Explore early 20th century history and culture—uncovering the entertainment and social trends that shaped life in North America and Europe from 1900 to 1930
As the motion picture industry took off, Salomania stormed the silver screen—Salome movies shocked, scandalized, and mesmerized people around the globe. It is hard to overstate how influential the Salome story was in silent film. The British Film Institute lists 21 films containing “Salome” in the title for films made before 1930, but this is…
When Richard Strauss attended a Berlin theatre production of Wilde’s play Salome in 1903, he imagined a Salome opera, feeling the play “cried out for music.” By choosing this provocative story for operatic treatment, Strauss courted controversy—perhaps in hopes of drawing attention. As Alex Ross notes, the composer “felt drawn to sexually charged material throughout…
In early 20th-century performance, art dance emphasized expressive movement, innovation, and aesthetic depth, as seen in modern dance and ballet. Erotic dance focused on sensual display and physical allure, often for popular entertainment. Art dance sought cultural legitimacy; erotic dance catered to titillation, though the boundaries often were blurred, especially when it came to Salome…
Salome painting over the centuries usually depicted her as the cold instrument of her mother’s murderous intent. The head of John the Baptist, detailed with bloody grotesqueness on a silver platter, is the usual focus. All that changed during the 19th century. Orientalism and Salome Painting During the middle years of the 1800s, a group…
Salomania was a performance phenomenon and cultural craze that swept through America and Europe during the early years of the 20th century. It sprang from a popular reinterpretation of the story of Salome, a figure alluded to in the New Testament who danced for a king and, as a reward, requested a head on a…
This is drawn from my book Prostitution and Illicit Sex in Baltimore: Commercialized Vice, Report of the Maryland Vice Commission, 1916. Revised March 26, 2025 I came across a brothel scandal while researching my historical mystery novel, Into the Suffering City, set in 1909 Baltimore. The Maryland Vice Commission exposed the scandal in 1916. The…
Rereading Louise Brooks’s writing of her early years in New York City, published as Chapter One in Lulu in Hollywood, I’m struck by the unique blend of detail, candor, and lack of pretension or sentiment. She credits her success in the city to a soda jerk who tamed her accent, a waiter who refined her…
Revised April 2, 2025 A Salome story: I spent many years working with historical documents at the Library of Congress and other cultural heritage institutions. Historical documents, also known as primary sources, provide firsthand evidence about people, events, and ideas from the past. Primary sources can reveal great stories about what has—and hasn’t—changed over time….
Revised March 26, 2025 The telephone and “Hello Girls” were wildly disruptive when they arrived at the end of the 19th century. They were radical innovations that brought change, not the least for single women, both in the workplace and in the male imagination. Women dominated the ranks of telephone operators early on, starting with…
Modified March 25, 2025 Autistic characters—both in stories and real life—have always existed. What we now call autism has long been part of the human condition, even though medicine only began identifying the particular set of physical and mental traits associated with it within the last 100 years. This issue has special relevance to me….