Examination of Prohibition in 1920’s American Popular Culture

Popular culture often reflects the thoughts and opinions of most of a population. This was no different in the prohibition-era of The United States, with different forms of entertainment like movies, music, theater, and more showcasing the creator’s opinions on prohibition. When applying issues such as this to popular culture, it can provide different things, such as political activism, public education on a topic, coping mechanisms for the populous, and more. In the 1920s, many different pieces of popular culture spoke on prohibition, both explicitly and implicitly. Within 1918-1920’s popular culture, creators of popular culture presented prohibition as a bad joke that poorly affected lower- and middle-class people’s lives.

Prohibition was a significant change in American life in the 1920s. The Volstead Act, passed in October of 1919 and put into effect in January of 1920, was a tricky bill that seemed to ban high alcohol content beverages only. However, the Volstead Act banned all alcoholic beverages (anything with an alcohol content higher than 0.5%).[1] As this is a massive change in the structure of American society, it caused many problems within it. Prohibition greatly affected businesses based on alcohol, forcing some of them to change their business practices. Some businesses did not have to change because the authorities in their communities did not enforce prohibition laws like they were supposed to because they either did not want to, or they could not because of things like inadequate funding.[2] Some businesses had to change to fit the new law, such as becoming a speakeasy.[3] Prohibition, trying to limit crime and degradation of morality through the removal of a supposedly immoral beverage, instead caused the crime rate in the nation to rise. Murder, bribery, and other crimes skyrocketed in the 1920s because of the prohibition laws.[4] Another thing prohibition accomplished was to bring alcohol into the female sphere of the nation.[5] Before prohibition, men were mainly the ones partaking of alcohol, and the cultures revolving around it. However, after prohibition in the 1920s, women and men were both partaking of alcohol and the cultures surrounding it, with some speakeasies purposely serving men and women.

In the 1920s, visual entertainment, like movies, was a major pastime of the American public. Globally, the United States created 80% of all the movies in the world in 1927.[6] Visual entertainment provides a fascinating lens into thoughts and opinions of the whole American public or sections and groups of the American public. Movies and prohibition caused significant changes in the 1920s.[7] Movies in the prohibition era even went so far as to advertise alcohol within them, one advertisement mentioning “champagne baths.”[8] Many movies had different views on aspects of the changing culture. Some tried to expose it, while others seemed to embrace it. Film and theater likely treated alcohol and prohibition in the same way, and it is beneficial to explore the link between prohibition and visual entertainment to gain a greater understanding of the 1920s. Other forms of entertainment, like music, also carried themes of prohibition throughout the different realms of American popular entertainment. Through entertainment, Americans coped with the realities of prohibition and also made social criticisms of the law.

One way in which popular culture presented prohibition as a bad joke was through humor. Humor allowed people to poke fun at it and cultivate catharsis on the subject since prohibition was frustrating to many. One famous example of this is within the lyrics of a song by Sam Marley called “No Beer, No Work.”[9] Within the song, Marley lamented over prohibition’s existence. He said no one is happy now that beer is not legal for them to drink. Marley joked about how everyone was okay with fighting wars for America, but taking away their beer was too far.[10] He also joked about historical figures by saying they probably drank alcohol. At the same time, they accomplished the significant events in their lives, like George Washington crossing the Delaware River and Christopher Columbus discovering America.[11] He made a humorous examination of the increase in aviation throughout America, saying that “Everyone’s becoming aviators, At least the people all seem in the air, cause prohibition has been forced upon us. . .”[12] While this is humorous, it also shows a critical understanding of the changing technological advancements of the 1920s. Marley, likely along with many in America, noticed the increase in aviation technology. Here, Marley showed that prohibition poorly affected people’s lives upon the land, so they had to “move” to the air, reflecting the idea of prohibition as a bad joke. This provided a fascinating lens into the 1920s from and unexpected place, a humorous song. Marley saw the changes in America, and knowingly prescribed a false, yet humorous, cause to it. Much in America was changing, moving both forward and backward. While prohibition did not have much to do with increasing aviation, it had much to do with many changes in the nation.

Another piece of prohibition humor came from a different song titled “No Beer, No Work,” by Norrie Bernard. In Bernard’s song, he told a story about two characters, Jim Callahan and John Barleycorn.[13] Bernard created these two characters as personified beer brands. Bernard presented John Callahan as a man who worked long hours and was of high moral character.[14] John Barleycorn was a man who was no longer in his prime. However, when both of them laid down at night, they sang a song about how they were fine if they could no longer lawfully drink cocktails, brandies, and gins; however, when the government took the beer away, it meant they would not work.[15] These two men, who had different lives, share the same sentiment on their beer, and share that prohibition is a bad joke that took away their beer so they cannot return to work. The two men were personified beer companies, which also showed how prohibition ruins lives. The men would not work without beer. Beer company employees could not legally work at the company anymore because prohibition took their jobs away from them.

