New York's 21 Club was a Prohibition-era speakeasy.
A speakeasy, also called a blind pig or blind tiger, is an illicit establishment that sells alcoholic beverages. Such establishments came into prominence in the United States during the Prohibition era (1920–1933, longer in some states). During that time, the sale, manufacture, and transportation (bootlegging) of alcoholic beverages was illegal throughout the United States. Speakeasies largely disappeared after Prohibition ended in 1933, and the term is now often used to describe retro style bars.
Etymology
First recorded use of speakeasies in United States. The Pittsburg Dispatch, June 30, 1889.
The phrase "speak softly shop", meaning a "smuggler's house", appeared in a British slang dictionary published in 1823.
The similar phrase "speak easy shop", denoting a place where
unlicensed liquor sales were made, appeared in a British naval memoir
written in 1844.
The precise term "speakeasy" dates from no later than 1837 when an article in the Sydney Herald newspaper in Australia referred to 'sly grog shops, called in slang terms "speakeasy's" [sic] in this part - Boro Creek.'
In the United States, the word emerged in the 1880s. The earliest
recorded use is from an 1889 newspaper, "Unlicensed saloons in Pennsylvania are known as 'speak-easies'."
They were "so called because of the practice of speaking quietly about
such a place in public, or when inside it, so as not to alert the police
or neighbors". Although, given the earlier uses, clearly incorrectly, the term has often been traced to saloon owner Kate Hester, who ran an unlicensed bar in the 1880s in the Pittsburgh area town of McKeesport, Pennsylvania, often telling her rowdy customers to "speak easy" to avoid attention from authorities. Many years later, in Prohibition-era America, the "speakeasy" became a common name to describe a place to get an illicit drink.
Different names for speakeasies were created. The terms "blind
pig" and "blind tiger" originated in the United States in the 19th
century.
These terms were applied to establishments that sold alcoholic
beverages illegally, and they are still in use today. The operator of an
establishment (such as a saloon or bar) would charge customers to see
an attraction (such as an animal) and then serve a "complimentary"
alcoholic beverage, thus circumventing the law.
In desperate cases it has to betake itself to the
exhibition of Greenland pigs and other curious animals, charging 25
cents for a sight of the pig and throwing in a gin cocktail
gratuitously.
[They] are in a mysterious place called a blind tiger, drinking the very bad whiskey for which Prohibition is indirectly responsible.
"Blind tiger" also referred to illegal drinking establishments in which the seller's identity was concealed.
A drawer runs into a wall of what appears to be a
billiard saloon. You pull out the drawer, drop in your change, shove the
drawer back, call for what you want and then pull out the drawer again
and there it is, "Straight" or "Spiked" just as you'd have it. Nobody is
heard or seen, and the blind tiger, apparently without any keeper,
works like a charm.
History
Inside the Mystery Room of the Arizona Biltmore Hotel which served as a speakeasy during Prohibition.
Speakeasies, though illegal, were numerous and popular during the Prohibition years. Some were operated by people who were part of organized crime. Even though police and agents of the Bureau of Prohibition
would often raid them and arrest their owners and patrons, they were so
profitable that they continued to flourish. The speakeasy soon became
one of the biggest parts of American culture during this time. Several
changes happened as speakeasies formed; one was with integration. With
"black and tans", people of all races, black or white, would gather
together and even mingle. People would mix together and have few or no
problems.
Another change that occurred was more participation from women.
Many businesses would set up their speakeasies to attract women to get
more profits. Women also began to insert themselves into the business of speakeasies. Texas Guinan,
a former screen and stage actress, opened many speakeasies during
Prohibition such as the 300 Club and the El Fey. Guinan greeted
customers with "Hey Suckers" and admitted she'd be nothing without
Prohibition. Her two biggest competitors were Helen Morgan and Belle
Livingston.
Culture was also affected by speakeasies during prohibition and
the speakeasy became a focal point. An example to show this was in the
movie theaters. Companies were restricted from depicting alcohol on
screen, but some still continued to do so because they felt it showed
the way Americans lived, such as the scene in Our Dancing Daughters in which Joan Crawford dances on a table in a speakeasy.
The poor quality bootleg
liquor sold in some speakeasies was responsible for a shift away from
19th-century "classic" cocktails, that celebrated the raw taste of the
liquor (such as the gin cocktail, made with Genever (sweet) gin), to new
cocktails aimed at masking the taste of rough moonshine. These masking drinks were termed "pansies" at the time (although some, such as the Brandy Alexander,
would now be termed "classic"). The quality of the alcohol sold in
speakeasies ranged from very poor to very good, depending on the
owner's source. Cheap liquor was generally used because it was more
profitable. In other cases, brand names were used to specify the liquor
customers wanted. However, sometimes when brand names were used, some
speakeasies cheated; they lied to their customers by giving them poor
quality liquor instead of the higher-quality liquor the customer
ordered. Prices were four to five dollars a bottle.
Varieties
The Mayflower Club, an upmarket speakeasy in Washington, D.C. It offered liquor and gambling.
From the beginning the speakeasy was relatively small with little or
no entertainment involved, but through gradual growth it popularized and
expanded to many different areas with new additions of entertainment
and eventually made the speakeasy one of the biggest businesses during
Prohibition.
