Episode 8: Transcript

L.A. Goes Boom in the Roaring 10s & 20s - PART 1

Last time on: The Story Los Angeles

The arrival of the airplane and automobile began transforming transportation culture in the Southland while silent film stars and movie palaces sold the Land of Sunshine to the world as a place of dreams, fame, and endless possibility.

Opening:

While silent film was working its way into the theaters and hearts of the Nation, planes and cars continued to grow in popularity, and by the time the First World War began in Europe, the US Government was leveraging Southern California’s impeccable year-round temperate climate for defense of the nation. Tens of thousands of soldiers and pilots trained under SoCal’s sunny skies while aircraft manufacturing spiked for the military. This sudden boom in spending sent population centers, manufacturing, and entertainment soaring as new middle class military families and contractors made Southern California their home.

Yet as the economy ballooned so did the power and influence of organized crime syndicates and groups driven by anger, frustration, or greed. Brutal gangsters with ties to crime families in the East began extortion and bribery rings aimed at siphoning profits from small businesses, illegal gambling & prostitution operations in the city and politicians. Further North, Owen’s valley farmers angered at the ecological devastation caused by Mulhollands engineering and L.A.s water use, repeatedly bombed northern sections of the new aqueduct, cutting off water supplies to the city.

As leaders worked to out-maneuver the farmers with more engineering plans, Angelinos were quenching their thirst with the free flow of alcohol, illegally sourced and sold by the powerful growing mafia in the city. This was the roaring 10s & 20’s in Los Angeles: an explosion in culture, industry, and engineering, propped up by underhanded deals and criminal operations. But few of those who prospered in this era of feverish growth could anticipate the struggles that awaited as the 1920’s came to a close.

This is The Story: Los Angeles

Episode 8: LA Goes Boom in the Roaring 10s & 20s - PART 1

Part 1: the Economy

Life in early 1910s Los Angeles was an exciting place to be. Growth of the city was visible every single day as new technologies and innovations established themselves in this western promised land. As silent films took over silver screen theaters, massive changes were erupting across Southern California. Just decades earlier the city faced an uncertain future: unpredictable droughts and floods plagued the success of the region while thousands of mid-western and east-coast migrants poured in seeking their fortunes in gold, oil, or film. With the stabilization of the water supply due to William Mulhulland’s brilliant engineering efforts on the Owen’s Aqueduct, the region could now support the new industries inundating the region. Tourists turned permanent residents boasted of seeing the mountains, the deserts, and the oceans all in a single day without a cloud in the sky. Newly christened silent films celebrities graced the streets of downtown while planes and other peculiar aircraft defied the laws of gravity in stunning and fantastical airshows.

Early in the decade, the silent film industry gained the first major foothold led by recent innovations in filming and projection techniques. No longer we’re moving pictures limited to short flicks viewed by one person at a time in clunky Kinetographs. New technologies afforded by light and projection techniques allowed theater owners to present longer creative works to hundreds at a time filling seats the way theater or opera had done years before. 

Without sound, performers relied on slapstick style exaggerated characterizations to express emotions. Successful early silent film stars were able to create reproducible characters that soon became loved by a public hungry for comedic and affordable escape from the realities of industrialization. Often with loosely scripted or non-existent narratives, improvisational skills were key. On one occasion, director Henry Lehrman simply shoved a young Charlie Chaplin into the course of a live auto race in Venice Beach and filmed the oversized reactions of Chaplin and the unsuspecting public. This brilliant piece of improvisation filmed in 1914 became the hit film “Kid Auto Races at Venice” and laid the groundwork for more of Chaplin’s characters to infiltrate the new entertainment landscape.

As silent film profits and popularity soared, so did the imaginations and ambitions of early film directors. D.W. Griffith, now regarded as “the father of the major motion picture” didn’t care much for the low-brow slapstick style of comedy that led to the cinemas popularity. He envisioned a film style that reproduced the grandeur and storytelling of Shakespeare married with the elaborate and epic Operas popularized in Europe.

Through trial and error, Griffith experimented with close-ups, fade-outs, flashbacks, and cross-cutting scenes in order to compose a lengthier, more engaging film. These innovations expanded the cinematic vocabulary, enabling more complex and emotionally resonant storytelling while introducing techniques still championed today.