Another song that poked fun at prohibition was the song “Every Day Will Be Sunday When The Town Goes Dry.”[16] This song was sung by an artist named Earl Weeks in towns. According to The Bennington Evening Banner, Earl Weeks sang this song at a fair from April 24-26^th in 1919.[17] The song told a story of personified alcohol brand and personified prohibition. In the song, the lyricist gave the name “Mister Prohibition” to prohibition, or the government, and different monikers for the different beer brands he references.[18] In the song, like others from the prohibition era, it told about these men, who were personified beer brands, which were sent away by Mister Prohibition.[19] With these men “sent away,” referenced the businesses that were once wholly legal, being harmed by prohibition. These businesses built themselves up and employed many people, who now could no longer work in the industry they had been in, showing how prohibition poorly affected people’s lives. It even said that many people who worked in the alcohol industry, explicitly citing those who worked for bourbon companies, would not find work elsewhere and would have to join the army.[20] The song poked fun at how instead of women driving men to and from the bar, they drove men to the sink instead to do dishes.[21] That was not a manly activity at that time, unlike going to the bar. While this did not ruin lives, especially in today’s eyes, it does show that prohibition changed the daily lives of people and people’s relationships, and it may not have been for the better. Another topic of the song is how the elderly drunk to help remove some of the physical pain that came with aging. However, with prohibition, the elderly could not use alcohol to help relieve any of their physical ailments or stress, which made their lives more difficult.[22] The song lists many ways that people’s lives were poorly affected or changed by prohibition.

Recorded monologues and songs put on sound discs also poke fun at prohibition and showed the effects of it on people. In one sound recording, performed by William Cahill, it portrayed two characters, Bill, an Irish man who is against prohibition, and another character who supports prohibition.[23] The characters had a light-hearted back and forth about prohibition. Bill explained his reasons for not supporting it. Bill starts off showing how prohibition harmed  people’s names because it hurt the Irish brand Hennessey, which he referred to as “the greatest name in Irish history.”[24] Once again, Cahill showed how alcohol companies and all of those who worked for them suffered under prohibition. When the government outlawed these businesses’ products, they could not survive or support their employees. Bill made a joke about the Irish drinking water for the first time when Sir Thomas Lipton put a shamrock in some water.[25] He referred to the shamrock as the Irish drinking the water. While this was a highly exaggerated joke, it showed the effect of prohibition on Irish culture. Alcohol, according to Bill, was a significant piece of Irish culture, with brands like Hennessey that he previously referenced.

When the country took alcohol away from them, they had to drink other things that do not have much cultural value to them, like the water the shamrock drinks. Bill also joked about things they had to drink instead of alcohol by naming many types of teas like oolong tea and pink tea.[26] The joke here is that he said what they should be able to drink is liberty, playing on how liberty can sound like a type of tea: Liber Tea.[27] Bill says that when Patrick Henry said, “Give me liberty or give me death,” he was right.[28] Once again, Bill showed how the law of prohibition affected up their lives. Here, he just showed that the law unnecessarily took away the freedoms of Americans and said it was better to be dead than to give up his freedoms. He also said that because of prohibition, no one was happy anymore, and that was evident on everyone’s face.[29] Once again, a hyperbolized claim, but it showed that when the government took away people’s freedom to drink, it negatively affected their lives in many ways, including their emotional state. Another joke he made refers to what happened to him as a baby. When they needed a bottle as a baby, they gave it to them. However, now that he needed a bottle as an adult, this time referring to alcohol instead of milk, they took the bottle away.[30] Bill finished off the sound recording by singing a song about how alcohol helped people throughout their adult lives, but now that prohibition was in effect, their lives were much harder.[31] Throughout this sound recording, Bill makes jokes about the prohibition era to cope with the changes in effect but also to show how prohibition poorly affected people’s lives.

Newspapers shared many stories about prohibition, even news about how prohibition changed the way people’s lives worked. Prohibition did not only affect the alcohol industry; it affected industries that utilized alcohol in different ways, like serving it to their patrons. One newspaper article in the New York Tribune showed the effects of prohibition on the cabaret chorus.[32] The article showed that the cabaret had to work even harder than they initially did because the patrons were no longer under the jolly-providing qualities of alcohol.[33] Because the patrons had to drink other drinks instead, like sodas, the women in the cabaret were not as attractive as they usually were to the patrons whenever they were able to drink alcohol.[34] The songs were no longer nearly as entertaining as they once were to the now sober audience.[35] They even had to change some of the songs they sang because of prohibition, and the new songs were not as entertaining to the audience as the originals.[36] Many other things happened to the cabaret as well, such as the waiter not receiving as many tips as he used to.[37] This business that once relied on alcohol to succeed could no longer gain the benefits of serving it. Because of that, their performances were no longer as entertaining to their patrons, which hurt their business.

