Prohibition

I've always wondered how the US ever passed laws prohibiting alcohol. Such an amazingly common thing today, it would be like banning caffeine or soda. This six hour story is told well from all sides and it provides clarity as to the insane and radical motives behind the Volstead Act and how it backfired in every way. While the video and photos are all rather dated being from the 1910s and 1920s, the interviews of experts, historians and people with real-life stories really come together well. The narration is also great and uses some of the best names in the film business.

This is a long series, about 6 hours. Ken Burns' direction is poignant and well-paced. It gives you time to think about the meaning and the historical impact of each chapter of this story which touches on many decades.

I feel I know understand an important part of American history that never made sense to me. Concepts like "Bootleggers and Baptists" being aligned and the role of the gangsters in society become crystal clear after viewing this film. I had no idea how vicious and immoral the attacks on Al Smith were by the Herbert Hoover camp. Politics and police seem violently corrupt in this era. You learn a lot about life, laws, religion and politics in a difficult and bitter era (the Great Depression). Most importantly, you are reminded of the fact that US was built on Freedoms--and Prohibition is such an amazing violation of this. It's a historical guidepost to preserving our freedoms going forward.

The story of the Roaring 20s, flappers, the speakeasy, the rum-runners, and ironically, how the post-prohibition era was favorable to women and equality and stories I'd never imagined.

FDR had three priorities when he took office: 1) regulate the banks, 2) cut federal spending, 3) legalize beer. He won by a landslide. On a funny note, Utah voted to repeal the Volstead Act rather quickly. Amazing given that that state has spend the last 80 years trying to restrict it! This three DVD series is worthy of a weekend of your time. Thanks PBS for this fine historical film and Ken Burns for another amazing tale.

This huge three-part series covers a lot of ground on not only the failed prohibition laws in the US but also of America's turbulent love affair with alcohol.

This is an excellent six-hour presentation. I knew a lot about the time. Or at least I thought so until this presentation. The details and pictures bring time and problems to life. Now we can see the problems of this day as a reflection of prohibition and its side effects.

A lot of information well presented gives you the fee that you lived through that time.

We have a strange collection of readers that you would never have guessed they would be: Patricia Clarkson John Lithgow Campbell Scott Sam Waterston

Includes the following episodes: "A Nation of Drunkards." "A Nation of Scofflaws." "A Nation of Hypocrites."

Narrator Peter Coyote Based on a book by Geoffrey C. Ward A PBS production.

It might be a bold statement, but I personally feel that Prohibition was arguably the biggest mistake America ever made, with the possible exception of the Vietnam War. Ken Burns, already well known for making a great deal of extremely high quality films and documentaries about a variety of subjects (including the aforementioned one), has once again delivered a riveting and deeply interesting experience that no history aficionado should miss. Although this series is shorter than many of his others, it's no less intriguing as it delves into how the movement to get alcohol banned in the United States actually started almost a century before the amendment banning it was passed. We learn how it was endorsed by a lot of different groups of people (many of them women), and they all had different reasons for wanting to see it go. Many priests had heard countless stories of women being abused by their husbands, ordinarily mellow people being turned into brutes, and children being neglected all because of drinking. Many had seen how beer and wine could ruin not just one person, but whole communities. The film does a great job of showing every conceivable angle to the story of prohibition, and discusses in detail how people, many of them Irish and German immigrants who loved to drink, tried their hardest to make sure it wouldn't go anywhere. Many bar and saloon owners were convinced such a ridiculous act would never happen, as the federal government was too reliant on taxes paid by these establishments. Meanwhile, once prohibition actually came into effect, people who were law abiding citizens before the act became criminals just to get what they viewed as theirs in the first place, and those who were already criminals became even more wealthy, as many new opportunities were opened. Of course, you can't talk about this era and not bring up the mobster aspect of it. Thugs like Al Capone (who was sometimes seen as someone much more respectable than just a thug) ran huge, elaborate bootlegging operations that encompassed entire cities, had their minions kill or threaten anyone who stood in their way, and left a legacy on america that's still talked about now. Burns also masterfully explains how the horrendous flu pandemic of 1918 and the First World War, both of which left millions dead, contributed to a much more flippant and hedonistic way of living which resulted in flappers. Women came to realize that life was short and you can die at any moment, so they dove into a sexualized lifestyle that made their Victorian parents quite angry. Despite the fact that prohibition was tearing the country apart, people were still breaking the law left and right and drinking whenever they wanted to. Thousands of speakeasies were operated all across america. These carefree times would eventually come to a tragic and sudden end in 1929, when a stock market crash caused the most dire emergency america had faced since the Civil War. This is just a small selection of the things talked about in this documentary. If you're like me and you've already seen Burns' masterpiece on the vietnam war (probably the best thing he ever did), you'll feel right at home. The same narrator is here, and there's more than enough archive footage. All I can say is if you like to drink, and especially if you don't like to, then this is for you.

I watched this several years after it had been first aired at my local library. It was a nice situation to see it in. Some of the library patrons who were also attending had relatives and such who were involved in the "industry" during the featured years.

The librarian had to make sure that we were sickened, or at least spooked by pointing out that all of the photographs of dead people were of real dead people and not staged.

Some of the prohibition people were just simply nuts.

Nothing makes crime like the de-legalization of something that most people can handle or will handle anyways.