By 1915 Griffith released his first major feature film “The Birth of a Nation”. An immediate hit, the film wowed audiences for its technical innovations audiences had never before encountered. The length of the film, over 2 hours, paired with its immediate widespread success also showed that audiences craved long-format narratives. Audiences would pay more and stay longer, maximizing profits for producers and theater owners. 

But the substance of D.W. Griffith’s content proved to be controversial. While the popularity and influence of his films were undeniable, films often portrayed scenes and narratives featuring a deeply racist and pro-KKK south in sympathetic terms. While the post-civil war South celebrated the films portrayals, much of the country held their noses, instead taking note of the technical ambitions and massive scope of the projects. This divide, while often overlooked, highlighted the deep division that still existed throughout the country and one that would take a starring role as the century progressed.

Despite his early success, Griffith’s sentimental style and serious subject-matter struggled to remain relevant to audiences while producers grew tired of lavish spending on massive sets and elaborate narratives. But his impact was clear: audiences craved long-format narrative films and such productions could be incredibly profitable. The motion picture industry was about to explode with sunny skied Los Angeles as its proven testing ground paving the way for an onslaught of performers like Buster Keaton, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and Roscoe Arbuckle took over the silver screen. As audiences moved away from Griffith’s epics, comedies dominated the artform as audiences flocked to theaters across the country.

While silent film was taking over the stages of vaudeville and the imaginations of aspiring filmmakers, planes and cars were taking over the streets and skies of Southern California. The country's first ever airmeet in 1910 hosted in Wilmington established the region as a hub of aerospace development while the oil industry and wide open spaces enticed car and engine manufacturers to the region.

Although growth during the decade began slowly the two industries grew largely in parallel and by 1920 both were major components of the region’s bustling economy.

Before 1910, several milestone achievements paved the way for robust growth:

• In 1906 cars were used to bring relief to earthquake and fire survivors in San Francisco while Standard Oil of California was busy establishing the first gas station on the West Coast. In 1907 the US was producing 43,000 cars per year, one car for every 800 people in the country. The following year in 1908 the Government purchased its first plane, setting in motion aerospace as a strategic wartime advantage

• In 1910, the army performed its first Aerial Bombing Experiment with sandbags in Southern California and car manufacturing grew to the 21st largest industry in the nation with over 200 competing manufacturers.

• 1911 - Ford establishes a west Coast presence with a manufacturing plant in downtown Los Angeles, the USPS begins experimenting with air mail delivery, and the first transcontinental flight is completed.

• 1912, the army build’s its first airbase and aviation school in San Diego and Henry Ford’s dealerships grow to 7000.

• 1913: the nation's first transcontinental highway is completed from New York to California and the first female to make a parachute jump in the US leaps out of a plane 1,000-feet above Griffith Park in Los Angeles.

• 1914: The Army enlists Sixty officers and students and authorizes 200 more for pilot training as World War 1 begins.

• 1915: Congress establishes the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics - it eventually evolves into NASA.

• 1916 - Airplanes in flight communicate with each other directly by radio for the first time while William E. Boeing builds and tests his first aircraft, and Ford manufactures more than 700,000 of the countries 1.5 million cars.

• 1917 - the Boeing Company is established led by William E. Boering and the Lockheed Brothers migrate from Northern to Southern California becoming major suppliers to the British Royal Air Force.

• 1918 - World War I, the “war to end all wars,” comes to an end bringing home over 750 pilots soon to become air mail deliverers.

• 1919 - The first organized aerial forest fire patrol is dispatched from Rockwell Field, Calif.

• 1920: The US produces 2.3 of the world’s 2.4 million cars and the first transcontinental mail service arrives in New York from San Francisco. 

It was a busy time for the two industries as tourists and newcomers flocked to the sunny region. With the growth of auto and aircraft manufacturing, middle class families thrived further fueling the growing economy.

Many wealthy legends in the city also helped the early industries develop. In 1920, Harry Chandler of the Los Angeles Times persuaded Donald Douglas to open firm Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica, soon becoming one of the largest manufacturers in the region. Jack Northrop opened his first airplane company in Los Angeles in the 1920s, later becoming one of World War 2s largest suppliers. Harry Culver, founder of Culver City, worked to establish the Los Angeles Municipal Airport and partnered with Chandler to market the benefits of the Los Angeles area: moderate climate, low construction costs, and an abundance of skilled labor. And the early success led the California Institute of Technology to establish its School of Aeronautics and research lab further fueling technical talent in the region.