In many rural towns, small speakeasies and blind pigs were
operated by local business owners. These family secrets were often kept
even after Prohibition ended. In 2007 secret underground rooms thought
to have been a speakeasy were found by renovators on the grounds of the
Cyber Cafe West in Binghamton, New York.
Speakeasies did not need to be big to operate. "It didn't take much more than a bottle and two chairs to make a speakeasy."
One example for a speakeasy location was the "21" Club in New York.
This is one of the more famous of the speakeasies and still stands
today. The "21" Club was only part of a series of businesses owned by
Charlie Berns and Jack Kriendler. They started the business in Greenwich
with a place called "The Redhead" and later moved onto the next
operation "The Puncheon Club". The "21" Club was special because of its
system to remain under the radar. It was a unique system that used a
doorkeeper to send a warning to the bar that it was in danger and the
bar would transform into an ordinary place through a mechanism.
The speakeasy spread all over New York with businesses such as
the "Bath Club" and "O'Leary's on the Bowery". All of the different
speakeasies that spread throughout had their own specialty that made it
unique. "The Bath Club" had musicians perform in their place to keep it
unique. This idea of musicians spread throughout the speakeasy business
and soon enough many of them had musicians.
The Jazz Age was a period in the 1920s and 1930s in which jazz
music and dance styles rapidly gained nationwide popularity in the
United States. The Jazz Age's cultural repercussions were primarily felt
in the United States, the birthplace of jazz. Originating in New Orleans
as a fusion of African and European music, jazz played a significant
part in wider cultural changes in this period, and its influence on popular culture continued long afterward. The Jazz Age is often referred to in conjunction with the Roaring Twenties, and in the United States it overlapped in significant cross-cultural ways with the Prohibition Era. The movement was largely affected by the introduction of radios
nationwide. During this time, the Jazz Age was intertwined with the
developing cultures of young people. The movement also helped start the
beginning of the European Jazz movement. American author F. Scott Fitzgerald is widely credited with coining the term, first using it in his 1922 short story collection titled Tales of the Jazz Age.
Background
Jazz music
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed from roots in blues and ragtime.
New Orleans provided a great opportunity for the development of jazz
because it was a port city with many cultures and beliefs intertwined. While in New Orleans, jazz was influenced by Creole music, ragtime, and blues.
Jazz is seen by many as "America's classical music". In the beginning of the 20th century, dixieland jazz developed as an early form of jazz. In the 1920s, jazz became recognized as a major form of musical expression. It then emerged in the form of independent traditional
and popular musical styles, all linked by the common bonds of
African-American and European-American musical parentage with a
performance orientation.
From Africa, jazz got its rhythm, "blues", and traditions of playing or
singing in one's own expressive way. From Europe, jazz got its harmony
and instruments. Both used improvisation, which became a large part of
jazz.
Prohibition in the United States
was a nationwide constitutional ban on the production, importation,
transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages from 1920 to 1933.
In the 1920s, the laws widely were disregarded, and tax revenues
were lost. Well-organized criminal gangs took control of the beer and
liquor supply for many cities, unleashing a crime wave that shocked the
U.S. This prohibition was taken advantage of by gangsters, led by Al Capone earning $60 million from illegally selling alcohol. The resulting illicit speakeasies
that grew from this era became lively venues of the "Jazz Age", hosting
popular music that included current dance songs, novelty songs and show
tunes.
By the late 1920s, a new opposition mobilized across the U.S.
Anti-prohibitionists, or "wets," attacked prohibition as causing crime,
lowering local revenues, and imposing rural Protestant religious values
on urban America. Prohibition ended with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment,
which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment on December 5, 1933. Some
states continued statewide prohibition, marking one of the latter stages
of the Progressive Era.
Prohibition and organized crime's effects on the popularity of jazz
Prohibition and organized crime
in the 1920s and 30s fueled the popularity of jazz through speakeasies
and records (in which jobs were provided by organized crime). There were
many speakeasies providing a large number of jobs for jazz musicians
run by organized crime. The sheer amount of speakeasies that popped up
over time indicates jazz popularity growth. The fact that important
organized crime leaders appreciated jazz music (especially Al Capone)
and gave jazz musicians jobs indicates a growth in popularity of jazz.
Also, the fact that the records of African American jazz in a time of
segregation brought jazz to white people, leading some to listen and
play it, shows a huge growth in popularity of jazz. Finally, the
lucrative nature of speakeasies and other organized rackets demonstrates
in part the popularity of jazz. Overall, Prohibition created the want
for alcohol that later created speakeasies and an environment where jazz
fit in (countercultural). Organized crime made a business of this and
jazz skyrocketed into popularity.
Speakeasies/records
Formed as a result of the eighteenth amendment,
speakeasies were places (often owned by organized criminals) where
customers could drink alcohol and relax, or speak easy. Jazz was played
in these speakeasies as a countercultural type of music to fit in with
the illicit environment and events going on. Jazz artists were therefore
hired to play at speakeasies. Al Capone, the famous organized crime
leader, gave jazz musicians previously living in poverty a steady and
professional income. A Renegade History of the United States states "The
singer Ethel Waters fondly recalled that Capone treated her 'with
respect, applause, deference, and paid in full.'"
