Strange Times 111: No Jazz For the Jungle

Strange Times is a newsletter that explores the weirdest news of 1921, one day at a time. If you like it, you will probably like Westside Saints, my latest Jazz Age mystery novel, as well.

Today brings lions disappointed, flappers arrested, and socialites stricken with ennui. Cast Newport aside on…

April 21, 1921

• Babe Ruth receives a speeding ticket for driving over 30 MPH while on his way to the Polo Grounds.

• Despite insisting that they are not “opposed to higher education for women” and “in many cases…are not even opposed to co-eds,” the men of the University of Pennsylvania announce their opposition to women attending their school, for fear they may become a majority on campus.

• The Weather: Cloudy today; Friday, showers and cooler; increasing south and southwest winds.

If you had to recreate the 1920s from a single news item, this might be the one—from the casually racist description of jazz as, sigh, “jungle music” to the fact that literally anything was deemed newsworthy. The final sentence is perfect.

To gauge more or less scientifically the effect of jungle music on animals a jazz band played to the resident population of the Central Park Menagerie yesterday afternoon. A press agent, an actress and a number of newspaper men were on hand to witness the demonstration and movie operators were draped on an iron railing outside the cage of Ackbar, the lion.

At the first bars Ackbar shot the serenade full of holes with a bombardment of reverberating roars which shook the movie men loose from their perches. Several cameras and one derby hat were put out of commission. The other animals concurred with the lion, except the goat, which is deaf.

The press agent admitted that for the first time in his career, he had nothing to say.

On the other hand, this might be the most 1920s story ever run in this newsletter. Sheer Mecklessness!

CHICAGO, April 20.—Mae McDonald, 17, pretty and unabashed, is under arrest as the “flapper bandit” who has been busy at highway robbery for several days. The girl stubbornly denies the charges against her, but she was identified by William Meckless as the girl who shoved a pistol under his nose last night and forced him to give up $35. Other victims of the girl bandit will be asked to identify the prisoner.

In all of the reported “flapper” robberies the girl bandit worked with several men in the background, though she carried the only visible weapon and did all the dangerous work. Early yesterday morning the band took a taxicab and money from a taxicab chauffeur at Eighty-seventh Street and Ashland Avenue. Lsat night Meckless was the victim.

Few know this, but “drawing-room ennui” was a leading cause of melancholy among the 1920s fast set. You’ll be happy to know that Julia Hoyt went on to have a respectable career on stage and screen. If you’re interested in film history, I strongly recommend subscribing to Henry Giardina’s excellent (mostly) movies newsletter “Less Art.”

Mrs. Lydig Hoyt, one of the ranking matrons of New York society, is going into the movies. Not as a playtime diversion, but as a serious career, Mrs. Hoyt intends to devote herself to the screen, according to announcement last night by Miss Beulah Livingstone. Miss Livingstone is Mrs. Hoyt’s manager in the venture. She is also press representative for the Normal Talmadge Film Corporation and it is in support of Miss Talmadge that Mrs. Hoyt will appear in her first picture, as a sort of novitiate, before she is starred on her own account.

Mrs. Hoyt last night confirmed the announcement. She said Miss Livingstone was correct in explaining that weariness of the round of social duties and pleasures had prompted her decision, but added that the love of acting which has made her conspicuous on the amateur stage since her débutante days, only a few years ago, had influenced her largely in making her decision.

It was Miss Livingstone who told last night more in detail of the forthcoming venture of another society woman into a professional career and of a keen competition between the speaking stage and the pictures for a recruit whose vivacity, charm and conspicuous success in amateur theatricals as well as her commanding position socially were expected to make her a stunning success in the most popular form of dramatics.

Ennui was the deciding factor that determined Mrs. Hoyt to forsake the arduous duties of a social leader, or at least to relegate them to a part subordinate to a new profession, according to Miss Livingstone, who added that it was only recently in that Mrs. Hoyt had succeeded in overcoming her husband’s opposition to the radical change in her activities.

Overcomes Husband’s Objections

Mr. Hoyt, scion of an old Knickerbocker family, Yale graduate, clubman and former Deputy Police Commissioner, at first was set against the departure of his wife from her wonted sphere, but at last she persuaded him, Miss Livingstone said, that the eternal round was “driving her mad.” No longer could she stand motoring to Piping Rock for luncheon, motoring somewhere else for bridge or tea or both, entertaining formally at dinner, rushing forth to the opera or the play or a ball, retiring in the small hours and getting up to do it all over again.

For several years she had tried to vary the monotony with appearances on the amateur stage, in which she always played a leading part and always scored a real success. Her dash, her adaptability to a variety of roles, her lithe grace, her slim figure with dark hair and eyes and pale complexion, her genius for making herself a lovely picture in the most striking gowns won her such easy success with audiences of her own kind that she could not resist the temptation to pit her ability against more widely critical and less personally friendly audiences.

Only recently in the costume of a sixteenth century Princess, she had charmed a Junior League gathering, only to move it to keen mirth a bit later when she did a cowboy dance.

Again to prove her own versatility she had adopted from the vaudeville stage the difficult musical saw and had drawn real harmony from it to the admiration of her playfellows.

And at last she became convinced that no longer could she resist the temptation to do it all in earnest and see what came of it.

Just recently Mrs. Hoyt returned from Boston, after having sat for a portrait by Sargent. Nearly every famous painter in this country and in Europe at one time or another has applied his brush to the task of depicting the woman generally known as one of America’s real beauties, and that, too, had palled upon her as a diversion.

It was just then that gossip of Mrs. Hoyt’s restlessness, of the imminence of her casting her lot with stagefolk, reached Miss Livingstone. So she hastened to see her, to lay before her all the opportunities for quick success, worldwide admiration and fabulous returns that the screen offered its favorites.…

As soon as Mrs. Hoyt learns screen make-up and masters the difference between acting on the spoken stage and before the camera, Miss Livingstone intends to star her in a picture of her own. What it will be and under what auspices, Miss Livingstone said had not been determined.

The making of the first picture will begin next Monday, and will have its first showing through the First National Pictures at the Strand late in August or September.

Mrs. Hoyt is the daughter of Julian W. Robbins. Her only sister is Mrs. Van Rennsselaer King. She is a grand-daughter of Hugh Judge Jewett, a former President of the Erie Railroad. Mr. Hoyt is the son of Gerald Livingston Hoyt and a Brother of Mrs. Samuel A. Welldon. The couple were married in June, 1914, when the bride was about 17. Their social orbit extends to Newport, Washington and the capitals of Europe.