ABSTRACT
The 1920s were certainly not all roaring or upbeat, but in significant ways people did indeed begin to enjoy life again after the horrors of war. Music particularly jazz would rival film as a successful American export throughout the 1920s. As film historian Steven J. Ross notes, the 1920s signaled the rise of a new type of film industry, an oligarchic studio system centered in Los Angeles and financed by some of the largest industrial and financial institutions in the nation'. Like Chaplin, Fairbanks would struggle with the transition to the talkies' and initially dithered he opened 1929's The Iron Mask with an introductory monologue, but performed the actual film as a silent work. Beyond film and music, the popular entertainment of the 1920s revolved around sport. For American sport fans, the 1920s would be dominated by the national pastime' of baseball and the stars that were increasingly becoming national heroes.