Also from A Renegade History of the United States, "The pianist Earl
Hines remembered that 'Scarface [Al Capone] got along well with
musicians. He liked to come into a club with his henchmen and have the
band play his requests. He was very free with $100 tips.'" The illegal culture of speakeasies lead to what were known as "black and tan" clubs which had multiracial crowds.
Jazz legends Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington were both invited to
play at white only clubs though they were both African American. Jazz
was also shared to the white public through records. White jazz master
Bix Beiderbecke learned jazz from records. He was a Cornet player with
an unorthodox style of playing.
There were many speakeasies, especially in Chicago and New York. New
York had, at the height of Prohibition, 32,000 speakeasies.
At speakeasies, both payoffs and mechanisms for hiding alcohol were
used. Charlie Burns, in recalling his ownership of several speakeasies
employed these strategies as a way to preserve he and Jack Kriendler's
illegal clubs. This includes forming relationships with local police and
firemen. Mechanisms that a trusted engineer created include one that
when a button was pushed, tongue blocks under shelves of liquor would
drop, making the shelves drop back and liquor bottles fall down a chute,
break, and drain the alcohol through rocks and sand. An alarm also went
off if the button was pushed to alert customers of a raid. Another
mechanism used by Burns was a wine cellar with a thick door flush with
the wall. It had a small almost unnoticeable hole for a rod to be pushed
in to activate a lock and open the door.
Rum running/bootlegging
As
to where speakeasies obtained alcohol, there were rum runners and
bootleggers. Rum running in this case was the organized smuggling of
liquor by land or sea into the U.S.. Decent foreign liquor was high end
alcohol during prohibition, and William McCoy
had some of the best of it. Bill McCoy was in the rum running business,
and at certain points of time was ranked among the best. To avoid being
caught, he sold liquor just outside the territorial waters of the
United States. Buyers would come to him to pick up his booze as a
precaution for McCoy. McCoy's liquor specialty was selling high quality
whiskey without diluting the alcohol.
Bootlegging was making and or smuggling alcohol around the U.S.. As
selling the alcohol could make plenty of money, there are several major
ways this was done. One strategy used by Frankie Yale and the Genna
brothers gang (both involved in organized crime) was to give poor
Italian Americans alcohol stills to make alcohol for them at $15 per
day's work.
Another strategy was to just buy liquor from rumrunners. Racketeers
would also buy closed breweries and distilleries to then hire former
employees to make alcohol. Another person famous for organized crime
named Johnny Torrio partnered with two other mobsters and legitimate
brewer Joseph Stenson to make illegal beer in a total of nine breweries.
Finally, some racketeers stole industrial grain alcohol and redistilled
it to sell in speakeasies.
Organized crime
Organized
crime, which is generally self explanatory, is crime on a large scale
with leadership and rank. Organized crime ran speakeasies and generally
supported jazz. Piero Scaruffi
states, "The gangsters who ruled the city [Chicago] were protectors of
music, that was a necessity for their gambling, alcohol and prostitution
rackets." The gangsters relied on the music and the musicians relied on
the gangsters for income. Scaruffi also notes, "When jazz musicians
arrived in Chicago, they were often employed by gangsters. Their first
audience was the mob [mafia]." As mentioned earlier, Al Capone
was an organized crime leader who appreciated jazz and used it as
entertainment in his rackets. Capone made a large sum of money running
these rackets, and jazz played a substantial role in them. So, the fact
that at one point, Al Capone was earning an estimated $100 million per
year from his rackets shows that jazz's popularity was growing. Even in
1930, Capone owned 6,000 speakeasies and made more than $6 million a
week. Overall, the nightclub environment and featured jazz artists lead to millions in profits for the heads of organized crime.
History
From 1919, Kid Ory's
Original Creole Jazz Band of musicians from New Orleans played in San
Francisco and Los Angeles, where in 1922 they became the first black
jazz band of New Orleans origin to make recordings. The year also saw the first recording by Bessie Smith, the most famous of the 1920s blues singers. Chicago, meanwhile, was the main center developing the new "Hot Jazz", where King Oliver joined Bill Johnson. Bix Beiderbecke formed The Wolverines in 1924.
The same year, Louis Armstrong joined the Fletcher Henderson dance band
as featured soloist, leaving in 1925. The original New Orleans style
was polyphonic, with theme variation and simultaneous collective
improvisation. Armstrong was a master of his hometown style, but by the
time he joined Henderson's band, he was already a trailblazer in a new
phase of jazz, with its emphasis on arrangements and soloists.
Armstrong's solos went well beyond the theme-improvisation concept, and
extemporized on chords, rather than melodies. According to Schuller, by
comparison, the solos by Armstrong's bandmates (including a young Coleman Hawkins), sounded "stiff, stodgy," with "jerky rhythms and a grey undistinguished tone quality." The following example shows a short excerpt of the straight melody of "Mandy, Make Up Your Mind" by George W. Meyer and Arthur Johnston (top), compared with Armstrong's solo improvisations (below) (recorded 1924). (The example approximates Armstrong's solo, as it does not convey his use of swing.)