For automobiles, the Auto Vehicle Company in Los Angeles had first dibs producing 3000 vehicles from 1902-1910 when it closed its doors. But growth really began with the establishment of Ford Motors early plant in downtown. In the decades that followed, Jeep, Chrysler, Studebaker, General Motors, and other iconic brands established plants in the region leading to rampant growth in vehicle registrations.

By 1910, Los Angeles was the seventeenth largest city in the nation, and some seventy local dealers represented 105 different automobile brands. “There was a time when the horse was in a majority but conditions are such on the coast today that in one city at least, Los Angeles, the horse is all but shooed off the street,” Out West reported in February 1913. “There is not more than one horse-drawn vehicle to every twenty motors, and the horses delay traffic frightfully in that rapidly moving city.” There would soon be more cars per capita in Southern California than any other part of the country.

In 1915, 7000 vehicles were registered in the state. By 1920 that number had soared to 90,000 and by 1930 230,000. While the early pioneers of auto manufacturing and retailing may be long forgotten, their legacy has come to define the City of Angels, and their work continues to impact everyday life in Los Angeles.

With all of the economic expansion a wealth of other service industries grew to support the population.

Among those were auto repair shops which had humble beginnings from bicycle stores that learned to repair and sell cars. Eventually, these new dealers began expanding services like used car trade-ins and purchasing on credit introducing the West to the concept of the dealership we know today.

The city’s automobile dealers campaigned for road improvements and traffic regulations that impacted efficiency on traffic flow, and launched a myriad of L.A. radio and television stations to market their vehicles to a broader audience.

Wealthy moguls like Emma Summers “The Oil Queen of California” also expanded beyond their initial industries. After earning enormous profits in the Oil Industry, Emma went on to start hotels, gas stations, car repair shops, laundromats, restaurants, and more service style businesses. 

The thirst and drive for success was palpable among early Angelinos as tales of the incredible fortunes of California’s pioneers spread across the nation. The economy was firing on all cylinders. But as we’ve learned with previous booms, wherever fortune blossoms, the struggle for dominance in money, politics, and power soon follow.

Part 2: Foundations In Crime

While the city boomed with industrial and cultural growth from automobiles, aerospace, film, and service businesses, dark underworlds of vice and crime were taking note of ways to exploit the region's newfound wealth for their benefit.

In the earlier boom-days of the late 1800s with real-estate and oil, crime and fraud schemes were largely carried out by individual or small-scale conmen seeking a quick buck on unsuspecting newcomers. But as the city became more established, larger criminal enterprises came to power. Similar to the Tong gangs of the 1870s that influenced and blackmailed successful small businesses, early organized crime groups dubbed “Black Hand gangs” extorted successful businesses in Southern California for protection money and fake taxes owed to the groups that ran the neighborhoods.

Much like the oil and real estate booms of decades prior, fraudsters, swindlers, and criminal enterprises flourished as legitimate industries grew, sometimes muddying legal waters between the two. Illegal gambling halls, drug dens, and brothels operated in the shadows along with actual small businesses. With limited police capabilities, the “wild west” mentality often prevailed as law enforcement focused on more overt offenses. In the 1900s, as the economy ballooned so did the power and influence of these criminal operations.

Very quickly, organized crime syndicates, like those found in the cities of the East, began taking control of parts of the city and industry. Groups mostly organized around familial or cultural ties created racketeering and extortion rings forcing small and large business owners alike to pay protection fees and fake rents for the price of doing business on their turf.

The streets of Los Angeles at the turn of the century were a battleground for various street gangs, each vying for power and control over the city's criminal underworld. Among these groups, the Matranga family emerged as one of the most prominent, using threats, violence, and extortion to dominate the Italian American community in the heart of the city near Plaza de Los Angeles.

As the Matranga family's influence grew, so did their conflicts with other criminal factions. The feud between the Matrangas and Joseph Ardizzone, a prominent Black Hand leader, would shape the course of organized crime in Los Angeles for years to come. The dispute, which began with the murder of a Matranga gang member, George Maisano, by Ardizzone, escalated into a bloody war that claimed the lives of several key figures on both sides.

Amidst the chaos, a new power emerged in the form of Vito Di Giorgio, a Sicilian immigrant with strong ties to mobsters across the country. Di Giorgio, feared for his violence and brutality, brought a semblance of order to the Los Angeles underworld. 

