 "The
Lawless Decade "
by Paul Sann
(original) Crown, 1957
(pb edition) Fawcett Gold Medal
Book, 1971
Bachelors cannot help
but love the roaring twenties with its gangsters, bootleggers, G-men, Hollywood
scandals, and general debauchery. It was a time when flappers flapped and
things started to swing. If you want to trace the roots of the the classic
American bachelor, you need go no further than America in the 1920's. Remember,
this is the decade that spawned F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemmingway and other
members of the "lost generation." If that wasn't a blueprint for future
bachelor-ness, then nothing was.
The Lawless Decade goes
year by year telling of all the highlights and lowlights of people and
things that were in the news. Besides prohibition, the stock market crash,
and the Lindbergh kidnapping, there were other notable events. There was
the life and death Valentino, of one of the bachelor's teachers in the
art of suave seduction. Also, we can't forget Ms. Clara Bow, one of Hollywood's
finest film idols, who was more of a femme fatale off screen than on. Then
there where forgotten stories like the infamous "big bath" of 1926 where,
at a party, theater producer Earl Carroll got 17-year-old Joyce Hawley
to bathe in a tub of champaign, which lead to his indictment on criminal
charges and her 15 minutes of fame. The 20's were a great time for much
of what the classic bachelor looks for. In fact, if it wasn't for the "great
depression," the classic age of the bachelor would have come 20 years sooner.
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