Throwing the Baby Out with the Bathtub Gin

By Annmarie Dean

Imagine not being able to walk into a bar and order a beer. Instead, walk up to a locked steel door, someone on the other side opens a peephole and asks you for the password to get inside. After the password is whispered, it is a speakeasy after all, the locked door opens and entertainment and booze are abundant. The air is seasoned with jazz music full of propulsive rhythms and improvisation. People in attendance include women wearing slinky knee-length dresses and chin-length bobbed hair sipping on illegal sidecars and men dressed in suits drinking illegal old fashions. That is the picture painted in Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s three-part documentary, Prohibition; the series premiers on WNED-TV at 9 p.m. on Oct. 2, 3 and 4.