Top:
excerpt from the straight melody of "Mandy, Make Up Your Mind" by
George W. Meyer & Arthur Johnston. Bottom: corresponding solo
excerpt by Louis Armstrong (1924).
Armstrong's solos were a significant factor in making jazz a true
20th-century language. After leaving Henderson's group, Armstrong formed
his virtuosic Hot Five
band, which included instrumentalist's Kid Ory (trombone), Johnny Dodds
(clarinet), Johnny St. Cyr (banjo), and wife Lil on piano, where he
popularized scat singing.
Jelly Roll Morton recorded with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings in an early mixed-race collaboration, then in 1926 formed his Red Hot Peppers. There was a larger market for jazzy dance music played by white orchestras, such as Jean Goldkette's orchestra and Paul Whiteman's orchestra. In 1924, Whiteman commissioned Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue,
premiered by Whiteman's Orchestra. By the mid-1920s, Whiteman was the
most popular bandleader in the U.S. His success was based on a "rhetoric
of domestication" according to which he had elevated and rendered
valuable a previously inchoate kind of music.
Other influential large ensembles included Fletcher Henderson's band,
Duke Ellington's band (which opened an influential residency at the Cotton Club in 1927) in New York, and Earl Hines'
Band in Chicago (who opened in The Grand Terrace Cafe there in 1928).
All significantly influenced the development of big band-style swing
jazz. By 1930, the New Orleans-style ensemble was a relic, and jazz belonged to the world.
Several musicians grew up in musical families, where a family
member would often teach how to read and play music. Some musicians,
like Pops Foster, learned on homemade instruments.
Urban radio stations played African-American jazz more frequently
than suburban stations, due to the concentration of African Americans
in urban areas such as New York and Chicago. Younger demographics
popularized the black-originated dances such as the Charleston as part
of the immense cultural shift the popularity of jazz music generated.
Over time, social strictures regarding racial segregation began
to relax in America: white bandleaders began to recruit black musicians
and black bandleaders white ones. In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman hired
pianist Teddy Wilson, vibraphonist Lionel Hampton and guitarist Charlie Christian to join small groups. In the 1930s, Kansas City Jazz as exemplified by tenor saxophonist Lester Young marked the transition from big bands to the bebop influence of the 1940s. An early 1940s style known as "jumping the blues" or jump blues used small combos, uptempo music and blues chord progressions, drawing on boogie-woogie from the 1930s.
Radio
The
introduction of large-scale radio broadcasts enabled the rapid national
spread of jazz in 1932. The radio was described as the "sound factory."
Radio made it possible for millions to hear for free the
music—especially people who never attended expensive, distant big city
clubs.
These broadcasts originated from clubs in leading centers such as New
York, Chicago, Kansas City, and Los Angeles. There were two categories
of live music on the radio: concert music and big band dance music. The
concert music was known as "potter palm" and was concert music by
amateurs, usually volunteers. Big band dance music is played by professionals and was featured from nightclubs, dance halls, and ballrooms.
Musicologist Charles Hamm
described three types of jazz music at the time: black music for black
audiences, black music for white audiences, and white music for white
audiences.
Jazz artists like Louis Armstrong originally received very little
airtime because most stations preferred to play the music of white
American jazz singers. Other jazz vocalists include Bessie Smith and Florence Mills.
In urban areas, such as Chicago and New York, African-American jazz was
played on the radio more often than in the suburbs. Big-band jazz, like
that of James Reese Europe and Fletcher Henderson in New York, attracted large radio audiences.
Elements and influences
Youth
Young
people in the 1920s used the influence of jazz to rebel against the
traditional culture of previous generations. This youth rebellion of the
1920s went hand-in-hand with fads like bold fashion statements (flappers), women that smoked cigarettes, a willingness to talk about sex freely, and new radio concerts. Dances like the Charleston,
developed by African Americans, suddenly became popular among the
youth. Traditionalists were aghast at what they considered the breakdown
of morality.
Some urban middle-class African Americans perceived jazz as "devil's
music", and believed the improvised rhythms and sounds were promoting
promiscuity.
Role of women
With women's suffrage—the right for women to vote—at its peak with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment
on August 18, 1920, and the entrance of the free-spirited flapper,
women began to take on a larger role in society and culture. With women
now taking part in the work force after the end of the First World War
there were now many more possibilities for women in terms of social life
and entertainment. Ideas such as equality and open sexuality were very
popular during the time and women seemed to capitalize on these ideas
during this period. The 1920s saw the emergence of many famous women
musicians, including Bessie Smith. Bessie Smith also gained attention
because she was not only a great singer but also an African-American
woman. She has grown through the ages to be one of the most well
respected singers of all time. Singers such as Billie Holiday and Janis Joplin were inspired by Bessie Smith.
Lovie Austin (1887–1972) was a Chicago-based bandleader, session musician (piano), composer, singer, and arranger during the 1920s classic blues era. She and Lil Hardin Armstrong often are ranked as two of the best female jazz blues piano players of the period.
Piano player Lil Hardin Armstrong was originally a member of King
Oliver's band with Louis, and went on to play piano in her husband's
band the Hot Five and then his next group called the Hot Seven
It was not until the 1930s and 1940s that many women jazz singers, such
as Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday were recognized as successful
artists in the music world.
