That Julian Fellowes is at it again.
The screenplay writer of the Academy Award winning film “Gosford Park” and creator, writer, and executive producer of the Award-Winning PBS series “Downton Abbey” recently premiered (January 24th) on HBO with his latest period piece: “The Gilded Age,” a miniseries set in New York in 1882. The drama depicts the old money established families (like the Astor’s) having to contend with the bluster of families with new money (nouveau riche) invading New York, such as the Vanderbilt’s, Carnegies, Rockefeller’s and other major titans of 19th century industry.
Fans of Fellowes will most likely be welcoming with open arms the lavish dresses, extravagant hats, and enormous mansions that became so emblematic of the Gilded Age on his new HBO creation. It will remind them so much of the magnificence of Downton Abbey which ran on PBS from 2010-2015.
The Gilded Age in the United States spanned from 1870 through 1900, roughly speaking.
Whether the “The Gilded Age’’ matches the cult following popularity of “Downton Abbey” remains to be seen. Prior to its debut on HBO, reviewers took a rather dim view of Fellowes new drama.
Inkoo Kang, television critic of the Washington Post wrote: if “The Gilded Age isn’t a serious show, it’s not a reliably entertaining one, either. Sure, the sets and costumes and gewgaws are fun to look at. But it’s also dispiriting to watch so many talented stars get so little meat to chew on. “
Mike Hale, television critic for The New York Times wasn’t too enthusiastic about the show either. “In general,” Hale wrote, “the conservatism and provincialism of the old guard is so overdrawn, and presented with such little context, that the society women seem like they’re from outer space, and the actresses playing them can’t do much to make them human.”
At this early juncture, some historians were hoping for a little more to chew on from Mr. Fellowes latest offering.
Daniel Czitrom, Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College (South Hadley, Massachusetts) and author of "New York Exposed: The Gilded Age Police Scandal that Launched the Progressive Era" says, “with all the money spent on sets, costumes, furniture, hair styling, etc., too bad there wasn't any left for the script, which is full of cliched, boring dialogue, and conveys little dramatic tension.”
Czitrom additionally wondered whether “it would be asking too much to portray people who work for a living (the vast majority) who are not house servants, such as the immigrant neighborhoods full of creative energy and family life in the tenements?” “What about,” Czitrom thundered, “the real class struggle, visible everywhere on 1880s New York City streetcar lines, the docks, tenement cigar factories, and many other such examples.”
Personally, after watching only two episodes of “The Gilded Age," I’ll reserve judgement whether it’s a smashing success or a major flop so early into the miniseries. “The Gilded Age” includes nine episodes with each episode released on Monday’s.
What viewers might find interesting, and even helpful, is “The Official Gilded Age Podcast” hosted by Alicia Malone (host on Turner Classic Movies) and Tom Meyers (host of the Bowery Boys podcast) who dissect each episode and provide some historical context to what viewers just saw. I found the first two episodes of the podcasts extremely informative and entertaining.
In episode one of the podcast, “The Gilded Age’’ creator Julian Fellowes discusses the hills and valleys he went through in getting his latest drama on to HBO. And Tony Award winning actress, Christine Baranski, who plays Agnes Van Rhijn, the embodiment of the old New York socialite, discusses how she prepared for the role.
In the second episode of the podcast, Morgan Spector who plays George Russell, a ruthless robber baron of the new money in New York, gives voice to the research he undertook to better understand a 19th industrialist. Spector is joined by Location Manager at HBO, Lauri Pitkus, who discusses all the different locations the show had to travel to in order to find the right mansion, since most of the Gilded Age mansions in New York City no longer exist.
Since it took Julian Fellowes nearly ten years to get the “Gilded Age” made, it would be a shame if his efforts didn’t match the high expectations. The Gilded Age, after all, was an incredibly momentous period in American history.
To many, the Gilded Age conjures up images of robber barons, corrupt politicians, and unscrupulous business practices with limited interference from the federal government.
That much is certainly true.
The term “robber baron” dates back to the Middle Ages, and was used to describe individuals who employed unscrupulous business methods to eliminate competition in order to develop a monopoly in their industry. Most of these industrial titans of the Gilded Age demonstrated little compassion for workers.
David S. Tanenhaus, Professor of History and Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said “The Gilded Age is a fascinating period in American History, which historians have described as the Great Barbeque during which the few feasted while the many were roasted.” According to Tanenhaus, 35,000 workers died in factories and mines every year from 1880 to 1900, the total deaths (700,000) are equivalent to the number of Americans who died in the Civil War. “During the Gilded Age,” Tanenhaus further explained, “the United States had the highest rate of industrial accidents and deaths in the world.”
While the movers and shakers of industry accumulated mass fortunes, 40% of industrial workers during this time earned measly incomes, well below the poverty line.
“Protectors of our Industries” was created by Bernhard Gillam and published in 1883 by Keppler and Schwarzmann in The Puck, a satirical magazine.
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Who coined the term Gilded Age?
The Gilded Age was widely popularized with the publication of Mark Twain’s 1873 novel: “The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today” written along with his friend, Charles Dudley Warner, in which they lampoon the personal greed and political corruption of the era. As Twain saw it, the age wasn’t a golden age, rather, it was a gilded age. To gild is to cover something of lesser value, giving it an attractive but deceptive look.
