It s the city that never sleeps. and never was that truer than in the heyday of Manhattan nightlife - the post-war 1940s and the Golden Age of the 1950s.
THOMAS D. ELIAS
The last time America experienced a pandemic on the scale of what the coronavirus has inflicted upon us, the wildest lifestyle decade in United States history followed immediately.
It was as if the petering out of the Spanish flu after it killed millions of Americans unleashed peopleâs pent-up desires to enjoy life while they could.
So the early years of the 20th Century were followed by the Roaring â20s, almost a decade of flappers and the emergence of baseball as big-time entertainment thanks to Babe Ruthâs home run streak. There were moonshine whiskey and the Teapot Dome scandal, seemingly unending stock market rallies and the arrival of automobiles in millions of garages.