The 2018 Fall Lecture Series and Teacher In-Service “The Roaring Twenties: Booze, Brawlers, and Broads” begins Tuesday (Sept. 25) at the Churchill County Museum.
Premiere speaker will be Geoff Schumacher, senior director of content at the Mob Museum in Las Vegas who will present “Nevada’s Rocky Relationship with Prohibition.” This lecture will focus on the Silver State’s relative comfort with vice: Prohibition was either completely ignored or only enforced when outside federal forces took an interest.
On Oct. 2, Dr. Michael Fischer, Nevada Humanities/Humanities on the Road presenter, will deliver “Tonopah’s Soft Drink Parlors and the Rise of Nevada’s Next Gambling Generation” tracing how the next generation of Nevada gamblers and top-notch businessmen emerged from a time of mining decline, Prohibition and illegal gambling.
Guy Clifton, journalist, author and Nevada Division of Tourism specialist, will speak on his book “Dempsey in Nevada” on Oct. 9 recalling Jack Dempsey, the heavyweight boxing champion from 1919 to 1926, who once called Nevada home.
Author and University of Nevada professor Anita Ernst Watson’s discussion, “Altering Reality: Women in the 1920s” is Oct. 16. She will survey some of the changes in women’s lives during 1920s America, consider the sources of transformation, and examine who was touched in an altered reality.
The final presentation “Saving and Restoring the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Fountain” by author and historian Neal Cobb on will be Oct. 23. He will detail the history and restoration of a vintage Reno landmark.
At the conclusion of the lecture series, the 1939 film “The Roaring Twenties” featuring Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, and Priscilla Lane will be shown at the historic Fallon Theatre on Oct 30. Built in 1920, the Fallon Theatre is listed on the Nevada State Register of Historic Places by the State Historic Preservation Office.
The 2018 Fall Lecture Series and Teacher In-Service “The Roaring Twenties: Booze, Brawlers, and Broads” is free to the public and refreshments will be served. Teachers/educators can earn one renewal credit of continuing education through registration and attendance. All lectures begin at 6 p.m. at the Churchill County Museum, 1050 S. Maine St., Fallon.
For information, go to ccmuseum.org, or call 775-423-3677.