Anything Goes

Bracketed by the catastrophes of the Great War and the Wall Street Crash, 1920s America was a place of drama, tension and hedonism. It glittered as it seduced: jazz musicians, flappers, wild all-night parties, the birth of Hollywood, and a glamorous world of gangsters all flourished under prohibition. But the period was also punctuated by momentous historical events - the political show trials of Sacco and Vanzetti; the huge Ku Klax Klan march down Washington DC's Pennsylvania Avenue - and produced a sparkling array of writers, musicians and film stars, from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Bessie Smith, Charlie Chaplin to Mary Pickford.