The Roaring Twenties (1939)

John Deering: Narrator

Quotes 

• Narrator : 1929. As the dizzy decade nears its end, the country is stock market crazy. The great and the humble... the rich man and the working man... the housewife and the shop girl. All take their daily flyer in the market, and no one seems to lose. Then like a bombshell comes that never-to-be-forgotten Black Tuesday, October 29. Confusion spreads throught the canyons of New York's financial district. And men stare wild-eyed at the spectacle of complete ruin. More than 16 and a half million shares change hands in a single day of frenzied selling. The paper fortunes built up over the last few years crumble into nothing before this disaster which is to touch every man woman and child in America.

• Narrator : [Opening lines - various clips of 1930's news footages are shown]  Today, while the earth shakes beneath the heels of marching troops, while a great portion of the world trembles before the threats of acquisitive power-mad men, we of America have little time to remember an astounding era in our own recent history. An era which will grow more and more incredible with each passing generation until someday people will say it never could have happened at all. April, 1918: almost a million American young men are engaged in a struggle which, they have been told, will make the world safe for democracy.

  [Scene switches to World War I battlefield action, somewhere in France] 

• Narrator : An era of amazing madness. Bootlegging has grown from small, individual effort to big business, embodying huge coalitions and combines. The chase after huge profits is followed closely by their inevitable partners: corruption, violence, and murder. A new and powerful tool appears, the Tommy - a light, deadly, wasp-like machine gun and murder henceforth is parceled out in wholesale lots.