Up to this point, the relatively small crime organizations, while brutal, fought over bounties won through their extortion networks and management of illegal operations. Their footprint was somewhat limited in comparison to the region as a whole. But all that was about to change surprisingly by acts of war in Europe and new laws passed in Congress.

Part 3: The War to End All Wars & the Rise of The Modern Mafia

For decades, coalitions like the Christian Women’s Temperance Union had been formed around the idea of outlawing all alcohol sales in the United States.  one of the most popular, and still the most deadly, substances used recreationally by the masses. Tired of and weary of the crime and tragedies that fell onto drunks righteous citizens argued a complete ban on the beverage was the only way to course correct the country.

But at the time, the beverage proved too popular and influential for an outright national ban. Restrictions were limited at the state and local levels only and not very successfully. Alcohol thirsty patrons could easily travel across state or county lines to imbibe or smuggle their own supply back to their homes.

While the prohibition movement highly influenced California, the real tipping point for the state's initial restriction of Alcohol in the mid-1910s came about due to World War 1 and eventual US involvement.

Among the reasons:

• grains and other ingredients used in alcohol production needed to be conserved for food and the war effort as US involvement grew.

• breweries were often owned by German Americans, and there was a growing sentiment against anything German during the war.

• temperance advocates argued that alcohol consumption negatively affected the war effort by reducing productivity and discipline.

• the U.S. military believed that restricting alcohol would help maintain more disciplined and effective soldiers.

And so, California legislatures put the concept of partial prohibition to the vote and by 1916, early restrictions on alcohol sales in Los Angeles County began on a local basis. 

The new ordinance meant a specific and complete prohibition of any alcohol manufacture, sale and consumption in the recently annexed harbor district of the city.  And beverages anywhere in the county could not be more than 14% alcohol, affecting wines, malt liquors and spirits. Suddenly, hundreds of once legal revenue streams from saloons to store bought alcohol were outlawed or greatly restricted. But this didn’t stop people from wanting to consume their alcohol of choice.

Seeing a broad open market for stronger proof liquors and drinks, organized crime families jumped on the opportunity to establish an early foothold and found themselves running extensive bootlegging and rum running operations. With a seemingly endless market in SoCals booming economy, gangsters and crime families began laying the foundation for their meteoric rise in the following decades. Using numerous methods for smuggling illegal booze, a new patchwork of illegal networks began to operate in the shadows:

• The vast California coastline provided easy access for rum-running ships, particularly from Canada, to deliver illicit cargo.

• Bootleggers creating their own concoctions built elaborate underground tunnels, some connecting to the Los Angeles sewer system, to transport and store alcohol. 

• Liquor, particularly tequila, was smuggled across the less-guarded  border with Mexico and transported north to the boomtown of LA.

After World War 1 ended, a federal push in the halls of congress in DC solidified prohibition as a national ban on alcohol. The passage of the 18th Amendment also known as the Volstead Act ushered in the era of Prohibition in 1920, outlawing the ALL production, sale, and transportation of intoxicating beverages across the United States regardless of the percentage of alcohol. 

The crime syndicates were elated. Having established a foothold on the illegal alcohol trade during WW1, their smuggling networks and dominance in their respective markets had already been established. Now they could continue to supply Southern California and the rest of the west with the overnight explosion in demand for illicit liquor.

By 1920, the ban on alcohol sales did little to stop the lively and feverish outlook for growth and opportunity in the country. Hidden establishments known as speakeasies thrived across the city ranging from simple hidden rooms to lavish nightclubs with live Jazz and secret entrances. Turf wars, violence, and the corruption of law enforcement officials became commonplace as rival factions warred over dominance of the bootlegging market, gambling, labor, prostitution, and extortion racketeering.

The First World War was over, film and culture blared from nickelodeons converted to grand movie palaces, magnificent cars rolled down the streets of the nation's cities, and despite prohibition, alcohol flowed through speakeasies as jazz and carefree life became the motto of the day.

Next time on… the story: Los Angeles

The Roaring Twenties in Los Angeles takes off with the emergence of Speakeasies, Jazz Clubs, and an Explosion in film fueled by economic booms and illegal booze. But the good times can’t always last. A number of unforeseen collapses and crackdowns mark the end of an era and the start of a newer, more humble rebuilding.