Judge — March 15, 1919 — page 23: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a satirical feature by Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. (the famous Broadway impresario) that humorously reimagines famous actresses as wildflowers. Each woman is assigned a fictional Latin botanical name and a comedic "natural habitat" description that mocks either her public image or career. The joke targets Ziegfeld's own chorus girls and actresses: Dorothy Leeds is compared to a Spanish olive found at a bullring; Martha Mansfield to a rooftop flower; Eva Lynn to a ground-dwelling species; Eleanor Dell to a climbing vine in coconut groves; and Katheryn Perry to a "Black-eyed Susan." The satire mocks both the pretensions of botanical classification and theatrical celebrity culture—treating glamorous stage performers as specimens to be catalogued and described with mock-scientific precision. It's social commentary wrapped in whimsy about the commodification of actresses in early 20th-century entertainment.