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This chapter explores the groundbreaking production of Show Boat and the golden age it ushered in for Ziegfeld. Included are detailed stories about the backstage drama, the composers’ efforts to complete the score, and new commentary from Broadway historians on the impact Show Boat had on Broadway. It had controversial themes and broke racial barriers by bringing black and white entertainers together on the same stage. Also, the show was not a star-driven production, meaning it could be revived again and again for generations to come. Meanwhile, Burke has decided to manage her own career, rather than relying on Ziegfeld to find properties for her. Ziegfeld enjoys more success with a witty musical comedy, Rosalie, which boasts a Gershwin score and Marilyn Miller as the star. The chapter ends with Ziegfeld planning more shows that will be as popular as his latest hits. Ziegfeld’s self-assurance reflects the national confidence Americans enjoyed in the late 1920s.

This chapter examines operettas by Sigmund Romberg that represented a fundamental paradigm shift from his earlier works for the Shuberts. These include his collaboration with George Gershwin called Rosalie and his series of four operettas for the Shuberts which include Cherry Blossoms, My Maryland, My Princess, and The Love Call. This chapter also describes the music for The New Moon.

The American woman suffrage movement inspired women to take actions unprecedented for their sex, such as marching in parades and picketing the White House. In addition, suffragists also engaged in new kinds of political action designed to persuade legislators—at the time all male—to remove from state constitutions the word “male” or “men” as descriptors of voters. New York City suffragists pioneered in such political work. They not only turned the tide in New York State but also provided a model that suffragists elsewhere followed. This chapter covers the contributions to this process made by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union of New York; the settlement, labor, consumer, and municipal reform movements; and individual suffragists such as Harriot Stanton Blatch, Rosalie Gardiner Jones, Carrie Chapman Catt, Harriet Burton Laidlaw, and Mary Garrett Hay.

After New York women won the vote in 1917, many joined political party clubs and some ran for office. In the 1920s, only a few won seats in the state legislature, and only one served more than one term. A few women won other posts—register of New York County and alderwoman—and a few others won appointive government and judicial posts. Local and state political party committees elected women as officers. These small victories encouraged other women to keep trying. The obstacles to women’s political success in the first decade after suffrage remained high, however. Some suffragists were ambivalent toward partisanship and discouraged women from being active party members; party men remained prejudiced against women politicians and government officials. In the 1920s African American women and Socialists had no electoral success at all.

Many of the city’s women civic and political activists supported La Guardia during his many electoral campaigns. The women he appointed to his administration brought into his government the feminist and social justice ideals they had been espousing since the suffrage and progressive reform movements: an end to sex discrimination, an expansion of measures to benefit human welfare, and the achievement of pay equity and more career opportunities for women. They believed that they would carry out the mayor’s modernizing agendas as well as, if not better than, the men he had appointed as commissioners. This chapter highlights five women who made singular contributions to the success of the La Guardia administration: Rebecca Rankin, Eunice Hunton Carter, Jane Bolin, Elinore Herrick, and Anna Rosenberg.