Another famous female vocalist, dubbed "The First Lady of Song," Ella
Fitzgerald was the one of the more popular female jazz singers in the
United States for more than half a century. In her lifetime, she won 13
Grammy awards and sold over 40 million albums. Her voice was flexible
and wide-ranging. She could sing ballads, jazz, and imitate every
instrument in an orchestra. She worked with all the jazz greats,
including Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra,
Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Goodman.
These women were persistent in striving to make their names known in
the music industry and to lead the way for many more women artists to
come.
African American influence
The birth of jazz is credited to African Americans.
But it was modified to become socially acceptable to middle-class white
Americans. Those critical of jazz saw it as music from people with no
training or skill.
White performers were used as a vehicle for the popularization of jazz
music in America. Although jazz was taken over by the white middle-class
population, it facilitated the mesh of African American traditions and
ideals with white middle-class society.
The migration of African Americans from the American South
introduced the culture born from a repressive, unfair society to the
American north where navigating through a society with little ability to
change played a vital role in the birth of jazz.
As
only a limited number of American jazz records were released in Europe,
European jazz traces many of its roots to American artists such as
James Reese Europe, Paul Whiteman, and Lonnie Johnson,
who visited Europe during and after World War I. It was their live
performances which inspired European audiences' interest in jazz, as
well as the interest in all things American (and therefore exotic) which
accompanied the economic and political woes of Europe during this time. The beginnings of a distinct European style of jazz began to emerge in this interwar period.
British jazz began with a tour by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1919. In 1926, Fred Elizalde
and His Cambridge Undergraduates began broadcasting on the BBC.
Thereafter jazz became an important element in many leading dance
orchestras, and jazz instrumentalists became numerous.
This style entered full swing in France with the Quintette du Hot Club de France,
which began in 1934. Much of this French jazz was a combination of
African-American jazz and the symphonic styles in which French musicians
were well-trained; in this, it is easy to see the inspiration taken
from Paul Whiteman since his style was also a fusion of the two. Belgian guitarist Django Reinhardt popularized gypsy jazz, a mix of 1930s American swing, French dance hall "musette",
and Eastern European folk with a languid, seductive feel; the main
instruments were steel stringed guitar, violin, and double bass. Solos
pass from one player to another as guitar and bass form the rhythm
section. Some researchers believe Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti pioneered the guitar-violin partnership characteristic of the genre, which was brought to France after they had been heard live or on Okeh Records in the late 1920s.
Criticism of the movement
During
this time period, jazz began to get a reputation as being immoral, and
many members of the older generations saw it as threatening the old
cultural values and promoting the new decadent values of the Roaring Twenties.
Professor Henry van Dyke of Princeton University wrote: "... it is not
music at all. It's merely an irritation of the nerves of hearing, a
sensual teasing of the strings of physical passion." The media too began to denigrate jazz. The New York Times
used stories and headlines to pick at jazz: Siberian villagers were
said by the paper to have used jazz to scare off bears, when in fact
they had used pots and pans; another story claimed that the fatal heart
attack of a celebrated conductor was caused by jazz.
Classical music
As
jazz flourished, American elites who preferred classical music sought
to expand the listenership of their favored genre, hoping that jazz
would not become mainstream. Controversially, jazz became an influence on composers as diverse as George Gershwin and Herbert Howells.
A landmark counterculture film, and a "touchstone for a generation" that "captured the national imagination," Easy Rider explores the societal landscape, issues, and tensions in the United States during the 1960s, such as the rise of the hippie movement, drug use, and communal lifestyle. Real drugs were used in scenes showing the use of marijuana and other substances.
Easy Rider was released by Columbia Pictures on July 14, 1969, grossing $60 million worldwide from a filming budget of no more than $400,000. Critics have praised the performances, directing, writing, soundtrack, visuals, and atmosphere. Easy Rider was added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 1998.
Plot
Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper) are freewheeling motorcyclists. After smuggling cocaine from Mexico to Los Angeles,
they sell their haul and receive a large sum of money. With the cash
stuffed into a plastic tube hidden inside the Stars &
Stripes-painted fuel tank of Wyatt's California-style chopper, they ride eastward aiming to reach New Orleans, Louisiana, in time for the Mardi Gras festival.
During their trip, Wyatt and Billy stop to repair one of the
bikes at a farmstead in Arizona and have a meal with the farmer and his
family. Later, Wyatt picks up a hippiehitch-hiker, and he invites them to visit his commune, where they stay for the rest of the day. The notion of "free love"
appears to be practiced, with two of the women, Lisa and Sarah,
seemingly sharing the affections of the hitch-hiking commune member
before turning their attention to Wyatt and Billy. As the bikers leave,
the hitch-hiker gives Wyatt some LSD for him to share with "the right people".
Later, while riding along with a parade in New Mexico, the pair
are arrested for "parading without a permit" and thrown in jail. There,
they befriend ACLU lawyer George Hanson (Jack Nicholson),
who has spent the night in jail after overindulging in alcohol. George
helps them get out of jail and decides to travel with Wyatt and Billy to
New Orleans. As they camp that night, Wyatt and Billy introduce George
to marijuana. As an alcoholic and a "square", George is reluctant to try it due to his fear of becoming "hooked" and it leading to worse drugs but quickly relents.
