(x-post from /r/downtonabbey)

I've recently started re-watching the show Downton Abbey and noticed that it portrays 1920s-30s Americans as being viewed as crass and inappropriate by their English counterparts. Women are seen as too forward, the servant staff is seen as being unprofessional for speaking "out of turn" to the elite, and as a whole, Americans seemed to be portrayed as non-traditional and ignorant of standards of politeness, to the point that it straight SHOCKED the English.

Were Americans during this era more forward-thinking about class and sex relations or is this just dramatized for the sake of a (admittedly soap-opera-like) good TV drama?