Carrie Coon and Morgan Spector star as wealthy social climbers in “The Gilded Age,” a new series created by Julian Fellowes on HBO.
Photo Credit: Alison Cohen Rosa/HBO
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One feature of accumulating great wealth during this era, was the way in which the industrial titans flaunted their prestige and power by living in magnificent brownstones and palatial mansions (influenced by Europeans and Persians) with huge billiard rooms and libraries, European antiques and stunning art collections and riding in gold-trimmed carriages, while average workers (including a gush of immigrants lured to America by the high demand for jobs) lived in filthy, wretched conditions, squeezed like sardines in tenements, without much living space or sometimes not even running water.
In one scene from HBO’s “Gilded Age,’’ someone mentions to social climber Bertha Russell (played splendidly by Carrie Coon) at a dinner party that she hears that she has a French cook. “Doesn’t everyone”? Russell quipped.
Jacob Riis, a social reformer and muckraker, once estimated in 1890 that about 330,000 persons were living in one square mile on the lower East Side of New York City.
As bad as it was for many economically deprived workers and new immigrants to the city, the Gilded Age transformed American society in many positive ways that is often overlooked.
The steel industry expanding from 77,000 tons in 1870 to nearly 11.4 million tons by 1900 is often cited by historians as one of the chief reasons for the Industrial Revolution of the Gilded Age. Imagine, between 1870 and 1890 both money and real wages increased by more than ten percent.
The infrastructure of the big city also changed drastically during this time, especially with the invention of electricity, which brought light to homes and streets and added to the luster of nightlife. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876; this was followed by typewriters, adding machines, and cash registers, which served as a boon to the advancement of a burgeoning, industrial society. Houses were better built, sanitation improved as did the quality of food.
The Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883, which linked the five boroughs together, and helped make New York the biggest city in America and the second largest city in the world.
Mark Summers, Professor of History at the University of Kentucky, thinks that “in so many ways, the Gilded Age was a hard, unjust time.” “But another part of me thinks,” Summers continued “what must it have been like to be the first generation to walk the streets under electric lights? Or be able to call across town on the telephone? Or to eat green peas and pineapple in the wintertime, with the coming of canned goods? Or drink pasteurized milk? Or, in the 1890s, to see the first few movies on a screen? To be able to go from New York to Chicago in barely a day, from New York to California in less than a week when your grandparents took five or six months to make the same trip? To read a newspaper not just stuffed with political speeches, but sports news and human-interest features, and the very first comic strips? To be able to type a letter, rather than have to write one? “
Thinking along the same lines as Mark Summers, Caroline E. Janney, Professor of History at the University of Virginia, summed up the developments of the era by observing, the Gilded Age was “an urban transformation - skyscrapers and streetcars, but also a period marked by recurring strife around issues of race, class, gender, ethnicity, religion. It was time that saw the rise of college and spectator sports from boxing to football. Finally, it was likewise a period when the US’s material progress led it toward empire building (Spanish-American War, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, etc.).”
Though the nouveau riche were known for their extravagant lifestyle and wasting money on frivolous and gaudy artifacts, many of the super-rich, especially the wives of industrial titans, used their money to help the less fortunate. Some of the rich, for example, created homes for destitute immigrants. Others helped advance temperance societies, so convinced were they that alcohol was the root of all evil especially among the poorer inhabitants of society. And still others sponsored the right to vote through women’s suffrage campaigns.
The monopolies, social inequality, obscene corruption, and lack of government interference that industrialists treasured so much when their wealth grew by leaps and bounds, came crashing down in the Panic of 1893. The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad (both overextended) failed, which sparked an economic depression, lasting four years. The result was the stock market plunged, millions were suddenly unemployed and homeless. In some states, unemployment shot up to 50%
This ushered in a Progressive era, which put in motion federal controls, the curbing of corporate greed and most importantly--eliminating industrial giants from making vast amounts of money at the expense of the working poor.
Some of the reforms implemented, included: trust busting, labor reform, women’s suffrage, the formation of trade unions, tax reform, election reform, fair labor standards, and food and medicine regulations, among others.
Another critical slice of the Progressive era was the revolutionary reporting journalists and muckrakers championed in uncovering abuse and greed from the filthy rich. In 1890, reporter and photographer, Jacob Riis, exposed the horrors of the tenements in his ground-breaking book, “How the Other Half Lives.” McClure Magazine journalist Lincoln Steffens (in 1902) exposed the corruption between city officials and crooked businessmen. Journalist, Ida Tarbell, investigated the scheming machinations of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, which brought Rockefeller’s monopoly (of the Standard Oil Company) to a screeching halt.
And, of course, Upton Sinclair’s highly celebrated 1906 book, “The Jungle” exposed the hideous working conditions of the meatpacking industry.
Like others, I look forward to see what the other seven episodes of the HBO’s the “Gilded Age” has to offer. I roundly applaud Julian Fellowes for tackling such an ambitious project centering on such a significant time in America’s social history, when the obscene social economic gap between the rich and poor grew wider and wider.
--Bill Lucey
February 5, 2022
Recommended Reading
- “The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age” by Alan Trachtenberg
- “New York City in the Gilded Age” by Esther Crain
- “The Gilded Age: 1876-1912, Overture to the American Century” by Alan Axelrod
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