Stopping to eat at a small-town Louisiana diner, the trio
attracts the attention of the locals. The girls in the restaurant think
they are exciting, but the local men and a police officer make
denigrating comments and taunts. Wyatt, Billy, and George decide to
leave without any fuss. They make camp outside town. In the middle of
the night, a group of locals attack the sleeping trio, beating them with
clubs. Billy screams and brandishes a knife, and the attackers leave.
Wyatt and Billy suffer minor injuries, but George has been bludgeoned to
death. Wyatt and Billy wrap George's body in his sleeping bag, gather
his belongings, and vow to return the items to his family.
They continue to New Orleans and find a brothel
George had told them about. Taking prostitutes Karen and Mary with
them, Wyatt and Billy wander the parade-filled streets of the Mardi Gras
celebration. They end up in a French Quarter cemetery, where all four ingest the LSD the hitch-hiker had given to Wyatt and experience a bad trip.
The next morning, as they are overtaken on a two-lane country
road by two local men in an older pickup truck, the passenger in the
truck reaches for a shotgun, saying he will scare them. As they pass
Billy, the passenger fires, and Billy has a lowside crash.
The truck passes Wyatt who has stopped, and Wyatt rides back to Billy,
finding him lying flat on the side of the road and covered in blood.
Wyatt tells Billy he's going to get help and covers Billy's wound with
his own leather jacket. Wyatt then rides down the road toward the pickup
as it makes a U-turn. Passing in the opposite direction, the passenger
fires the shotgun again, this time through the driver's-side window.
Wyatt's riderless motorcycle flies through the air and comes apart
before landing and becoming engulfed in flames.
Hopper and Fonda's first collaboration was in The Trip (1967), written by Jack Nicholson, which had themes and characters similar to those of Easy Rider. Peter Fonda had become "an icon of the counterculture" in The Wild Angels (1966), where he established "a persona he would develop further in The Trip and Easy Rider." The Trip also popularized LSD, while Easy Rider went on to "celebrate 60s counterculture" but does so "stripped of its innocence." Author Katie Mills wrote that The Trip is a way point along the "metamorphosis of the rebel road story from a Beat relic into its hippie reincarnation as Easy Rider", and connected Peter Fonda's characters in those two films, along with his character in The Wild Angels, deviating from the "formulaic biker" persona and critiquing "commodity-oriented filmmakers appropriating avant-garde film techniques." It was also a step in the transition from independent film into Hollywood's mainstream, and while The Trip was criticized as a faux, popularized underground film made by Hollywood insiders, Easy Rider "interrogates" the attitude that underground film must "remain strictly segregated from Hollywood." Mills also wrote that the famous acid trip scene in Easy Rider "clearly derives from their first tentative explorations as filmmakers in The Trip."
When seeing a still of himself and Bruce Dern in The Wild Angels, Peter Fonda had the idea of a modern Western,
involving two bikers travelling around the country and eventually
getting shot by hillbillies. He called Dennis Hopper, and the two
decided to turn that into a movie, The Loners, with Hopper directing, Fonda producing, and both starring and writing. They brought in screenwriter Terry Southern, who came up with the title Easy Rider. The film was mostly shot without a screenplay, with ad-libbed
lines, and production started with only the outline and the names of
the protagonists. Keeping the Western theme, Wyatt was named after Wyatt Earp and Billy after Billy the Kid.
However, Southern disputed that Hopper wrote much of the script. In an
interview published in 2016 [Southern died in 1995] he said, "You know
if Den Hopper improvises a dozen lines and six of them survive the
cutting room floor he'll put in for screenplay credit. Now it would be
almost impossible to exaggerate his contribution to the film—but, by
George, he manages to do it every time."
According to Southern, Fonda was under contract to produce a motorcycle
film with A.I.P., which Fonda had agreed to allow Hopper to direct.
According to Southern, Fonda and Hopper didn't seek screenplay credit
until after the first screenings of the film, which required Southern's
agreement due to writers guild policies. Southern says he agreed out of a sense of camaraderie, and that Hopper later took credit for the entire script.
According to Terry Southern's biographer, Lee Hill, the part of George Hanson had been written for Southern's friend, actor Rip Torn.
When Torn met with Hopper and Fonda at a New York restaurant in early
1968 to discuss the role, Hopper began ranting about the "rednecks"
he had encountered on his scouting trip to the South. Torn, a Texan,
took exception to some of Hopper's remarks, and the two almost came to
blows, as a result of which Torn withdrew from the project. Torn was
replaced by Jack Nicholson, whom Hopper had recently appeared with in Head (along with another Easy Rider co-star, Toni Basil). In 1994, Jay Leno interviewed Hopper about Easy Rider on The Tonight Show,
and during the interview, Hopper alleged that Torn had pulled a knife
on him during the altercation, prompting Torn to sue Hopper successfully
for defamation.
Filming
The filming budget of Easy Rider was $360,000 to $400,000.
Peter Fonda said that on top of this, he personally paid for the costs
of travel and lodging for the crew, saying, "Everybody was taking my
credit cards and would pay for all the hotels, the food, the gas,
everything with Diner's Club".
