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the roaring 20s were a time of liberation and experimentation in america in the wake of the
first world war and the spanish flu pandemic which collectively killed more than 100 million people
worldwide americans were eager to break free of the moral and social constraints of the past
and experience every pleasure and thrill that life had to offer women smoked drove cars and
flaunted their sexuality unmarried couples did the previously unthinkable and danced in public
and everyone drank alcohol in record amounts prohibition be damned this spirit of hedonism and
wild abandon also made the 1920s one of the most bad obsessed decades in history music and dance
crazes like jazz and the charleston swept the nation while the recent revival of the olympic
games fueled national obsession with world records and endurance events from marathon footraces to
the decidedly more bizarre fad of flagpole sitting but few 1920s crazes can compare to the sheer
insanity of dance marathons these grueling ordeals in which couples dance near continuously
for days weeks or even months for cash prizes started out as just another harmless fact but
by the time the great depression dance marathons have become grim exploitative spectacles whose
participants driven by sheer desperation danced to the point of insanity collapse or even death
like most 1920s fads the dance marathon craze was started by a single trendsetter in 1923 new
york dance instructor alma cummings waltzed around manhattan's audubon ballroom for 27 hours straight
outlasting six dance partners and wearing through the soles of her shoes in the process within three
weeks her record was broken at least nine times across the country kicking off a national trend
soon dance marathons began popping up everywhere in big cities and small towns in dancehalls
churches arenas and even new york's madison square garden while the details varied from event event a
standard format soon emerged the basic rules were simple contestants had to dance in couples had to
remain in continuous motion and had to stay on their feet as soon as someone's knees touched
the ground they were eliminated while couples were encouraged at dan's actual steps throughout this
quickly became unsustainable and a simple back and forth shuffle became the bare minimum needed to
remain in the contest music was played throughout to keep everyone energized typically on a
gramophone during the day and by live bands at night for 15 minutes every hour contestants were
allowed to leave the dance floor to rest use the bathroom or eat meals which were served up to 12
times a day some events even provided doctors to treat blisters and other injuries or masseuses
to massage the dancer's feet but once those 15 minutes were up it was right back to the
dancing during which contestants often carried out daily tasks like writing letters reading
the newspaper bathing and even showering using a mirror hung around their dance partner's neck some
contestants even learned to sleep upright cradled in their partner's arms these bizarre spectacles
drew in massive audiences who eagerly paid the 25 cent admission fee night out tonight to gawk
at the dancers and cheer on their favorite couples one 1928 new york city marathon attracted nearly
12 000 spectators every day and was avidly followed by millions more in the newspapers
but as watching exhausted people sleepily shuffle around a dance floor quickly grew tiresome
marathon promoters began coming up with creative ways of mixing up their program mcs would keep
up a rapid-fire banter to urge the contestants on and keep the spectators entertained occasionally
announcing snap sprint races or derbies where the music suddenly sped up or silver showers
where spectators were encouraged to throw coins at the dancers other attractions included raffles mud
wrestling audience votes on favorite contestants and mock weddings between dancers during some
marathons the rest periods were progressively cut down from 15 to 10 to five and finally zero
minutes causing contestants to drop like flies like today's reality tv and professional wrestling
dance marathons became a perverse mixture of fantasy and reality with mcs fabricating elaborate
backstories and rivalries between contestants hiring professional dancers to pose as amateurs
or even paying contestants to fight each other for the sake of maximizing drama adding to the surreal
atmosphere contestants could even be sponsored by companies who paid to place their logos on
the backs of the dancer's clothes what began as an innocent fad soon grew into a profitable and
highly exploitative cottage industry implying at its height an estimated 20 000 people nationwide
successful promoters became infamous for traveling through small town america organizing marathons
only to skip town once the bill was due like any sport dance marathons attracted their share of
fanatical devotees none more so than callum de villier a hairdresser from lanesborough minnesota
during one 1928 marathon held in brainerd minnesota lavilia and partner vonnie kaczynski
danced for a mind-numbing 443 hours or almost 19 days straight but even this superhuman achievement
would be topped just four years later at a particularly legendary marathon in somerville a
suburb of boston dancing 24 hours a day with only 15 minutes rest every hour davilia and kaczynski
outlasted their competitors for a staggering 157 days from december 1931 to 1932 clinching the
1 000 top prize about 20 dollars today so proud was devilia of his achievement that his tombstone
which he designed himself reads world champion marathon dancer three thousand seven hundred and
eighty continuous hours the villain's feat went largely unnoticed by the record communities his
achievement being misattributed to other dancers it was not until the end of his life that devilia
