A Resource Guide for Live and Tabletop Roleplaying Games set in the 1920s,
including Lovecraftian Horror and Gangster Genre Games.
Art Film and Stage
         

      The Silver Screen 

      The Silent Artists Index 

        Excellent Site! The "Silents Majority" has done a tremendous job of compiling information on the stars of the silent screen. Do not miss this site! 
      The Silent Film Bookshelf 
        EDITOR'S CHOICE - This site reprints original documents from the silent film era.  Nickelodeons in NYC, Roxy, D.W. Griffith, Cecil B. DeMille, 1915-1927 Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount Lawsuit, Salaries of silent stars
      Great Films of the 1920s 
        A hundred of the best, organized by year.
      Silent Ladies 
        Excellent Site! "Photo Galleries of Silent Film Actresses Over 1,500 JPEGs of 300 actresses from the silent era."
      Film in the 20's 
        A fairly simple but interesting account of film in the 20s, by Hollywood Center Studios
      The Orpheum in The 1920's 
        Excellent page on a specific theatre built in 1929. "These were the golden years for the birth of movie palaces in America. This was a time when where we went to the movies was as Important as the movies we went to see - And 1929 was the year the Orpheum opened in Phoenix at the corner of 2nd Avenue and Adams."
      Buster Keaton 
        A tribute to one of the biggest stars of the silent era.
      Louise Brooks 
        Homepage of the Louise Brooks Society, dedicated to silent star Louise Brooks.
         
      Jazz & Popular Music 

      A History of Jazz before 1930: The Red Hot Jazz Archive 

        Great jazzpage with material (espescially RA-format) from the early jazz age  - Contributed by Trond Hansen
      Milt Hinton 
        Jazz musician Milt Hinton remembers the 20s and 30s, including Al Capone, and racism
      Maxine Gray 
        A 30's and 40's vocalist, Maxine Gray led a long and interesting career.  An excellent collection of pictures, and details of her injury in a train wreck.
      Roy Smeck and the Ukelele 
        "The first nationally promoted Vitaphone talking picture was "Don Juan," starring John Barrymore, and the production was accompanied by other short entertaining video pieces including one entitled "His Pastimes" featuring our man Roy. (Al Jolson's "Jazz Singer" was issued a year later.)" This page discusses Smeck's career, and the ukelele and steel guitar. 
         
      Stage and Vaudeville 

      Vaudeville Memories
        An Excellent page of Vaudeville and American Popular Music Links - Contributed by Roots
      American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment, 1870-1920 
        Excellent Site! The Library of Congress sponsors this exhibition of some of their materials. Old Playbills and photos, with a lot of great history. Harry Houdini, Theater Playbills and Programs, Sound Recordings, Motion Pictures, English Playscripts, Yiddish Playscripts. 
        "The American Variety Stage is a multimedia anthology selected from various Library of Congress holdings. This collection illustrates the vibrant and diverse forms of popular entertainment, especially vaudeville, that thrived from 1870-1920. Included are 334 English- and Yiddish-language playscripts, 146 theater playbills and programs, 61 motion pictures, 10 sound recordings, and 143 photographs and 29 memorabilia items documenting the life and career of Harry Houdini. Groups of theater posters and additional sound recordings will be added to this anthology in the future."
      Vintage Vaudeville and Ragtime Show 
        This site is full of sound clips and other useful information on Vaudeville, including a section on the Palace Theatre in New York, which was the "center" of vaudeville.
      Ragtime Home Page 
        The "Big Three" Fathers of Ragtime, Short biographies of Scott Joplin, James Scott, and Joseph Lamb. Links and CD information.
      Tim Gracyk Page -Early Record Artists 
        Incredible Site!!! - this site is crammed with technical information on every aspect of early 20th century sound recording. If you wanted to know anything about the history of sound, or a long list of artists, check this site. 
         
      Visual Artists 
         
      Man Ray 
        Ray, Man (1890-1976), American painter, photographer, and leading figure in the artistic avant-garde in Paris of the 1920s. 
         
      Literary Artists 
         
         
         
      Miscellany 

      Dutch Falconi and his Twisted Orchestra 

        This is a Sacaramento band which has apparently concocted a fictional character as its leader, whose exploits date back to the Jazz age. Intereating, but not historical in the least. It does give an interesting view of developing a "character" from out of the 1920s.
      Biography  
        An excellent search engine, which purports to have 20,000 individuals indexed.  Great for checking birth and death dates. 
           
           
The Resource Guide for Live and Tabletop Roleplaying Games set in the 1920s,
including Lovecraftian Horror and Gangster Genre Games is the property of Gordon Olmstead-Dean. Your comments and suggestions for additions, or notes on expired links, are appreciated.
Articles found on these pages may be freely distributed unless otherwise specificed.
 
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Last Updated October 16, 1998