Historians dispute when exactly King Arthur lived, but the legend of his court at Camelot and the exploits of the Knights of the Round Table are something most children know. My favorite version of the tale is the 1967 musical starring the incomparable Richard Harris.

For some, Camelot is a tale of chivalric deeds and a quest for the Holy Grail. Lisa Hilton in her book on the consort of the medieval queens of England points out that Camelot, in the form of The death of arthur, is an elegiac tale from the Middle Ages, of how the period disintegrated in civil war during the Wars of the Roses, overthrown by its own excesses. The eponymous song Camelot from Burton’s film concludes:

That once there was a stain

For a brief brilliant moment that you met

Like Camelot.

That to me is Camelot. A brilliant moment in history accelerating toward ever-increasing joy and indulgence that ultimately, of course, fuels its destruction.

For me, the 1920s is a perfect example of the Camelot era. In England, the Bright Young Things immortalized by Evelyn Waugh in her 1930 book, Fel bodies, they were quintessential party creatures, so vividly portrayed in Stephen Fry’s 2003 film appropriately named Bright young things. It was a period of decline and debt-fueled parties.

The roaring twenties, as it is known at the time, were characterized by the flapper. The most popular dance was the Charleston. Previous dances had been performed with straight arms or in a formal embrace from a partner. At Charleston, arm movement was an important part of the dance, and bewildered conservatives felt that women who moved like this looked like flapping chicken, or “flappers.” The length of the skirt hem became shorter and shorter during the 1920s, as in the 1960s. Corsets were abandoned and the emphasis was on freedom of movement and playfulness.

In Hollywood, silent movies had their heyday and gave way to talkies, but the Hollywood stars of the time were huge. Three of the biggest stars, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, along with director David Llewelyn Wark Griffith formed the United Artists studio that is still famous today. Fairbanks and Pickford were a married couple for most of the 1920s, and invitations to their Beverly Hills Pickfair mansion were often more appreciated than invitations to the White House. They were the Brad and Angelina of their time. A 2006 article in the LA Times by Patt Morrison was titled Our own Camelot and Morrison says “They [Fairbanks and Pickford] they made the Hollywood of the 1920s a virtual kingdom, themselves their king and queen, and Pickfair their Camelot. “

However, not just dancing, fashion, and parting were roaring, the stock market was enjoying an extended bull market. Even ordinary people were making fortunes on paper. Stockbrokers and banks were so sure of the bull market that they commonly slowed people down to 90% of the purchase price of the stock so someone could take $ 20 and only $ 200 of shares that could increase in value to $ $ 250 in a few minutes. months giving the investor a quick $ 50 profit on a $ 10 investment. These days, we’d say the market was very oriented.

The 1920s was a whirlwind in every way. As long as it got faster and faster, the carousel was magical. Ultimately, however, the mountain of debt took hold of itself and on Black Thursday, October 29, 1929, Wall St suffered its biggest one-day drop (so far) and the market continues to decline for the next month. . The Crash had begun and the world was dragged into the Great Depression. The Camelot period of the 1920s came to an abrupt end, shattered by the debt and excess that had made the roaring 1920s glow so brightly.

However, the magic was not completely lost. Women retained many of the freedoms one has, and in the United States the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in the summer of 1920 to give women the vote. In many ways, the modern way of life was formed during the Camelot of the 1920s.