Prohibition also affected the film industry. Hollywood produced films both for and against prohibition, though many saw any of these works as propaganda. In an article of the Motion Picture News, H. Cochrane, vice president of the Universal Film Manufacturing Company, answered questions on propaganda. Cochrane said that many people viewing his company’s films had thought that the film was propaganda about prohibition.[38] He responded to them by saying his companies’ films were not propaganda for either side, and he also did not know of any film company which attempted to join the prohibition debate, nor did he know why they would want to.[39] This newspaper article showed how prohibition messed with the film industry. While the movies were not propaganda for or against prohibition, prohibition had become a significant part of people’s lives by changing a significant part of people’s lives, causing them to see things in the film industry that were not there. When the people began to think the film industry produced propaganda, that hurt the reputation of the industry, while also possibly hurting sales in the film industry. Cochrane also mentioned how some people against prohibition began to think that the film industry supported prohibition because, with bars and saloons closed, people went to theaters more often and gave the film industry more money.[40] They saw it as a battle between the working class and the upper-class. Again, Cochrane said that this was not true, and he also offered the option of providing a set of unbiased judges to review films to determine whether the films were propagandistic or not.[41] Through this information, it showed more how prohibition has messed with the film industry and hurt its reputation.

Another instance of people claiming propaganda in the film industry came from the editorial section in an issue of Motion Picture News. In the article, the author stated that the people have said that films have included pro-prohibition propaganda within them.[42] This claim arose from films that were about reformed drunkards.[43] The author stated that they did not make films to be propagandistic, nor was the film industry on the side of prohibition (or on the side against prohibition).[44] Once again, prohibition caused people to think things that were not true about the film industry, harming its reputation. People that worked in the film industry had their livelihoods irritated by the false reports that came against them because of prohibition.

Some stories in the film showed the way prohibition affected people. In one film titled “Dry and Thirsty,” advertised in Motion Picture News, it showed what happened to people who still tried to get alcohol.[45] The movie was a comedy about a man who got involved with a bootlegger so he could get alcohol.[46] While the magazine only told the overarching plot of the movie, the movie did show important issues with prohibition. The movie showed how, when the government took something away that had been legal for hundreds of years, people would still try to acquire it, and they would acquire it from unlawful sources. Bootleggers, who operated their liquor sales outside of the formal economy, acquired their goods from illegal sources. People who had liquor as a part of their daily lives would still try to acquire it, even from illegal sources. If the justice system caught these people, the police would arrest them, harming their lives in unnecessary ways. Also, legal liquor benefited the economy through its sale. However, when people exchanged liquor and money outside of the formal economy, the economy suffered from a decrease in profit. When the economy suffered, that causes most people within that economy to suffer, which revealed how prohibition ruined many people’s lives, and for unnecessary reasons.

Another movie that showed how prohibition unnecessarily caused people to begin breaking the law was “The Valley of Tomorrow,” which was about an illicit distillery, as advertised by Motion Picture News.[47] In the movie, one of the characters went to jail for taking part in illicit distilling.[48] In this movie, it showed the consequences of trying to obtain something that had been legal for hundreds of years and was a part of people’s entire lives, but then the government took it away from them for no reason. When the government enacted unnecessary laws like prohibition, people rebelled against the laws and got in trouble with the law. This movie presented this major flaw within prohibition and how that ruined people’s lives over something that the government should never have outlawed.

Many different forms of popular culture from 1918-1920, ridiculed prohibition. Humor and song poked many holes in prohibition, by showing the many effects on people’s livelihoods with the removal of alcohol. Newspapers showed how industries involved in popular culture, such as the film industry and the cabaret, suffered because they could not serve alcohol, and people began to think the industries were on one side or the other of the prohibition debate, making their reputation decrease. Movies were able to show reasons why prohibition messed up people’s lives by showing how some people would still try to get ahold of alcohol by breaking the law and how prohibition would make people’s lives suffer. Popular culture not only provides general entertainment, but it also provides political commentary and can function as a coping device for people who suffer in certain situations. Popular culture in the early years of the prohibition era certainly accomplished this.

Bibliography

Allen, Frederick Lewis. Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the Nineteen Twenties. New York: Harper & Row, 1931.

