1920s

Vintage: The Gold Rush (1925)

Vintage: The Gold Rush (1925)

The Gold Rush is a 1925 American silent comedy film written, produced, and directed by Charlie Chaplin. Though it was a silent film, it received Academy Award nominations for Best Music and Best Sound Recording upon its re-release in 1942.
Vintage: New York’s Bohemian Greenwich Village (1910s – 1920s)

Vintage: New York’s Bohemian Greenwich Village (1910s – 1920s)

Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870 – 1942) was an American photographer, the first published female photojournalist in the United States mostly known for her portraits of places such as Bohemian Greenwich Village. Greenwich Village became widely identified as America’s bohemia by the mid-1910s. The radicals who lived in Greenwich Village in the early 20th century rejected traditional structured socialization, preferring instead…
Behind the scenes: Metropolis (1927)

Behind the scenes: Metropolis (1927)

Metropolis (1927) is a stylized, visually-compelling, melodramatic silent film set in the dystopic, 21st century city of Metropolis – a dialectical treatise on man vs. machine and class struggle. Austrian director Fritz Lang’s German Expressionistic masterpiece helped to develop the science-fiction genre, with innovative imagery from cinematographer Karl Freund, art design by Otto Hunte, Erich Kettelhut, and Karl Vollbrecht, and…
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a 1920 German silent horror film, directed by Robert Wiene and written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer. Considered the quintessential work of German Expressionist cinema, it tells the story of an insane hypnotist (Werner Krauss) who uses a somnambulist (Conrad Veidt) to commit murders. The film features a dark and twisted visual style,…
Vintage French Erotic Postcards (1920s)

Vintage French Erotic Postcards (1920s)

A French postcard is a small, postcard-sized piece of cardstock featuring a photograph of a nude or semi-nude woman. Such erotic cards were produced in great volume, primarily in France, in the late 19th and early 20th century. The term was adopted in the USA, where such cards were not legally made.
40 Glass Plate Mugshots from the 1920s

40 Glass Plate Mugshots from the 1920s

These are wife killers, petty thieves, dealers of fake opium, hustlers – plucked from the street by the police of 1920s Sydney, Australia and photographed, fresh from the scene of the crime. These photographs reveal a lot more than the usual mugshot. The suspects strike poses. A few look disheveled and deranged, but some look decidedly guilty. They lean casually into…
Vintage: Wall Street bombing in 1920

Vintage: Wall Street bombing in 1920

At 12:01pm on Thursday, September 16th, 1920, a blast shook the Financial District of New York City immediately killing 30 people, with another 8 to die later of wounds sustained in the blast. On top of the dead, there were 143 people seriously injured with the total number injured measuring in the hundreds. This event was the deadliest act of…
Vintage: Poland during Interwar period (1918-1939)

Vintage: Poland during Interwar period (1918-1939)

The History of interwar Poland comprises the period from the re-recreation of the independent Polish state in 1918, until the joint Invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939 at the onset of World War II. The two decades of Poland’s sovereignty between the world wars are known as the Interbellum.
Vintage: Motor Racing from the 1920s-30s

Vintage: Motor Racing from the 1920s-30s

Donald James Harkness, pioneer in the Australian automotive and aeronautical industries, racing driver and record breaker, was born in Leichhardt, NSW in December 1898. On leaving school he became an apprentice in general engineering. At the age of 20 he secured employment at J.C. Hillier’s garage at Drummoyne and in 1922 the partnership of Harkness & Hillier Pty Ltd was…
Vintage: photos of Ku Klux Klan Parade in 1920s

Vintage: photos of Ku Klux Klan Parade in 1920s

The Ku Klux Klan was a secret organization; apart from a few top leaders the members never revealed their membership and wore masks in public. Investigators in the 1920s used KKK publicity, court cases, exposés by disgruntled Klansman, newspaper reports, and speculation to write stories about what the Klan was doing. Almost all the major newspapers and magazines were hostile.…
Vintage: Prohibition in Boston (1920s)

Vintage: Prohibition in Boston (1920s)

Prohibition in the United States was a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, in place from 1920 to 1933. The ban was mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and the Volstead Act set down the rules for enforcing the ban and defined the types of alcoholic beverages that were prohibited. Prohibition ended with the…
Vintage: historic photos of Peking, China (1920s)

Vintage: historic photos of Peking, China (1920s)

An older English spelling, Peking, is the Postal Map Romanization of the same two characters as they are pronounced in Chinese dialects spoken in the southern port towns first visited by European traders and missionaries. Those dialects preserve the Middle Chinese pronunciation of 京 as kjaeng, prior to a phonetic shift in the northern dialects to the modern pronunciation.
The Days of Prohibition

The Days of Prohibition

Prohibition in the United States was a nationwide constitutional ban on the sale, production, importation, and transportation of alcoholic beverages that remained in place from 1920 to 1933. It was promoted by “dry” crusaders movement, led by rural Protestants and social Progressives in the Democratic and Republican parties, and was coordinated by the Anti-Saloon League, and the Woman’s Christian Temperance…
Images from “Safety Last!” (1923)

Images from “Safety Last!” (1923)

Safety Last! is a 1923 romantic comedy silent film starring Harold Lloyd. It includes one of the most famous images from the silent film era: Lloyd clutching the hands of a large clock as he dangles from the outside of a skyscraper above moving traffic. The film was highly successful and critically hailed, and it cemented Lloyd’s status as a major…