Capitolo 4
The Flight That Changed Everything
Lindbergh's progress was closely tracked as he flew over New England and eastern Canada, with regular updates interrupting Congress and drawing crowds outside newspaper offices. After passing Newfoundland at 6:00 p.m., he headed into open ocean, disappearing from contact for what would be sixteen hours. Americans everywhere said prayers, and thousands called the New York Times despite knowing there could be no news.
His navigation was extraordinary-hitting every target precisely while making calculations on his lap in an unstable plane. When he landed at Le Bourget at 10:22 p.m. after 33 hours and 30 minutes in the air, a hundred thousand ecstatic people rushed the field in "seething, howling" pandemonium, flattening fences in their excitement. In that moment, "a pulse of joy swept around the earth."
Lindbergh's arrival in Paris triggered worldwide jubilation. The crowd at Le Bourget was a "seething, howling mass of humanity" that nearly destroyed his plane while trying to reach him. Rescued by French aviators, Lindbergh was escorted to Ambassador Herrick's residence where, after briefly meeting reporters despite being awake for over sixty hours, he finally slept.
America erupted in celebration with newspapers struggling to find adequate superlatives, calling it "the greatest feat of a solitary man in the records of the human race." The New York Times devoted four full pages to the story. Proposals emerged to rename Minnesota "Lindberghia," exempt him from taxes for life, and make May 21 a national holiday. He received millions of letters and gifts, inspired songs and dances, and even influenced Walt Disney to create Mickey Mouse.
In Paris, Lindbergh charmed France with his humility and respect for French aviation. He visited Nungesser's mother, received the Legion d'Honneur from President Doumergue, and drew crowds of a million people. After brief visits to Brussels and London (where King George questioned him about urination during the flight), he boarded the USS Memphis for America, leaving behind a briefly adoring France that would soon return to anti-American sentiment.
The Lindbergh arrival broadcast marked a milestone in radio history as Graham McNamee narrated for NBC's first coast-to-coast network, reaching an estimated fifty million listeners. At the Washington Monument ceremony, President Coolidge made a brief speech, pinned the Distinguished Flying Cross on Lindbergh, and invited him to speak. Lindbergh said only a few words of thanks before stepping back, creating an awkward moment as the crowd realized they were witnessing two of America's most taciturn men.
On June 13, Lindbergh flew to New York Harbor to find an extraordinary sight-an entire city standing ready to receive him. The harbor was filled with boats, and from Manhattan's southern tip to Central Park, four to five million people thronged sidewalks, rooftops and windows-possibly the largest crowd ever assembled to honor a single person. The parade generated 1,800 tons of debris (compared to just 155 tons after the 1918 Armistice parade).
Lindbergh's new life as a public figure began with an exhausting schedule-three banquets, several speeches, hospital visits, and a wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in just thirty-six hours in Washington. For three days, Lindbergh stories filled sixteen pages of the New York Times. He received lucrative offers-$500,000 to star in a film about his life, $50,000 to endorse cigarettes, even $1 million to find and marry a bride on film. Politicians suggested he could eventually become president.
Capitolo 5
The Sultan of Swat
While Lindbergh captivated the world, another American icon was quietly making history. George Herman Ruth was born on February 6, 1895, in Baltimore's rough Pig Town district into a troubled family. Six of his eight siblings died in childhood, and his parents died young-his mother of tuberculosis and his father in a knife fight. In 1902, his father took him to St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, a combination orphanage, reform school, and private academy that would be Ruth's home for the next twelve years.
St. Mary's provided Ruth with structure and dignity. The Xaverian Brothers believed troubled boys needed decency and respect to become model citizens. Though living in monastic conditions with no privacy, Ruth thrived, especially in baseball. The school fielded 44 teams, and Ruth excelled under Brother Matthias Boutilier's guidance. By adolescence, he stood 6'2", weighed nearly 200 pounds, and could play every position masterfully.
In 1914, the Baltimore Orioles signed Ruth as a pitcher. Leaving St. Mary's at 19, Ruth experienced many firsts-trains, hotels, menus. His teammates nicknamed him "Babe" for his innocence. He quickly developed his legendary appetites for food, women, and spending. When the struggling Orioles sold him to the Boston Red Sox that July, Ruth won his first major league game the same day he arrived.
Despite beginning as a pitcher-and an extraordinary one with a 94-46 career record-Ruth's hitting prowess couldn't be ignored. By 1918, Boston played him at first base or outfield between pitching starts. While entire teams struggled to hit home runs that year, Ruth alone hit 11. By 1919, he shattered the American League home run record with 29 while still pitching regularly.
