The Roaring 20's

Excellent TV show set in the Twenties with great cast and stories. I remember seeing this in the 60's and loved the musical numbers in the Charleston Club. Could we please have the entire series on DVD including songs sung by Dorothy Provine listed on each volume. As of now, all we have are a few uploaded to YouTube. I bought the new CD from Amazon which is a compilation of songs from the show. However, many of us would like to see the numbers as well. Warner Bros. for some reason has not released a number of shows from the 60's which were popular such as Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, etc. Why should this be? There are so many series released that are not as good. Thank you.

One hundred years ago was the 1920s, and that, in a way, is as odd a time in American history as the one we're living through, in 2024. The United States caved to a special interest group, the religious right, and chose to institute Prohibition. That meant that nobody in the country was drinking alcohol. Noooooo. Never. And that's where we meet the players on this show.

It's clear that ABC, the network that ran this series, was attempting to capitalize on another show it debuted the previous season: "The Untouchables." The stories of Eliot Ness and his "G Men" busting up racketeering and other methods of organized crime was an instant success and so they came back with this entry, a little softer and a little sweeter.

Rather than focusing on the Feds in Chicago, the interest was a handful of journalists for the various NYC newspapers, who were covering the stories of how the law was fighting the mob and trying to snuff out the baddies. Donald May and Rex Reason played a couple of these news hounds on the trail of some headlines.

Dorothy Provine was a flapper and a triple threat, singing, dancing and acting all as part of her duties in the cabaret where she performed. In fact, the show was one of the first to have a companion soundtrack with music featured from the series on an LP.

Speaking of, the musical director for the series was a guy named Alexander Courage, who eventually would go on to help with music cues and the title theme for a very different series, "Star Trek," just a few years later.

New York plays a part because we had to get a look into the speakeasys where people sipped their bathtub gin and the other interesting hobbies people had at the time. It's funny, human nature is so predictable. If you make something illegal, or unavailable, it only seems to make people want to do it more. And the rise of organized crime occurred specifically because of the government's actions. Something to think about for OUR 20s.

I don't mean to say they were humanizing any criminals shown in the process of this series, but the point is that we're looking at the concept of Prohibition from the 1960s, well after it was ended and after it was clear that it was one of the worst ideas that ever was. So, really, nobody was as bad as all that, if the politicians had never chosen to institute it.

The most memorable feature of this show for me as a boy of eight years old was the sex appeal of Dorothy Provine. I'd watch the show to get a glimpse of Miss Provine doing one of her flapper numbers and in my puzzled pre-adolescent mind wonder why her appearance always evoked such unusual and seemingly strange thoughts and sensations. Of course, this did not escape the notice of my parents, who were relentless in their teasing ("Oh, she's your girlfriend, now we know..."). Anyway, aside from that, the show featured plenty of action and intrigue in the riotous and often chaotic period preceding the Depression years. Looking back, it was a time of almost innocence after the experience of the first World War, which tragically turned out to be a precursor to a much bloodier and sobering experience a generation later. The passage of time has given a luster and burnish to those years which obviously paints over the harsher reality of violence and hardship. Still, it was a fun hour of escapism in the early years of network TV.

Television came late to us in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia): in 1960. We waited forever for it, getting our TV sets way ahead of the first broadcasts (we got a Murphy set), and then watching the Indian test pattern forever! But when it did arrive, besides Highway Patrol, The Honeymooners, The Rag Trade, Fury, Dr. Kildare, 77 Sunset Strip, Zed Cars, The Terrific Adventures of the Terrible Ten, the Adventures of Robin Hood, and many others ... was one of my favourites: THE ROARING TWENTIES.

I particularly loved the musical intro ending with the 1920's model motor flying over a shed and landing with a splat and a cloud of dust. I was mesmerized by the show. Dorothy Provine was all the rage in 1960 as a result of that. I remember the papers following her around the world, and reading of her arriving to adoring crowds in Rio de Janeiro and Paris. The show also spurned a 1920's revival in fashion and attitude. Great fun!

Years later when I was living in Sydney, Australia in the early 70s, I managed to find a copy of the soundtrack to the television series. I still have that album, and occasionally I play it.

Would love to see this series out on DVD ... no one has ever heard of it here in Amsterdam !

The Roaring Twenties as a television series had a two year run on television and was marketed to take advantage of a brief spurt of nostalgia for the era of the flapper. Donald May and Rex Reason were reporters in the Twenties Chicago with Mike Road as a police lieutenant. Between all of them they managed to solve a crime and get a news story every week. Helping them out was Dorothy Provine who as a speakeasy entertainer was in a position to hear a lot of interesting information.

Dorothy also sang a number or two straight out of the Roaring Twenties song book. She was pretty enough to entice younger viewers and their parents and grandparents got to hear the music of their youth. Though the show was set in the Twenties, in style it was not too different from those other Warner Brothers private eye shows of the time, 77 Sunset Strip, Surfside Six, Hawaiian Eye, Bourbon Street Beat, etc.

If you look at the episode list you won't see any names of some of the real gangster names of the times. That was left to the Untouchables. It also left plenty of room for the writer's imagination.

The episode I remember best was one with Claude Akins, a gangster reunited with his son and his new found responsibilities as a father persuade him to give up the life of a wiseguy. Not totally though, because after a trip to Comiskey Park to see the Yankees and Babe Ruth play the White Sox, they then went to Arlington Park to see Earl Sande, the Babe Ruth of jockeys ride a couple of winners home. And earn some money for Akins.

It was a good show, I do wish TV Land Channel would pick it up.