'The Charleston Dance' Josephine Baker, Jack Dempsey

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Dancing the Charleston around the world. Including performances by Miss Bee Jackson, dancer Miss Josephine Baker, Heavyweight Boxing Champion Mr Jack Dempsey, and Miss Vaughan. 1923-1928.

'What Is The Charleston?' Popular 1920s dance, https://www.thoughtco.com/the-charleston-dance-1779257



Josephine Baker dancing The Charleston at the Folies Bergere in Paris, 1926.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_(dance ), *select 'dance'



Jack Dempsey, 1920s cultural icon, world heavyweight boxing champion (1919-1927) & wife Estelle. (Ctr in video above).

[Kind of Blue]

1. Had to see it to believe it that Josephine

Baker did the Charleston in clogs! Amazing.

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2. Great dance footage, real silk stockings, cute 'Dutch Girl costume.'

They all look so happy, lively and cool.

My grandfather was a cousin of boxer Dempsey (middle figure in video) and a bodyguard for one of his matches, v. T. Gibbons, July 4, 1923, Montana. My aunt said when she was a girl Jack would come by the house to say hello, and "he wasn't very good looking."...?? Ha, ha, not so.

~ FLAPPERS: The Roaring 1920s

[Kind of Blue]

4. Great history lesson, especially your personal history!

Thanks for the links!
Yeah, Dempsey was pretty smooth doing the dance. I'm sure being an athlete made him pretty limber and the energy of youth, indeed. Yeah, I guess by the time your aunt was born, he'd taken some serious punches to the face and not as pretty as a young man.

Those Flapper girls were wild! I wish I could remember the title of a documentary of flappers from a few years ago. Once upon a time elderly flappers were reminiscing and holding nothing back about the era. I was shocked by how liberated they were after thinking all they were doing was dancing, drinking and smoking, enjoying their freedom from the Victorian age

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5. Flapper girls were so cool. Back then our grannie was a young woman,

a wife and mom who liked to dress up, go out and hang with a girlfriend beauty queen in Atlantic City, NJ. But I don't think she drank or smoked much, esp. with 2-3 little ones.

Our aunt was a teen when JD came by and he was in his 40s, 50s, had felt plenty of punches as you said. But post- sports career the champ was still fit, a neat dresser, an outgoing public figure & NYC restauranteur from what I know.

That 1920s era was a time of greats for America- the Jazz Age, radio, automobiles, skyscrapers, modernity and economic growth- before the 1929 party crash, the Great Depression and improvement of US systems. Love this stuff...

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6. Oh yeah, the thing about the flappers in the documentary

is that they ran the gamut but the focus was really the women who didn't think marriage was their ultimate destinies, were in control of their sexuality and felt free to live without societal constraints placed on them.

Funny, reading your OP, I couldn't help thinking then it all came Crashing down.

Hopefully, our 20's coming up will approach all the good stuff that you mentioned of the era.

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7. Here's to the upcoming 2020s! More on the 1920s,

I forgot the Womens' Vote, adoption of the 19th Amendment, airplanes, Bessie Coleman, the first African-American female pilot in 1921 and plenty more.



- Bessie Coleman, first African-American pilot in 1921.

That great thing, sliced bread, was invented in 1928, along with bubble gum. If that wasn't enough, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon was shown, penicillin was discovered, and the first Oxford English Dictionary was published.
More, https://www.thoughtco.com/1920s-timeline-1779949

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3. 1920s Charleston Dance (2014) :)