Ruth's revolutionary approach used a massive 54-ounce bat gripped at the very end around the knob, creating a whip-like motion. This combination of power and timing generated 8,000 pounds of force (scientifically measured), converting a 90-mph incoming pitch into a 110-mph outgoing rocket in just one-thousandth of a second of contact.
In 1920, his first Yankees season, Ruth hit 54 home runs-more than any other team in the majors. In 1921, he improved to 59 homers while leading in multiple categories. Curiously, home runs league-wide quadrupled from 235 in 1918 to over 1,000 by 1922, due to several factors: cleaner baseballs following Ray Chapman's death, banning of spitballs, and the introduction of the "rabbit ball" with Australian wool wound tighter around cork centers.
Ruth became an unprecedented celebrity, perfectly timed with the birth of tabloid newspapers, newsreels, and radio. Columbia University professors tested him and pronounced him "one man in a million." Despite his fame, Ruth remained endearingly unpretentious though notoriously extravagant-once wearing twenty-two silk shirts in three days before giving them all to a chambermaid.
In 1926, Ruth rebounded from health issues with intensive fitness training, shedding forty pounds and nearly nine inches off his waistline. He hit 47 home runs and batted .372, but ended the season with an inexplicable blunder-getting thrown out trying to steal second base for the final out of the World Series against the Cardinals. Now 32 years old with chronic health issues, Ruth seemed past his prime-yet amazingly, 1927 would become the year that no baseball fan would ever forget.
Capitolo 6
The Summer of Transformation
As summer finally arrived, America warmed up and dried out. New York temperatures climbed toward 80 degrees for the Fourth of July weekend, bringing the first heat wave of the season. Heat transformed city life, creating a shared misery that sparked conversations between strangers. People sat on stoops, barbers moved chairs outside, and windows everywhere were opened wide, allowing the city's sounds to drift through buildings-a stark contrast to modern air-conditioned isolation.
The holiday brought 74,000 fans to Yankee Stadium for a doubleheader against the Washington Senators-the largest crowd ever for a regular season game. The Yankees, who had been winning consistently despite predictions they were past their prime, utterly demolished the Senators 12-1 and 21-1 in the most lopsided doubleheader in history. This 1927 Yankees team, with an average age over twenty-eight, would prove to be possibly the greatest baseball team of all time, with seven future Hall of Famers.
Most formidable were Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, baseball's greatest double act. Gehrig, despite his impressive physique, winning smile and immense talent, suffered from crippling shyness. At twenty-three, he'd never had a girlfriend and still lived with his mother, to whom he was extraordinarily devoted. Born to poor German immigrants, Gehrig was a natural athlete who could hit a baseball harder and farther than anyone his coaches had seen.
By July 1927, Gehrig was outpacing Ruth in home runs, with 28 to Ruth's 26 after the Fourth of July doubleheader. Despite their rivalry and vastly different personalities, they were close friends, with Ruth often enjoying Mrs. Gehrig's cooking. This friendship wouldn't last-by the 1930s, Gehrig would hate Ruth passionately, reportedly after Ruth slept with Gehrig's wife.
Meanwhile, the Mississippi flood waters were finally receding. Herbert Hoover proudly noted that the federal government had provided no financial assistance, with all relief coming from private donations. However, the $13 million loan fund he helped create amounted to just $20 per victim. The flood accelerated the Great Migration of blacks from the South and forced the federal government to accept greater responsibility for disaster management.
Charles Lindbergh faced new challenges as July began. He agreed to a three-month tour visiting all forty-eight states to promote aviation, sponsored by the Guggenheim Fund for $2,500 weekly. Simultaneously, he was writing his autobiography for G.P. Putnam's Sons after rejecting a ghostwriter's draft. Working in a bedroom overlooking the sea at Falaise, a French-style chateau on the Guggenheim family estate, Lindbergh completed his autobiography in under three weeks-about forty thousand words. Critics were unimpressed with the book, titled We, which barely mentioned his childhood and devoted just seven pages to his historic flight. The public didn't care-the book sold 190,000 copies in its first two months.
Capitolo 7
Justice and Prejudice in America
On a mild, sunny afternoon in April 1920, a brutal robbery unfolded in South Braintree, Massachusetts. Frederick Parmenter, a payroll clerk, and Alessandro Berardelli, his guard, were carrying $15,776.51 in cash boxes-the weekly wages for 500 employees of the Slater & Morrill Shoe Company. Two men confronted and shot them, then escaped in a getaway car with accomplices. This seemingly commonplace crime would become the most consequential crime scene of the 1920s.
