This first appeared as a Twitter thread to commemorate the milestone of $8000 raised in my Creature Court Kickstarter!
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Hold on tight, duckies and hoppers. Time for an epic thread about My Favourite Flappers (not for Old Fogies). In the 1920s a new kind of woman emerged: she bobbed and shingled her hair, drank and smoked in public, left her corset at home, and decided to enjoy herself.
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Let’s start with Clara Bow, the original “It Girl.” This glamorous, tousle-haired actress was the queen of the silent era silver screen. The self-described “awkward, funny-faced kid” hustled her heart out to get parts from age 16. As the quintessential Flapper in film after film, Clara came to symbolise the wild freedoms women claimed for themselves in the Roaring Twenties.
Adele Rogers St Johns, screenwriter, said:
“Clara is the total nonconformist. What she wants she gets, if she can. What she desires to do she does. She has a big heart, a remarkable brain, and the most utter contempt for the world in general. Time doesn’t exist for her, except that she thinks it will stop tomorrow. She has real courage, because she lives boldly. Who are we, after all, to say she is wrong?”
Colleen Moore, another epic film star of the 20s was established long before Clara Bow, and they competed for flapper roles before Moore withdrew, declaring the age of the Flapper was over. It was Colleen Moore who popularised the Flapper look, including the iconic “Dutch-boy” haircut she kept all her life. F. Scott Fitzgerald, who for better or worse wrote a lot of words defining this era, called this “the most fateful haircut since Samson’s.”
Colleen herself said:
“We were coming out of the Victorian era and in my pictures I danced the Charleston, I smoked in public and I drank cocktails. Nice girls didn’t do that before.”
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Josephine Baker danced for her living from age 8, from street corners & Harlem clubs to a European tour. She joined La Revue Nègre in Paris and she STORMED EUROPE WITH HER AWESOME. With comedy routines, the most extreme Charleston anyone had seen, and an iconic outfit entirely composed of bananas, Josephine rocked Paris and became that city’s highest paid entertainer.
I’m also pretty sure Josephine Baker invented the finger-guns. Fight me.
This glamorous bisexual star refused to return to America because it was so hard to exist there as a woman of colour. Josephine Baker stayed in Paris until WWII broke out, spied for the Resistance, fought racism & continued to be awesome.
Josephine Baker:
“To realise our dreams we must decide to wake up.”
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Theda Bara AKA the Vamp, also billed as Hollywood’s first Femme Fatale, was a silent movie star who played famous seductresses like Cleopatra and Salome. It was a popular trend at the time to promote actresses with mysterious & exotic backstories: Theda therefore became the Serpent of the Nile, despite never having visited Egypt.
Theda Bara’s movie A Fool There Was caused a mass fad across the country of young women cosplaying a glam vampire aesthetic, with low-cut gowns, pendant earrings, heavy eyeliner and dark lipstick. Vampmania!
Theda Bara:
“To be good is to be forgotten. I’m going to be so bad I’ll always be remembered.”
Florence Mills was a Broadway performer famous for dancing the Charleston in the Plantation Revue, a Broadway show created from nightclub acts. She became an international star & used her music & fame to speak up for racial equality. Florence died at the height of her success and fame, in 1927. She was mourned by the nation and the music world; thousands including huge numbers of celebrities attended her funeral.
Florence Mills:
“I belong to a race that sings and dances as it breathes. I don’t care where I am so long as I can sing and dance. The wide world is my stage and I am my audience.”
The Roaring Twenties wasn’t just about the Charleston – sometimes it was about the shimmy! Gilda Gray was one of the Ziegfeld Follies, whose shimmy became a national craze in the US. When asked about the dance Gilda replied “I’m shaking my chemise” and later credited the move to Native Americans from whom she had (apparently) learned the dance.
Bessie Smith was “the voice of the Roaring Twenties,” also known as the Empress of the Blues. She broke bestselling album records, and transfixed audiences with the power of her voice. Bessie performed live with Louis Armstrong in1925, the two famous icons of jazz clashing to outdo each other… he was the only trumpet player who could match her impressive voice.
Only with the invention of the electric microphone were other singers able to compete against a Bessie Smith performance. She was just that epic.
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Zelda Fitzgerald, credited as the “first American flapper” by her husband F. Scott Fitzgerald, was a writer, socialite and epic symbol of abandon, excess and other outrageous behaviour, punctuated by psychiatric breakdowns. Her husband was furious Zelda used their explosive marriage in her novel; he wanted to use the same material, but she wrote her novel faster! (Dude you literally stole her diary & put excerpts in your fiction, step back)
My favourite Zelda Fitzgerald quote is from when a magazine asked her to send in a recipe:
“See if there is any bacon, and if there is, ask the cook which pan to fry it in. Then ask if there are any eggs, and if so try and persuade the cook to poach two of them. It is better not to attempt toast, as it burns very easily. Also, in the case of bacon, do not turn the fire too high, or you will have to get out of the house for a week.”
Zelda Fitzgerald on the Flapper:
“The Flapper awoke from her lethargy of sub-deb-ism, bobbed her hair, put on her choicest pair of earrings and a great deal of audacity and rouge and went into the battle. She flirted because it was fun to flirt and wore a one-piece bathing suit because she had a good figure … she was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do. Mothers disapproved of their sons taking the Flapper to dances, to teas, to swim and most of all to heart.”
If you enjoyed this post, check out my 1920’s inspired fantasy trilogy The Creature Court (flappers with swords!!) crowdfunding now on Kickstarter.