The radical cultural changes that occurred in the 1920's were reflected in the Broadway musical. Musically, jazz ruled the Broadway musical stage. There was also a sense of liberation in the style of the performances, in part as a reaction to the supposed strictness of Prohibition. What ended up on stage were primarily musical comedies, still revue style, more often than not featuring stories of the newly liberated woman, often poor, who ends up with a rich husband. These stories reflected the newly mingling classes that spent time together in the speakeasies in New York, and the American fantasy of dreams coming true. Although the classes were mixing, colors still did not. However, black musicals were also featured on Broadway, such as composers
Eubie Blake and
Noble Sissle's 1921 show, "Shuffle Along", which did influence the big names of the time, such as
Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. and
Irving Berlin. Broadway musical stars of the time included singer
Al Jolson, dancer
Marilyn Miller and comedians
The Marx Brothers. Another influential behind the scenes figure was producer/dancer
George White, whose new dances, such as The Charleston, were all the rage. Young songwriting teams were emerging, such as composer
George Gershwin/lyricist
Ira Gershwin, composer
Richard Rodgers/lyricist
Lorenz Hart, and composer
Ray Henderson/lyricists
Buddy G. DeSylva and
Lew Brown. Media of the time helped disseminate what was happening on Broadway to the American masses, most specifically through radio commentator and newspaper columnist
Walter Winchell, who coined the nickname 'The Big Apple'. But the advent of talking motion pictures coinciding with the stock market crash ended what was the golden age of Broadway.
—Huggo