Laszlo Kovacs said that an additional $1 million, "about three times
the budget for shooting the rest of the film" was spent licensing music
that was added during the editing.
Hopper was said
to be difficult on set. During test shooting on location in New
Orleans, Hopper fought with the production's ad hoc crew for control. At
one point he entered into a physical confrontation with photographer Barry Feinstein,
who was one of the camera operators for the shoot. After this turmoil,
Hopper and Fonda decided to assemble a proper crew for the rest of the
film.
The hippie commune was recreated from pictures and shot at a site overlooking Malibu Canyon, since the New Buffalo commune in Arroyo Hondo near Taos, New Mexico, did not permit shooting there.
A short clip near the beginning of the film shows Wyatt and Billy on Route 66 in Flagstaff, Arizona,
passing a large figure of a lumberjack. That lumberjack statue—once
situated in front of the Lumberjack Cafe—remains in Flagstaff, but now
stands inside the J. Lawrence Walkup Skydome on the campus of Northern Arizona University. A second, very similar statue was also moved from the Lumberjack Cafe to the exterior of the Skydome.
Most of the film is shot outside with natural lighting. Hopper
said all the outdoor shooting was an intentional choice on his part,
because "God is a great gaffer." The production used two five-ton trucks, one for the equipment and one for the motorcycles, with the cast and crew in a motor home. One of the locations was Monument Valley.
The restaurant scenes with Fonda, Hopper, and Nicholson were shot in Morganza, Louisiana. The men and girls in that scene were all Morganza locals.
In order to inspire more vitriolic commentary from the local men,
Hopper told them the characters of Billy, Wyatt, and George had raped
and killed a girl outside of town. The scene in which Billy and Wyatt were shot was filmed on Louisiana Highway 105 North, just outside Krotz Springs, and the two other men in the scene—Johnny David and D.C. Billodeau—were Krotz Springs locals.
While shooting the cemetery scene, Hopper tried to convince Fonda to talk to the statue of the Madonna as though it were Fonda's mother (who had committed suicide
when he was 10 years old) and ask her why she left him. Although Fonda
was reluctant, he eventually complied. Later, Fonda used the inclusion
of this scene as leverage to persuade Roger McGuinn to allow the use of his cover of Bob Dylan's "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)."
Post-production
Despite being filmed in the first half of 1968, roughly between Mardi Gras and the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, with production starting on February 22, the film did not have a U.S. premiere until July 1969, after having won an award at the Cannes film festival in May. The delay was partially due to a protracted editing process. Inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of Hopper's proposed cuts was 220 minutes long, including extensive use of the "flash-forward"
narrative device, wherein scenes from later in the movie are inserted
into the current scene. Only one flash-forward survives in the final
edit: when Wyatt in the New Orleans brothel has a premonition of the
final scene. At the request of Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, Henry Jaglom
was brought in to edit the film into its current form, while Schneider
purchased Hopper a trip to Taos so he would not interfere with the
recut. Upon seeing the final cut, Hopper was originally displeased,
saying that his movie was "turned into a TV show," but he eventually
accepted, claiming that Jaglom had crafted the film the way Hopper had
originally intended. Despite the large part he played in shaping the
film, Jaglom only received credit as an "Editorial Consultant."
There are various reports
about the exact running time of original rough cut of the movie: four
hours, four and a half hours or five hours. All deleted footage is
believed to be lost. Some of the scenes which were in the original cut but were deleted are:
the original opening showing Wyatt and Billy performing in a Los Angeles stunt show (their real jobs)
Wyatt and Billy being ripped off by the promoter
Wyatt and Billy getting in a biker fight
Wyatt and Billy picking up women at a drive-in
Wyatt and Billy cruising to and escaping from Mexico to score the cocaine they sell
an elaborate police and helicopter chase that took place at the
beginning after the dope deal with police chasing Wyatt and Billy over
mountains and across the Mexican border
the road trip out of L.A. edited to the full length of Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild" with billboards along the way offering wry commentary
Wyatt and Billy being pulled over by a cop while riding their motorcycles across a highway
Wyatt and Billy encountering a black motorcycle gang
ten additional minutes for the volatile café scene in Louisiana where George deftly keeps the peace
Wyatt and Billy checking into a hotel before going over to Madam Tinkertoy's
an extended and much longer Madam Tinkertoy sequence
extended versions of all the campfire scenes, including the enigmatic finale in which Wyatt says, "We blew it, Billy."
Easy Rider's style — the jump cuts, time shifts, flash
forwards, flashbacks, jerky hand-held cameras, fractured narrative and
improvised acting — can be seen as a cinematic translation of the psychedelic experience. Peter Biskind, author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls wrote: "LSD did create a frame of mind that fractured experience and that LSD experience had an effect on films like Easy Rider."
