Judge, 1922-12-23 · page 14 of 36
Judge — December 23, 1922 — page 14: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page promotes the film "Merton of the Movies" starring Glenn Hunter, sketched by artist Guy Hoff. The feature satirizes small-town naïveté and show-business dreams. **The character Merton Gill** is a earnest but delusional young man from a small town whose only aspiration is becoming a movie actor. He prays nightly for success, imagining himself as screen character "Clifford Armatage"—despite being a complete failure at acting. The satire targets his blind ambition and the gap between his sincere aspirations and his actual talentless incompetence. **The joke:** Hunter's character succeeds not through talent but through a friend named "Flips Montague," who serves as both "best pal" and "severest critic." The page celebrates Hunter's performance as the "actingest kid in the world"—mockingly praising his commitment to an impossible dream. The various sketches show different scenes, illustrating this central irony of naive rural ambition meeting theatrical reality.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
ERTON GILL is the small town boy whose soul is in the moving pictures. At the end of each perfect day of hard labor he kneels at his bedside to pray: “Please make me a good movie actor, for Jesus sake. Amen.” As “Clifford Armatage” (his nom de screen), he is an abject failure, but out of the ashes of de- feat he rises Phoenix- like to success with the aid of Flips Montague, his “best pal, but severest critic.” Glenn Hunter has made a personal triumph as the poor, deluded “act- ingest kid in the world.” Glenn Hunter in “Merton of the Movies’ Sketches by Guy Hoff ’