contacted guinness world records to set the record straight but in the 1970s guinness changed their
guidelines to define marathon dancing as being non-stop causing devilia and kaczynski to be
expunged from their records de villier's pride in his achievements however conceals the brutal
almost dystopian reality of dance marathons which one contemporary newspaper described as
a macabre modern equivalent of a homicidal roman gladiatorial spectacle for as the contest dragged
on over days weeks or even months the contestant's ordeal went from merely exhausting to downright
nightmarish when break periods were announced dancers would often fall unconscious into
waiting cots only to be jolted awake 15 minutes later by the blast of an air horn those who could
not be roused were slabs given smelling salts or dumped in tubs of ice water to get them back on
their feet in the final hours of a marathon it was not uncommon for exhausted contestants to collapse
from exhaustion right on the dance floor some even died including 27 year old homer morehouse
of north tonawada new york who died in 1923 of heart failure after dancing for 87 hours straight
marathon dancing also took a terrible toll on the mind after six or seven days of sleep deprivation
contestants sometimes began to hallucinate with some being reported picking imaginary flowers from
the dance floor or fleeing from imaginary phantoms in 1928 a seattle woman named gladys lands was
punched in the jaw when her exhausted giant's partner suddenly turned psychotic
tragically lent fed little better after dancing for 19 days straight and only placing fifth
she committed suicide lens's death shocked the seattle authorities prompting the city
to pass an ordinance banning dance marathons within city limits other cities soon followed
two including tacoma boston and new york whose board of health shut down a massive marathon at
madison square garden at its 428th hour after a 21-year-old contestant collapsed and began
vomiting blood in addition to the physical and psychological risks many opposed dance marathons
on moral grounds seeing the events and dancing in general as a corrupting influence on society movie
theaters and other entertainment venues fearing competition also joined in the condemnation of
dance marathons but just as prohibition failed to curb alcohol consumption these bands did little to
dampen the dance marathon craze which simply moved underground or outside city limits many of these
events also rebranded themselves as walkathons in order to appear more benign a term which
survives to this day yet for all the physical and psychological ordeals marathon dancers were
willing to endure the cash prizes were relatively paltry rarely more than 500 or a thousand dollars
even the longest dance marathon on record which lasted for a mind-boggling 2831 hours
after the top prize of only 2 650 or around 38 000 in today's money so why then did people willingly
subject themselves to such torture to begin with as with marathon races long distance swimming
flagpole sitting at other popular 1920s endurance events the appeal of marathon dancing lay in
discovering just what the human body was capable of and the thrill and glory of pushing oneself to
the limit and coming out victorious there was also of course the perennial lure of fame and
celebrity fleeting as it was but as the shadow of the great depression fell across the world and
millions of americans lost their farms their homes and their livelihoods dance marathons acquired a
grimmer appeal for as grueling and degrading as they could be for desperate unemployed americans
dance marathons offer the opportunity to have a roof over one's head and several free meals a
day as well as a slim chance of winning a prize worth more than the average farmer or worker
made in a year all one had to do was keep dancing and for the spectators many of whom were jobless
and homeless themselves the perverse spectacle of dance marathons presented a rare opportunity to
gawk and jeer at people worse off than themselves the dance marathon thus became a grotesque mirror
of the despair and desperation of depression age america this was infamously immortalized by horace
mccoy's 1935 novel they shoot horses don't they by the outbreak of the second world war however
the dance marathon craze had all but died out not only were people increasingly unable to afford the
entrance fees but with the country gearing up for war more and more people were returning to
work and had little time to watch dances shuffle endlessly around a dance floor the dance marathon
phenomenon remains all but forgotten until 1969 when director sydney pollock's film the adaptation
of they shoot horses don't they brought it back into the public consciousness inspired by the film
in 1973 students at penn state university held a clean fundraising version of a dance marathon with
the contest duration capped at 30 hours the event was a success raising two thousand dollars for
children with disabilities and inspiring dozens of other universities including northwestern
pennsylvania state ohio state and the university of iowa to start their own charity dance marathons
such toned down contests as well as the less strenuous walkathon remain popular fundraising
events to this day during its brief heyday the bizarre phenomenon of the dance marathon managed
to encapsulate both the heady freewheeling spirit of the roaring twenties and the grim
desperation of the dirty thirties so if you think the degrading manufactured spectacle of reality tv
is a new phenomena well think again and the next time your child comes home seeking pledges for
the school walkathon remember that this seemingly harmless activity originally started as the jazz
age equivalent of squid game so i really hope you found today's video interesting if you did please
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