During the silent era, Mr Douglas Fairbanks was perhaps the biggest movie star in the world. When he married Ms Mary Pickford, “America’s Sweetheart”, in 1920, the couple were Hollywood royalty and huge stars on both sides of the Atlantic. Only his best friend Sir Charlie Chaplin was more famous. With films such as The Mark Of Zorro and The Thief Of Bagdad, Fairbanks started the buckling of swashes and invented the action hero we know today. His and Pickford’s became the first hands put in wet cement outside the newly opened Grauman’s Chines Theatre. And, fittingly, in 1929 at a private dinner at the Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles, Fairbanks hosted the first Oscars.

He also effectively created Beverly Hills when he renovated an old hunting lodge on what was then scrubland to create his mansion, dubbed Pickfair. The advent of the talkies killed Fairbanks’ career and multiple adulteries on both sides killed his marriage. His legacy was a Hollywood dynasty – his son Mr Douglas Fairbanks Jr became almost as big a star. Fairbank Snr’s famous last words were, “I’ve never felt better.”

While Fairbanks was seen as the incarnation of the all-American man, many men thought Mr Rudolph Valentino was a threat to their masculinity. Women, however, didn’t care despite persistent rumours that he was, in fact, gay – one of his alleged lovers, Mr Ramon Novarro, who was murdered, was rumoured to have been found dead with an Art Deco dildo given to him by Valentino stuffed in his mouth. It is now thought that Valentino was most likely straight.

Whatever the truth, the hysterical devotion he inspired in women made the Italian-born actor the first ever male sex symbol, most famously for his part in The Sheik in 1921, which made him a superstar. When he died of appendicitis aged 31 in 1926, 100,000 people lined the streets of New York for his funeral. While men may have found him intimidating, he was a style icon nonetheless, and his classic 1920s slicked-back hairdo was dubbed the “Vaselino”.

A scion of one of the greatest acting dynasties of all time (his granddaughter is Ms Drew Barrymore), Mr John Barrymore was considered one of the most influential actors of his generation. Dubbed the “greatest American tragedian”, Mr Orson Welles said he was the best Hamlet that he had ever seen. His nickname was the Great Profile, as almost all publicity stills featured the left side of his face and he himself commented that, “The right side of my face looks like a fried egg.”

In private, however, Barrymore’s life was a mess. He was a spectacular alcoholic – his big drinking buddy was the notorious Mr WC Fields – and at the height of his career, aged 41, he had an infamous affair with the then 17-year-old actor Ms Mary Astor. His personal demons ultimately destroyed his career and he ended up playing parodies of himself as the original self-destructive actor.

In the 1920s, the British Raj was at its zenith and the real-life eye-waveringly wealthy Maharajas became global celebrities. The most glamorous of the Indian princes was Mr Yeshwant Rao Holkar II, the Maharaja of Indore, now Maharashtra in central India. After succeeding his father in 1926, the Maharaja and his wife Sanyogita became a fixture of the glamorous set that flitted between London, Paris and the Riviera. (On their honeymoon, the couple were the subject of a famous series of portraits by photographer Mr Man Ray.)

Today, his legacy largely focuses on his championing of the Art Deco movement and designers and artists such as Ms Eileen Grey and Mr Constantin Brâncuși. In his home state, he commissioned a modernist masterpiece, Manik Bagh (Jewelled Garden), to house his collection. Today, it is a government office and the treasures that once adorned it have largely been auctioned off.

Among the most famous characters of the 1920s were the Bright Young Things, with the aristocratic British socialite Mr Stephen Tennant being dubbed the “brightest of the bright young people”. Tennant was immortalised by both Ms Nancy Mitford and Mr Evelyn Waugh as, respectively, Cedric Hampton and Miles Malpractice, as well as, in part, Lord Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead Revisited. Unashamedly homosexual, his lovers included the poet Mr Siegfried Sassoon. His one attempt to marry a woman allegedly foundered when he discussed bringing his nanny on their honeymoon.

Style-wise, Tennant’s indulgently over-the-top take on fashion was a precursor of today’s gender fluidity and Instagram celebrities. In 1927, the Daily Express wrote that, “The Honourable Stephen Tennant arrived in an electric brougham [car] wearing a football jersey and earrings.” His great niece was supermodel Ms Stella Tennant, who died tragically young last year.

It could be argued that popular music was born when one-time Washington DC sign-painter and pianist Mr Duke Ellington was hired to play with his orchestra at the Cotton Club in 1927 and heralded the dawn of the jazz age. Ellington himself became one of the first black superstars and one of the 20th century’s most influential composers.

His personal style – a hat at a jaunty angle, teamed with an immaculately tailored double-breasted tuxedo or a sharp houndstooth blazer – was instantly recognisable. Ellington was the epitome of an African-American aesthetic that, a century on, still shapes fashion.

Having inherited an enormous fortune thanks to Standard Oil, industrialist Mr John D Rockefeller Jr was one of the richest men in history – and the head of the most powerful family in American history. Standard Oil had a virtual monopoly on oil production and, had it not been broken up by the US courts in 1911, it rather than Apple would have likely been the world’s first trillion-dollar company.

Today, Rockefeller is perhaps most famous for the vast Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, started in 1928, while his home on Park Avenue has been described as the greatest trophy apartment in the world. Rockefeller’s son Nelson rose to become vice president of the US, while it is thought that his grandson, Michael, had the more dubious distinction of being eaten by cannibals in New Guinea.