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by Peter Aperlo (Author)
The City of Angels? No burg this side of the Pearly Gates could live up to such a moniker, and L.A. isn't even trying. You won't see many inhabitants of that sprawling boom town sprouting downy wings or signing up for the Celestial Choir. Sure, L.A. has more than its share of evangelists, faith-healers, and political do-gooders, but when your economy is built on black gold, land speculation, the Hollywood dream factory, and the sweat of migrant workers, it attracts a lot more than just the saintly. The fresh-faced, scrubbed-clean, Midwest wholesomeness they plaster all over the real estate ads doesn't even tell a tenth of the story. You can't have sunshine without casting shadows, and one thing L.A. has in spades is sunshine? 1920s Los Angeles is a fast-growing, fast-moving city encompassing all that is great and all that is rotten in America. A racial, ethnic, and religious melting pot presaging what America would become later in the century, L.A. nonetheless clings to a veneer of Wh
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LOS ANGELES IN THE 1920s was a fast-growing, fast-moving city that encompassed all that was great and all that was rotten in America. Racial, ethnic, and religious melting pots presaged what the whole country would become by the end of the century. L.A. nonetheless clung to a veneer of White Protestantism more in line with farm-belt states in the Midwest. The newly-rich built pleasure palaces in her hills and on her beaches, while recent immigrants and the descendants of the first humans who walked the land huddled together in filthy shantytowns. These resembled the most squalid parts of the undeveloped world. Philanthropists endowed the city with impressive monuments and dreams of a utopian society, while greedy businessmen and industrialists crushed the labor movement and embroiled themselves in scandals that rocked the nation. Celebrated movie stars worked and played before the eyes of the world, while rum-runners and racketeers plied their trade behind the scenes in the land of noir, hand-in-hand with crooked cops and two-faced politicians.