Chief Michael Stewart of Bridgewater Police, with no real evidence, decided Italian anarchists were responsible. Police arrested two Italian men-Bart Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco-who were carrying loaded pistols and anarchist literature. It was a dangerous time to be both radical and foreign in America during the Great Red Scare. Under the Espionage and Sedition Acts, thousands were imprisoned for even mild criticism of America.
The evidence against Sacco and Vanzetti was remarkably weak. Nothing placed them at the crime scene. Witness testimony was contradictory-some identified different suspects entirely, while others noted the gunman had a pencil-thin mustache, unlike Vanzetti's famous drooping one or Sacco's clean-shaven face. Identification procedures were improper, with no proper lineups conducted.
Italian immigrants faced shocking prejudice in America. They encountered employment discrimination, housing restrictions, and social exclusion. Some in the South were even forced to attend black schools. While all immigrant groups faced challenges, Italians were viewed as especially troublesome-stereotyped as anarchists, Communists, Fascists or criminals.
The murder trial began May 31, 1921, with Judge Webster Thayer presiding. Over seven weeks, 160 witnesses generated two thousand pages of testimony. The prosecution focused solely on Sacco and Vanzetti, making no attempt to identify other participants or recover the stolen money. After deliberation on July 14, 1921, both men were found guilty and sentenced to death. Appeals continued for six years, including a confession from death row inmate Celestino Madeiros claiming involvement in the crime, which Judge Thayer dismissed as untrustworthy.
The first protests against the Sacco-Vanzetti verdict came from abroad. In October 1921, a bomb was sent to Ambassador Myron Herrick in Paris. International petitions poured in, with one gathering nearly 500,000 signatures. Streets, cafes, even an Argentine cigarette brand and tango were named for the two Italians.
The case reached a turning point when Harvard law professor Felix Frankfurter examined it and became convinced Sacco and Vanzetti had been railroaded. In a March 1927 Atlantic Monthly article, he systematically demolished the case against them, calling Judge Thayer's opinion "a farrago of misquotations, misrepresentations, suppressions, and mutilations" with "demonstrable errors" and "a spirit alien to judicial utterance."
Massachusetts Governor Alvan T. Fuller appointed a commission of three distinguished men-Harvard president Abbott Lawrence Lowell, MIT president Samuel Stratton, and retired judge Robert Grant-to review the trial's fairness. Fuller conducted his own investigation, reading every transcript, examining physical evidence, interviewing jurors and witnesses. Nevertheless, the Lowell Commission concluded Sacco was unquestionably guilty, Vanzetti probably so, and recommended no reprieve.
The executions proceeded at midnight on August 22, 1927, with smaller, subdued crowds watching. Madeiros died first at 12:09, followed by Sacco who cried "Long live anarchy!" before his execution at 12:19. Vanzetti, displaying remarkable dignity, thanked the warden, declared his innocence, and forgave his executioners before dying at 12:26.
Capitolo 8
The Birth of Modern Entertainment
H.L. Mencken derided Hollywood as "the one authentic rectum of civilization," but most Americans viewed it as magical. In 1927, Los Angeles was America's fastest-growing and richest per capita city, with a population approaching 2.5 million. The motion picture industry, America's fourth largest, produced 800 features annually-80% of global output-and employed more people than Ford and GM combined, generating $750 million yearly. Twenty thousand theaters sold 100 million tickets weekly, with one-sixth of Americans at the movies on any given day.
Silent films reached their creative zenith just as they were about to be replaced, with "Wings" exemplifying this painful irony. Opening in August 1927 with a dedication to Lindbergh, this $2 million Paramount epic was conceived by John Monk Saunders, a Rhodes scholar and charming philanderer who sold his half-finished novel to producer Jesse Lasky.
Director William Wellman, a 30-year-old former WWI flying ace earning just $250 weekly, brought unprecedented authenticity to aerial filmmaking. Nothing was faked-cameras mounted inside and outside cockpits captured real clouds, explosions, and pilots' reactions, with stars Richard Arlen and Buddy Rogers operating cameras themselves. The Texas production deployed 5,000 extras and 60 planes, with dangerous stunts causing one pilot's death and numerous injuries.
Many viewers of "Wings" came not for aerial thrills but to see Clara Bow, Hollywood's enchanting 22-year-old star. Despite her tough Brooklyn upbringing with an unstable mother who once held a knife to her throat, Bow arrived in Hollywood in 1923 after winning a photo contest and quickly became beloved for her work ethic, often putting in 15-hour days and making 35 films between 1925-1929.
