Folks stopping in here yesterday saw, of course, that the banner headlines on the Germans signing the Versailles Treaty and the Great War ending. As one of the papers below notes, it would actually require the ratification by the various signing countries to do that, but for most it would come fairly soon. The U.S. never did ratify it, but instead ratified a treaty that picked out the clauses the Administration of the time liked, that coming after President Wilson had left office.
The US version omitted, famously, the League of Nations.
Anyhow, the big news remained on the front pages of the few newspapers in Wyoming that had Sunday editions. Most did not.
Both local and national prohibition were also in the news. The national news was that President Wilson had decided he had no authority to lift wartime prohibition and therefore wasn't going to, for the time being. It was big, if odd, news in that general Federal prohibition was inevitable at this point, given the recently passed Constitutional amendment.
Locally Monday June 30 was the upcoming last day for alcohol in Wyoming, which made such headlines doubly confusing, as while the national story mattered, it only mattered somewhat and it only mattered if you lived in a place where booze was going to remain legal until the Federal ban hit. In Wyoming, as with Colorado, that day came earlier.
The Sheridan newspaper ran that as its cover, with an odd racist cartoon that depicted booze in a mistral show fashion. Not only is it odd to see the topic of the legality of alcohol being discussed, and its disappearance frankly celebrated, but it's really odd to see the press lean on racist stereotypes.
On stereotypes, Sunday was a big day for movie releases and the there were a number of interesting options, including Girls.
The romantic comedy Girls was released on this day in 1919. Like most silent films, the plot is somewhat complicated. The interesting thing, perhaps, is that this pre production code film shares a title with the latter skanky trash released under the same name more recently by HBO. While no more restricted by the law than the latter production, the earlier one didn't plumb the same icky depths.
If you preferred Westerns, The Outcasts of Poker Flat was released, which is a well known silent film.
And the dram Sahara was out as well. Romantic depiction of the Middle East were a big deal with early movies for some reason.
The title Sahara has been used for movies at least five times, including fairly recently.
If you lived in France, where the relief of the end of the war was particularly felt, this Sunday saw the start of the 1919 Tour de France. The Tour is of course one of the greatest annual sporting events. This was the 13th time the race had been run, and the first race since 1914, given the interruption of the war.
No comments:
Post a Comment