The Roaring 20's

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.

As the Western genre began to decline, the main beneficiary was the private eye genre. Warner Bros. Already spawned a hit with "77 Sunset Strip" which premiered in 1958. That success led to Warner Bros. Taking that template, putting together a similar ensemble cast, and setting the new shows in places like Miami, Hawaii, and New Orleans...much like recent shows like CSI and NCIS did with their respective franchises.

In 1959, two new series premiered, with a theme of law enforcement taking action against Depression-era gangsters. NBC's little-known "The Lawless Years", which lasted for a season and a half, was based on the memoirs of New York police detective Barney Ruditsky. Over on ABC, the memoirs of Eliot Ness became "The Untouchables".

So Warner Bros. Took the setting of these two gangster shows and applied their formula of two or three male leads and a singer, with the result being "The Roaring 20s". Unlike WB's other private-eye shows which had one character for comic relief, popular trends from the era provided a break from the crimefighting. (A 1961 ABC show from 20th Century Fox, "Margie", was a sitcom about an adolescent girl in the 20s.)

But I give that history to set up the review. The strength of "The Roaring 20s" was jointly in the writing and the characters, but also in its ability to capture the fun spirit of that era to avoid the noirish feel of "The Untouchables". We will probably not see it on DVD due to the weekly musical numbers provided by Dorothy Provine, another strength of the show.

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.

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.

"The Roaring 20's" was a "must see TV" at our house way back when! I remember watching this show week after week! Dorothy Provine as "Pinky Pinkam" was a very believable character. The show had a lot of action and some really good entertainment. I can still hear Pinky singing "Someone To Watch Over Me" is a kind of sad way at the loss of a boyfriend. Donald May and Rex Reason were great as newspaper reporters, both after the affections of Miss Pinkam. There were always car chases and shoot em ups to be had as well as plenty of mysteries to be solved. This show and "The Untouchables" went hand in hand and I so wish TV Land network would realize that us "Baby Boomers" are out here waiting for our shows to turn up on their network! Many "Boomers" would also like to be able to have these shows available to us in a DVD format.