Despite both moving pictures and recorded sound existing since the 1890s, combining them proved surprisingly difficult. Two major challenges persisted: projecting clear sound to large audiences and synchronizing voices with moving lips. Lee De Forest, a brilliant but financially troubled inventor with 216 patents, created the thermionic triode detector in 1907 for amplifying electrical currents, laying groundwork for sound projection.
Based on Samuel Raphaelson's Broadway play, Warner Bros' "The Jazz Singer" represented a significant $500,000 gamble that could initially be shown in just two theaters worldwide. Though Jolson had never acted on camera before, he now shone brilliantly. The film took four months to shoot, but the sound portion was completed in just two weeks between August 17-30, containing only 354 spoken words.
Talking pictures saved Hollywood but at considerable cost-anxiety for stars, equipment expenses for studios and theaters, and job losses for thousands of musicians. The industry initially feared talkies might be a passing fad, especially given the massive investment required: $10,000-$25,000 for theaters to install sound equipment and at least $500,000 for studios to build sound stages.
Despite these obstacles, talking pictures succeeded spectacularly. By 1930, virtually every American theater had sound, movie attendance jumped from 60 million to 110 million, and Warner Bros' worth skyrocketed from $16 million to $200 million. The most profound impact came with the Americanization of global cinema. With approximately 400 foreign actors working in Hollywood in 1927, talkies suddenly made those with accents unemployable. As American voices dominated screens worldwide, American speech patterns, thoughts, attitudes, humor and sensibilities spread globally. Almost accidentally and unnoticed, America had culturally colonized the world.
Capitolo 9
The End of an Extraordinary Summer
In summer 1927, Babe Ruth could often be found in movie theaters watching himself star in "Babe Comes Home" alongside Swedish actress Anna Q. Nilsson. Shot in just twenty-two days that January, the film was reportedly dreadful and unsuccessful, particularly unfortunate timing as it was released May 22, just after Lindbergh's Paris flight captured worldwide attention.
With the Dempsey-Tunney fight concluded, baseball reclaimed the nation's attention as Babe Ruth chased his own home run record. After hitting his 57th on September 27 with a grand slam off the great Lefty Grove, Ruth added his 58th the next day against rookie Hod Lisenbee.
The dramatic 59th home run came against Paul Hopkins-a college graduate making his major league debut with the bases loaded. Hopkins carefully worked the count to 3-2 before throwing a slow curve that Ruth, with remarkable eye-hand coordination, managed to hit into the bleachers.
On the last day of September, in a muggy, 80-degree afternoon at Yankee Stadium, Ruth faced left-hander Tom Zachary with the score tied 2-2. After walking once and singling twice in previous at-bats, Ruth connected on Zachary's third pitch-"as good as I had" according to the pitcher-lofting it high toward the right field foul pole. The ball dropped into the bleachers just inches fair, giving Ruth his historic 60th home run. Zachary threw down his glove in frustration while Ruth acknowledged the roaring crowd with military salutes.
In the clubhouse, Ruth exclaimed, "Let's see some son of a bitch try and top that one!" Yet the celebration was surprisingly muted-everyone expected Ruth might hit even more the next day or in future seasons. In fact, his record would stand until Roger Maris hit 61 in 1961 (with the advantage of a longer season), and wouldn't be seriously challenged until the steroid era of the 1990s.
The summer of 1927 faded gradually into autumn, with October bringing some of the year's warmest days. "The Jazz Singer" drew massive crowds despite its $10 ticket price, with audiences reacting to Al Jolson's voice "as if they were listening to the voice of God." The Holland Tunnel opened after five and a half years of construction, Mount Rushmore work began in earnest, and in Detroit, Henry Ford began hiring again as production of the new Model A commenced.
Lindbergh finished his tour at last, having flown 22,350 miles, visited 82 cities, delivered 147 speeches, ridden 1,285 miles in parades, and been seen by an estimated 30 million people. When it ended, he found himself at once free and yet permanently trapped by fame. For reasons not fully explainable, Lindbergh's flight had brought the world "a moment of sublime, spontaneous, unifying joy on a scale never before seen," creating an impossible obligation for the young aviator.
Looking back nearly nine decades later, the summer of 1927 stands as a remarkable moment in American history. That extraordinary summer saw Babe Ruth hit sixty home runs, the Federal Reserve make a fateful mistake that would precipitate the stock market crash, Al Capone enjoy his final summer of prominence, the creation of television, radio coming of age, the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, President Coolidge choosing not to run again, the beginning of Mount Rushmore, the devastating Mississippi flood, a school bombing in Michigan that killed 44 people, and a young pilot from Minnesota captivating the entire world. "Whatever else it was, it was one hell of a summer."