“Bennington Briefs.” The Bennington Evening Banner. April 10, 1919.  https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn95066012/1919-04-10/ed-1/seq-8/.

Bernard, Norrie. No Beer, –  No Work. 1919.

Bryson, Bill. One Summer. New York: Anchor Books, 2013.

Dinnie Donohue, on Prohibition. William Cahill, performer. Irish monologue. 1921. Sound disc.

Hill, W. E. “Among Us Mortals: The Dry Cabaret.” New York Tribune, August 3, 1919. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1919-08-03/ed-1/seq-44/.

Jerome, William and Jack Mahoney. Every Day Will Be Sunday When the Town Goes Dry. New York: Leo Feist, Inc, 1918.

Marley, Sam. No Beer, No Work. 1919.

“‘No Propaganda,’ Says Cochrane.” Motion Picture News. January 17, 1920.  https://archive.org/stream/motionpicturenew21moti_1#page/824/mode/2up/search/prohibition.

“Propaganda—and Power.” Motion Picture News. January 10, 1920. https://archive.org/stream/motionpicturenew21moti_1#page/586/mode/2up/search/prohibition.

“Three Gayety Comedies (Two Reels Each).” Motion Picture News. February 28, 1920. https://archive.org/stream/motionpicturenew21moti_1#page/2176/mode/2up/search/prohibition.

“Truckee’s Two Secrets.” Motion Picture News. January 31, 1920. https://archive.org/stream/motionpicturenew21moti_1#page/1292/mode/2up/search/prohibition.

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[1] Bill Bryson, One Summer, (New York: Anchor Books, 2013), 167.

[2] Bryson, 162.

[3] Bryson, 162.

[4] Bryson, 167.

[5] Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the Nineteen Twenties, (New York: Harper & Row, 1931), 99.

[6] Bryson, 66.

[7] Allen, 99.

[8] Allen, 100.

[9] Sam Marley, No Beer, No Work (1919).

[10] Marley.

[11] Marley.

[12] Marley.

[13] Norrie Bernard, No Beer, –  No Work (1919).

[14] Bernard.

[15] Bernard,.

[16] Jerome William and Jack Mahoney, Every Day Will Be Sunday When the Town Goes Dry, (New York: Leo Feist, Inc. 1918), 1.

[17] “Bennington Briefs,” The Bennington Evening Banner, April 10, 1919, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn95066012/1919-04-10/ed-1/seq-8/.

[18] William and Mahoney, 2.

[19] William and Mahoney, 2.

[20] William Mahoney, 2.

[21] William Mahoney, 2.

[22] William and Mahoney, 2.

[23] Dinnie Donohue, on Prohibition, performed by William Cahill, Irish monologue, 1921, Sound disc.

[24] Dinnie Donohue, on Prohibition.

[25] Dinnie Donohue, on Prohibition.

[26] Dinnie Donohue, on Prohibition.

[27] Dinnie Donohue, on Prohibition.

[28] Dinnie Donohue, on Prohibition.

[29] Dinnie Donohue, on Prohibition.

[30] Dinnie Donohue, on Prohibition.

[31] Dinnie Donohue, on Prohibition, performed by William Cahill.

[32] W. E. Hill, “Among Us Mortals: The Dry Cabaret,” New York Tribune, August 3, 1919, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1919-08-03/ed-1/seq-44/.

[33] W. E. Hill.

[34] W. E. Hill.

[35] W. E. Hill.

[36] W. E. Hill.

[37] W. E. Hill.

[38] “‘No Propaganda,’ Says Cochrane,” Motion Picture News, January 17, 1920,  https://archive.org/stream/motionpicturenew21moti_1#page/824/mode/2up/search/prohibition.

[39] “‘No Propaganda,’ Says Cochrane.”

[40] “‘No Propaganda,’ Says Cochrane.”

[41] “‘No Propaganda,’ Says Cochrane.”

[42] “Propaganda—and Power,” Motion Picture News, January 10, 1920, https://archive.org/stream/motionpicturenew21moti_1#page/586/mode/2up/search/prohibition.

[43] “Propaganda—and Power.”

[44] “Propaganda—and Power.”

[45] “Three Gayety Comedies (Two Reels Each),” Motion Picture News, February 28, 1920, https://archive.org/stream/motionpicturenew21moti_1#page/2176/mode/2up/search/prohibition.

[46] “Three Gayety Comedies (Two Reels Each).”

[47] “Truckee’s Two Secrets,” Motion Picture News, January 31, 1920, https://archive.org/stream/motionpicturenew21moti_1#page/1292/mode/2up/search/prohibition.

[48] “Truckee’s Two Secrets.”