In total, four former police bikes were used in the film. The 1949, 1950 and 1952 Harley-DavidsonHydra-Glide bikes were purchased at an auction for $500,
equivalent to about $3700 in 2020. Each bike had a backup to make sure
that shooting could continue in case one of the old machines failed or
got wrecked accidentally. One "Captain America" was demolished in the
final scene, while the other three were stolen and probably taken apart
before their significance as movie props became known. The demolished bike was rebuilt by Dan Haggerty
and offered for auction in October 2014 by Profiles in History, a
Calabasas, CA-based auction house with an estimated value of $1–1.2
million. The provenance of existing Captain America motorcycles is
unclear, and has been the subject of much litigation. A motorcycle on display at the EMP Museum in Seattle, Washington is identified by that organization as the original rebuilt movie prop. A replica resides at the National Motorcycle Museum in Anamosa, Iowa. Many other replicas have been built since the film's release.
Hopper and Fonda hosted a wrap party
for the movie and then realized they had not yet shot the final
campfire scene. Thus, it was shot after the bikes had already been
stolen, which is why they are not visible in the background as in the
other campfire scenes.
Reception
Peter Fonda's American Flag patch, sold for $89,625 in 2007
The film appears at number 88 on the American Film Institute's list of 100 Years, 100 Movies. In 1998, Easy Rider was added to the United States National Film Registry, having been deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." In April 2019, a restored version of the film was selected to be shown in the Cannes Classics section at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.
Critical reception
Vincent Canby of The New York Times
called it "pretty but lower case cinema" despite the "upper case"
"pious statement about our society which is sick". He was mildly
impressed by the photography, rock score and Nicholson's performance. Penelope Gilliatt in The New Yorker said that it "speaks tersely and aptly for this American age, that is both the best of times and the worst of times."
Roger Ebert added Easy Rider to his "Great Movies" list in 2004.
Box office
The
film opened on Monday, 14 July 1969 at the Beekman theater in New York
City and grossed a house record $40,422 in its first week. It grossed even more the following week with $46,609.
It was the third highest-grossing film of 1969, with a worldwide gross $60 million, including $41.7 million domestically in the US and Canada.
Significance
Along with Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, Easy Rider helped kick-start the New Hollywood era during the late 1960s and 1970s. The major studios realized that money could be made from low-budget films made by avant-garde directors. Heavily influenced by the French New Wave,
the films of the so-called "post-classical Hollywood" came to represent
a counterculture generation increasingly disillusioned with its
government as well as the government's effects on the world at large and
the establishment in general. Although Jack Nicholson
appears only as a supporting actor and in the last half of the film,
the standout performance signaled his arrival as a movie star, along with his subsequent film Five Easy Pieces in which he had the lead role. Vice PresidentSpiro Agnew criticized Easy Rider, along with the band Jefferson Airplane, as examples of the permissiveness of the 1960s counterculture.
The film's success, and the new era of Hollywood that it helped
usher in, gave Hopper the chance to direct again with complete artistic
control. The result was 1971's The Last Movie, which was a notable box office and critical failure, effectively ending Hopper's career as a director for well over a decade.
It also gave Fonda the chance to direct with The Hired Hand although he rarely produced again.
Music
The movie's "groundbreaking" soundtrack featured The Band, The Byrds, The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Steppenwolf.
Editor Donn Cambern used various music from his own record collection
to make watching hours of bike footage more interesting during editing. Most of Cambern's music was used, with licensing costs of $1 million, triple the film's budget. The film's extensive use of pop and rock music for the soundtrack was similar to what had recently been used for 1967's The Graduate.
Bob Dylan was asked to contribute music, but was reluctant to use his own recording of "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)", so a version performed by Byrds frontman Roger McGuinn was used instead. Also, instead of writing an entirely new song for the film, Dylan simply wrote out the first verse of "Ballad of Easy Rider" and told the filmmakers, "Give this to McGuinn, he’ll know what to do with it." McGuinn completed the song and performed it in the film.
Originally, Peter Fonda had intended the band Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young to write an entirely original soundtrack for the film, but this failed to materialize for two reasons.
For one, cutter Donn Cambern edited the footage much more closely to
what were only meant as temporary tracks than was customary at the time,
which led to everyone involved finding them much more suited to the
material than they had originally thought. On the other hand, Hopper
increasingly got control over every aspect over the course of the
project and decided to throw CSNY out behind Fonda's back, telling the
band as an excuse, "Look, you guys are really good musicians, but
honestly, anybody who rides in a limo can't comprehend my movie, so I'm
gonna have to say no to this, and if you guys try to get in the studio
again, I may have to cause you some bodily harm."
Home media
The film was released by The Criterion Collection in November 2010 as part of the box set America Lost and Found: The BBS Story.
It included two audio commentaries, one featuring actor-director-writer
Dennis Hopper, the other with Hopper, actor-writer Peter Fonda, and
production manager Paul Lewis; two documentaries about the making and
history of the film, Born to Be Wild (1995) and Easy Rider: Shaking the Cage (1999); television excerpts showing Hopper and Fonda at the Cannes Film Festival; and a new video interview with BBS co-founder Stephen Blauner.
Sequel
In 2012, a sequel to the movie was released titled Easy Rider: The Ride Back, directed by Dustin Rikert.
The film is about the family of Wyatt "Captain America" Williams from
the 1940s to the present day. No members of the original cast or crew
were involved with the film, which was produced and written by amateur
filmmaker Phil Pitzer, who had purchased the sequel rights to Easy Rider. Pitzer also pursued legal action against Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider in order to block them from reclaiming the rights to the film.
