakers to do more.
In 1905, “Nickelodeons”, or 5-cent movie theaters, were created, providing an easy and inexpensive way for the public to watch movies. This increased the popularity of films and generated more money for filmmakers, allowing them to keep making more. It also became a common way to spread WWI propaganda, which was an important step towards the combination of entertainment and social issues in film; however, this was an idealistic version of the social issue at hand, meant to promote the idea of the war rather than to question it or demand change.
the rise of hollywood
By the 1920s, Hollywood had been established as the home of the film industry. Many influential movie studios had been established in Hollywood, such as Paramount Pictures, Warner Brothers, and 20th Century Fox, and Hollywood itself had come to represent luxury, leisure, and a “party scene”. Actors in popular films began to become more widely recognized and celebrated in pop culture, and their fame only increased during the 1930s. This decade became known as the golden age of film due to the introduction of sound, which led to the creation of different genres of film, including action, musicals, comedies, and horror movies. In the 40s, the film industry only continued to grow, with more new advances in technology such as special effects, higher sound quality, and color film use. Once again, film was used to spread information about the second world war through both propaganda and documentaries. Movies were an incredibly popular source of entertainment - 1946, there was an all-time high in theater attendance and profits.
This era of film and its fast-paced growth through constantly developing and advancing technology showed a high focus on entertainment from the start, much like the beginnings of theater in America during the colonial era. Directors and producers were more eager to explore the possibilities using this new medium than to use those possibilities to portray a significant message about society. However, there was significantly more focus on social issues throughout the beginning of this entertainment industry than there was for theater. Focuses on war efforts to educate the public, while overly patriotic and idealistic, still helped to bring social issues and entertainment together. Additionally, there were plenty of social statement films released during this era; however, they were just not the most popular movies.
One revolutionary film that greatly increased the popularity of film as a form of entertainment was The Jazz Singer. While this film is very controversial now because it uses blackface, it was a huge deal at the time because it was the first feature-length film by Hollwood to have both a synchronized recorded music score and lip-synced singing as well as speech.
NEwsies
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Newsies, like many movies and musicals, glorified an aspect of history that was in reality very brutal. In 1872, James D. McCabe, a resident of Brooklyn who witnessed the hardships of newsboys, wrote, “There are 10,000 children living on the streets of New York.... The newsboys constitute an important division of this army of homeless children. You see them everywhere.... They rend the air and deafen you with their shrill cries. They surround you on the sidewalk and almost force you to buy their papers. They are ragged and dirty. Some have no coats, no shoes and no hat.” The flashy dances and uplifting songs that captivated audiences in the Broadway show beg the question of, how much are you allowed to edit things in a show for other purposes before it becomes historically inaccurate?
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The answer to that appears to be based on the goal of the editing. While the goal of Newsies wasn’t meant to be a complete history lesson, it also wasn’t necessarily meant to be solely focused on entertainment. This signifies a huge change in the goals of Broadway shows and how this impacted their portrayal of history. Where shows once completely rejected historical accuracy just to make people laugh, they now bend history so that it can be used as a jumping point from which they can portray an important positive message.
Newsies, first a movie in 1992 and then a Broadway musical from 2012 to 2014, is another example of a history lesson glorified through song and dance. The show told the story of a newsboy strike which occurred in 1899 after publishers William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer raised their newspaper prices, making it more expensive for the newsboys to buy the papers in order to sell them. This strike lasted for two weeks, during which thousands of newsboys refused to work. Finally, it ended in a compromise between the publishers and the newsboys in which the price of 100 newspapers was lowered from 60 to 55 cents, and the newsboys would get 100% return rights, meaning they could return unsold papers for a refund.
"You see them everywhere...They rend the air and deafen you with their shrill cries. They surround you on the sidewalk and almost force you to buy their papers." - James D. McCabe
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