With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture since 1830

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Cover of an 1870 children’s book on Sam Patch. (Courtesy of Paul Johnson, Department of History, University of South Carolina, Columbia.) (Above) T. D. Rice as Jim Crow. (Courtesy of the Harvard Theater Collection, Houghton Library.) (Right) P. T. Barnum caricatured as a humbug, emblematic of the antebellum era’s fascination with exaggeration and bunkum. (Courtesy of the Harvard Theater Collection, Houghton Library.) 1'LfE ORifH.c ""' AL ,J Lltf C'ROW E\ITM - JElUG-o 135.219.166] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 07:58 GMT) Mose, stage hero of the Bowery b’hoys, with his g’hal, Lize. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress.) MISS MARY TAYLOR & M~ F.S. CHANFRAU._ IN TH( NCW PIECE CALLED ..A GLANC EA f NEWYORk. J):]Q::i~. 1;•11'N rln' '!f'tlSTCABD BilOW A tobacco card in 1869 of the first all-salaried baseball team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress.) (Left) A publicity poster of “the Menken”—Adah Isaacs Menken— as Mazeppa. (Courtesy of the Harvard Theater Collection, Houghton Library.) (Below) Although they soon led to belly dances and strip shows, early burlesque troupes did more than display women’s bodies in titillating ways; they also exhibited female rebelliousness, sexual power, and dominance. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress.) (Above) The Great Sandow supporting the Trocadero Vaudevilles, with Florenz Ziegfeld at the center of the platform. (Courtesy of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research.) (Left) Vaudevillian Eva Tanguay, combining sexual innuendo with childlike innocence and energy, was perhaps America’s highest-paid actress. (Courtesy of the Harvard Theater Collection, Houghton Library.) 135.219.166] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 07:58 GMT) (Above) Under the guidance of a friendly adult supervisor, youths in 1911 play basketball on a New York City playground. Demonstrating reformers’ desire to use entertainment as an agency of uplift and social control, the era’s playground movement helped popularize basketball on city streets. (Below) Movie still from Bird in a Gilded Cage (1909) shows the kinds of action and danger that thrilled nickelodeon audiences and worried moralists. (Photos courtesy of the Library of Congress.) The Great Houdini, illusionist and escape artist, symbolized natural man breaking loose from the chains of modern institutions, restrictions, and technology. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress.) (Left) Edgar Rice Burroughs’s “Tarzan of the Apes” made its debut in 1912, in the pulp magazine All-Story. Clinton Pettee drew this first picture of Tarzan. The book version, Tarzan of the Apes, was published two years later. (Courtesy of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Collection, Ekstrom Library, University of Louisville.) (Right) Harold “Red” Grange, the University of Illinois’s “Galloping Ghost” in 1923, was later a key player in developing professional football. (Courtesy of the University of Illinois.) (Right) Irene and Vernon Castle, authors of the bestselling instruction manual Modern Dancing (1914) and populizers of sanitized versions of dances such as the tango in 1913. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress.) (Below) The Beverly Hill Billies (pictured here in 1930) illustrated the impact of radio as well as country music’s widening popularity and the rustic hillbilly image that promoters initially attached to it. (Courtesy of the Folklife Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.) 135.219.166] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 07:58 GMT) During the Great Depression, radio dominated entertainment with a wide variety of advertiser-sponsored programming, including music, comedy, and soap operas. Radio’s messages both reinforced and questioned social norms. (Courtesy of Bettman/ CORBIS.) (Left) Superman, who made his debut in the June 1938 Action Comics, was a cartoon hero for depressed times, and he transformed the comic industry. (“Action Comics” #1, © 1938 DC Comics. All rights reserved. Used with permission.) (Below) This World War II poster, featuring the heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis, reflected the government propaganda that emphasized America’s racial diversity and freedom. (Courtesy of the National Archives [Image #44 PA-87].) Pvt. Joe Louis says_ "We're going to do our part ••• and we'll win because we're on God's side" John Wayne, World War II and Cold War icon, in Fort Apache (John Ford, 1948). (Courtesy of the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington.) A family in mid-1957 watches TV, by then the leading Cold War medium. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, U.S. News and World Report Magazine Collection, LC-U9-927.) 135.219.166] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 07:58 GMT) (Right) With a...