Nuanced but Never Dry

By JULIA M. KLEIN

American Spirits: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition

National Constitution Center

Through April 28

Philadelphia

Mention Prohibition, and the images flow: flappers, speakeasies, gangsters, bootleggers. The national fascination with the period still infuses popular culture, inspiring shows such as HBO's violent, sexually charged "Boardwalk Empire."

The National Constitution Center's new exhibition, "American Spirits: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition," duly features a re-created speakeasy, beaded dresses and mug shots of gangsters, as well as "untouchable" Prohibition agent Eliot Ness's oath of office. But the show, which will travel to at least five other venues, also offers a more nuanced examination of this strange interlude, from 1920 to 1933, during which law breaking was invested with a rare glamor.

Balancing the imperative to entertain with serious history was "the hardest part" of crafting "American Spirits," says curator Daniel Okrent, the author of "Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition." The aim was "to be fun, first and foremost," says Stephanie Reyer, the center's vice president of exhibitions.

The National Constitution Center's new exhibition, "American Spirits: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition," offers a more nuanced view of the Prohibition era.

The center is billing "American Spirits" as the "first comprehensive exhibition about Prohibition." Exhibits illustrate the country's longstanding love affair with alcohol; the surprising links between Prohibition, suffrage and the federal income tax; the era's impact on Fourth Amendment protections against "unreasonable searches and seizures," and the economics of repeal. But visitors can also get their photos taken in a lineup with Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, chase rumrunners in a video game, and learn to dance the Charleston.

Mr. Okrent, a writer and editor whose résumé includes inventing a fantasy baseball league, serving as the New York Times' first public editor, and co-creating the current off-Broadway show "Old Jews Telling Jokes," says he approached the National Constitution Center with the exhibition idea about four years ago.

The nine-year-old history center overlooks the Liberty Bell Center and Independence Hall, Philadelphia's top tourist attractions. But it has struggled financially and tried to boost visits with loan shows—spotlighting figures such as Princess Diana and Bruce Springsteen—whose relevance to the Constitution seemed tenuous at best.

"Stephanie says in her speeches that it's very hard to do a show on the separation of powers between the states and the federal government," Mr. Okrent says. "So I was able to say, 'Have I got two amendments for you.'"

"Of the 27 amendments we have to work with at the center, these [the 18th and 21st, Prohibition and its repeal] are by far the sexiest," Ms. Reyer says.

Mr. Okrent had hoped—unrealistically—to time the exhibition to coincide with his book's 2010 publication. But Ms. Reyer did convince her colleagues to sign off on the center's most ambitious self-curated show to date, with more than 100 artifacts, vintage films, an iPod tour and interactive quizzes and games.

Of the show's 50 lenders, Mr. Okrent is the second-biggest (after Anheuser-Busch), supplying five artifacts from his seven-piece collection of Prohibition-related memorabilia. One is a symbolic hatchet, a saloon accessory from the early 1900s emblazoned with the slogan "All Nations Welcome But Carrie." The reference is to temperance crusader Carrie Nation's predilection for vandalizing saloons. A hatchet she actually wielded and a smashed barroom mirror are also in the show.

An 1876 letter from Susan B. Anthony to Frances Willard, president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, suggests the entwining of the suffrage and temperance movements. "The two movements grew up together as sisters," Mr. Okrent notes, "and they entered the Constitution within months of each other." The 19th Amendment, giving women the vote, was ratified Aug. 18, 1920—seven months after Prohibition took effect.

Mr. Okrent's favorite artifact is a telephone that belonged to the Pacific Northwest bootlegger Roy Olmstead. Olmstead was the most exemplary of bootleggers—a former Seattle policeman who, according to an exhibit label, never diluted his liquor or engaged in other criminal behavior. "The entire political and commercial establishment got their liquor from him," says Mr. Okrent. "He was a local hero."

Tapping Olmstead's phone without a warrant allowed the feds to destroy his operation and put him in prison. He sued, claiming a Fourth Amendment violation, but lost. The 1928 Supreme Court decision upholding the wiretapping wasn't overturned until 1967.

The centerpiece of "American Spirits" is a complex, colorful device, evocative of a carnival game, that shows how the 18th Amendment was passed. Mr. Okrent says he ordered up a "Rube Goldberg machine"—and got more than he'd expected.

With flashing lights, sounds and multifarious moving parts, "Wayne Wheeler's Amazing Amendment Machine" demonstrates how Wheeler, the Anti-Saloon League's legislative mastermind, shepherded the amendment, which outlawed the manufacture, transport and sale of "intoxicating liquors," from pipe dream to reality.

To replace taxes on alcohol, which Prohibition would eliminate, the creation of a federal income tax (the 16th Amendment) was essential, Mr. Okrent says. Another key was the willingness of Prohibition supporters to punish politicians for any deviation from the "dry" party line, as well as to accept allies—from the suffragists to the Ku Klux Klan—wherever they found them.

A clear majority of the country probably never favored Prohibition, Mr. Okrent says. But, once the amendment and the enabling Volstead Act were passed, they settled in to enjoy it. The era of bathtub gin, rumrunners and underground drinking began. Men and women congregated in speakeasies, listening to jazz, sipping sweet cocktails and dancing the Charleston.

In the end, it wasn't corruption and rampant law-breaking that doomed Prohibition—it was economics. "The stock market crash and the onset of the Depression—that's what kills Prohibition," Mr. Okrent says. Repeal meant that breweries, distilleries, bottle-making plants and other industries could roar back to life—"a great jobs program," he says. And states could introduce the liquor regulations—from blue laws to monopolistic control—that still bedevil us today.

Ms. Klein is a cultural reporter and critic in Philadelphia and a contributing editor at Columbia Journalism Review.