It could be argued that Wayne Bidwell Wheeler, a man who is now forgotten, was one of the most influential characters of the Jazz Age.

He was the main impetus behind the passage of the National Prohibition Act in 1919. Prohibitionists claimed that banning the use of alcohol would help solve a variety of problems, including domestic abuse, political corruption, and alcoholism itself.

The Act is well known for its contribution to the development of crime in the United States and the establishment of a lucrative new industry: the clandestine manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages.

The most well-known of these millionaires in the bootlegging industry was Al Capone, who ran a large portion of Chicago's illicit business between 1925 and 1931.

He managed brothels and breweries, but he was also lauded for his charitable donations as a contemporary Robin Hood. In 1929, during the Great Depression, Capone established one of the largest soup kitchens in the city, providing meals to around 2,200 people three times daily.

For a couple of additional reasons, Capone stood out among the gangsters of his day: he readily hired black people, and he loved jazz music.

According to legend, he once requested Johnny Dodds to perform a tune. According to reports, Capone ripped a $100 bill in half and gave half to Dodds after the clarinet player claimed not to know how to play it, telling him that he would get the other half after he learned.

Once, as a birthday surprise for their boss, a gang of Capone's henchmen sort of kidnapped the jazz pianist and vocalist Fats Waller. Waller spent three days with Capone. According to reports, he was paid $100 for each song and given unlimited quantities of food and champagne. After departing Capone's business unscathed, Waller was thousands of dollars wealthier.

This world is the source of the eccentricities, sense of abundance, and depravity in F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, The Great Gatsby (1925).

In the late 1910s, Fitzgerald, a young soldier who was about 22 years old and on vacation for the weekend, stayed at the Seelbach hotel in Louisville, Kentucky. He encountered George Remus there, a man who had become a millionaire bootlegger after beginning his career as a criminal attorney (in both meanings of the word).

Remus passed off the bonded booze he purchased from the pre-Prohibition era as having therapeutic value. In order to resell the same alcohol at a much higher price, his men then organized their own delivery truck hijackings.

Remus also owned and managed his own distilleries in Cincinnati, where he transported this alcohol via underground tunnels. In addition to diamond stick pins and new automobiles as gifts for visitors, he hosted lavish parties with scantily dressed dancers.

The impact of Prohibition on organized crime in the United States is better shown in Coppola's 1972 movie The Godfather.

The Italian-American mafia was divided by Salvatore Maranzano into five families: the Maranzano, Profaci, Mangano, Luciano, and Gagliano. He then proclaimed himself "the boss of all bosses." Charles "Lucky" Luciano ordered his assassination, and he immediately founded The Commission, a ruling council comprised of members of the five New York families and representatives from across the nation.

In the meantime, New York City's crime rate was soaring in tandem with a new musical movement.

Capone wasn't the first bootlegger of the time. Arnold Rothstein was most likely the man. He trafficked Scotch whisky into the nation using his own fleet of freighters and invested in speakeasies when Prohibition took effect. Rothstein served as the inspiration for the character Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby.

One could get a drink at the speakeasy. Some of these businesses were trendy, while others were seedy. There were a few folks who managed to accomplish both. Visitors to New York's 21 Club included Joan Crawford and Humphrey Bogart. Even in 1933, when Prohibition came to an end, it was still popular.

In a similar vein, the Cotton Club in Harlem, which was once a front for the gangster Owney Madden to sell alcohol to the residents of Harlem, became one of the trendiest spots in New York and the center of the Harlem Renaissance. New Yorkers of all races thronged the area to witness performances by luminaries such Louis Armstrong (1901-1971) and Duke Ellington (1899-1974).

The Flapper was a new kind of woman who was drawn to these trendy clubs. Her attire, behavior, and opinions about sex and alcohol all questioned notions of what a woman should be. She used her own slang, in which a divorced woman was a fire alarm and engagement rings were handcuffs.

The Jazz Age, which was followed by World War II, may have ended suddenly in 1929 with the catastrophic Wall Street crash and the beginning of the Great Depression, which lasted ten years.

However, by this point, culture had become a popular phenomenon. The roles of men and women had changed irrevocably. And thus it was with art. Music. Films.

The globe had shifted. And it would shift once more.

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