American Popular culture from the early 20th century?

November 3, 2006 8:05 AM

I'm looking for sites related to American popular culture from the early 20th century: books, films, radio, magazines, music, dance, comic strips, celebrities — you name it. I'm particularly interested on the period between the wars, but open to great stuff from before (and during) World War I, as well. Little Nemo, Keystone Kops, the Lindy Hop, Enrico Caruso, Fatty Arbuckle, Al Jolson, Clara Bow, Flash Gordon, Alice blue, Teddy bears, etc. These are all the sorts of things I'm after, especially as they're represented on the web. Bonus points for sites with RSS feeds.

A similar question about personal finance led to my personal finance site. I'm planning to use this question to jumpstart a site about American popular culture from the early 20th century.

posted by jdroth to society & culture (10 comments total)

This guy has mp3s of about twenty popular songs from back in the day.
posted by Greg Nog at 8:08 AM on November 3, 2006

I am that guy, Greg. (But then maybe you knew that.) That post has been gnawing at me for months, and is what led to me deciding to do this new site.

Examples of the kind of thing I'm looking for:

• the list of songs Greg linked to
• This piece on EPCOT 1939
• a Keystone Kops episode featuring Fatty Arbuckle
• Our Gang/The Little Rascals
• The Red Hot Jazz Archive

I'm also interested in modern incarnations of old pop culture. For example, there was a recent Little Nemo book. The 1980 Flash Gordon film is fair game. I'm mainly interested in the originals, but remakes are cool.
posted by jdroth at 8:21 AM on November 3, 2006

This fantastic site has most (maybe all) of the Mercury Theatre radio shows Orson Welles & co. produced in the late 1930's. As an added bonus, the shows that were sponsored by Campbell's contain incredibly cheesy and amusing advertisements for soup. Highly recommended.
posted by hazelshade at 8:41 AM on November 3, 2006

It would help if I actually remembered to provide a link, no?
posted by hazelshade at 8:42 AM on November 3, 2006

I guess the only site that readily spring to mind are animationarchive. Also: Link list. This really sounds like a job for some intensive blog/net searching and link following, to state the bleeding obvious.
posted by peacay at 8:53 AM on November 3, 2006

Yeah, peacay - I've been doing a lot of research already. It helps that I have a crazy passion for this stuff. I have a lot of books on the era(s), too, from which I can pull ideas. But I figure there have to be some people around here that know where, for example, there's a treasure trove of move serial information, or a site devoted to 1920s baseball.
posted by jdroth at 9:04 AM on November 3, 2006

American Memory Project (Library of Congress).
posted by mattbucher at 9:25 AM on November 3, 2006

The New Deal Network.
posted by LarryC at 11:30 AM on November 3, 2006

Doctor Macro Image Gallery -- I'm particularly fond of the Ziegfeld girls.
posted by loiseau at 11:59 AM on November 3, 2006

Can I piggyback a little? I'm particularly interested in Eddie Cantor.
posted by booksandlibretti at 12:44 PM on November 3, 2006