Judge, 1920-01-24 · page 10 of 36
Judge — January 24, 1920 — page 10: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Post Card Probloid No. 6: A Social Etiquette Puzzle This page presents a satirical "Probloid"—a social dilemma contest—by humorist Gelett Burgess. The scenario involves a divorced man attending a theater where his current wife (No. 2) sits nearby, and his ex-wife unexpectedly appears. The joke targets the awkwardness of modern social situations where etiquette fails. The two small photographs show a movie director demanding retakes of an "ideal scene" in Arcadia—likely satirizing how cinema manufactures artificial perfection, contrasting with real life's messy complications. The satire mocks upper-class anxiety about propriety and public appearances. The solution (readers could submit answers for prizes) exposes how people navigate embarrassing social encounters through manufactured politeness. This reflects early-20th-century concerns about divorce's social stigma and the tension between authentic feeling and performative civility in public settings.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
To vit APPEARANCES THIS Is AN TDR AL SCENE in Akcapia, Bur Vie Movie Direcrok Demanns a Re-rvnt Post Card Probloid No. 6 ersonall LMOST everybody hates to make a speech. Or Ai we don’t, we say we don’t, anyway But it isn’t only the man who sits at the guest's table, and sips cigars and wonders whether he can remember the story about the Irishman and the mule while the toastmaster eulogizes him, who suffers. Many difficult: speeches have to be made when you are not dressed up in a porcelain shirt, and when there is no audience of cigar- burners to applaud you It is often difficult to be ii acawerecenu truthful. It is even harder Post Cards, the lon to be eloquent, sometimes. Upon such occasions it is fre- quently all one can do to be merely handsome, and sober And yet, you must speak, or you won't ‘be re-elected Cards to be cons Life is very hard, in arde t be contids tern New York after the date of the I Suppose you are married, the Probloic for instance; or even for The Answer whi keeps. Suppose your present Best, wil wife is No. 2a—and this time Rosner you are fond of her even in ren be atl curlers, even when she washes tice! JUDGE hair or puts perfume it water so feverishly and bites ry answ npetitor ma provided each is her Conducted RULES t be written in ink way of the Card Cards ed JUDGE, fth Ave send as ritten ed in the Ce JUDG shed and Prizes fter that by Geterr Burcess your tobacco, or tears your newspaper limb from limb when she reads it before you do, in the morning. Such love surpasseth the movies at the final fade-out. Can you suppose all that? All right, then; now for another ¢ It won’t hurt but a minute. You were married before, you recall—or don’t you? Anyway, you were. You loved th’at woman with the passion of a Rocky Mountain catamount in early April, 4 give $1,750 for the letters you wrote.to her alleging same. What are you going to do when Present meets Past. and you have to introduce Ethel to Maude? What are you going to say? Your divorced wife is sitting in the next chair in the orchestra, you know, and there is no escape. Can you make them both happy and at case, so that they laugh naturally at the show? “hat is the Probloid. The Prize-winning Replies to Probloid No. 6 will be Ar nounced in “Judge” for Feb- ruary 21st and you'd or typewritten upon to Gelett Burgess, care w York. d by the Name and many Answe upon a sep ived n Days Announcement of n of Gelett Burg Dollars. in JUDGE will receive a arded in the fourth containing the Announce: comicbooks.com