Judge, 1923-06-30 · page 14 of 37
Judge — June 30, 1923 — page 14: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical comic by Ralph Barton contrasts theatrical fantasies with mundane reality. Each pair of panels compares how Broadway shows dramatize life versus how things actually occur: 1. **Cabarets**: Stage versions feature glamorous, melodramatic encounters; real cabarets show ordinary diners. 2. **Beaches**: Revues depict scantily-clad, exclusive bathing; newsreels show crowded public beaches. 3. **Office relations**: Melodramas portray employers and stenographers in romantic tension; newspapers suggest sordid affairs. 4. **Marriage**: Problem plays show husbands nobly accepting infidelity; reality depicts rigid, conventional spouses. The satire targets how theatrical productions sensationalize everyday life, presenting exaggerated vice, romance, and drama where actuality offers mundane domesticity and social convention. Barton mocks both theatrical excess and the public's appetite for such fantasies.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
LOOKING AT LIFE AGAIN AFTER THE THEATRICAL SEASON—by Ralph Barton C} LA The allegorical drama cabaret, in which the hero takes the wrong road— Cw Sa / The sole inhabitants of the bathing beaches as depicted in the revues— The relations that exist between an employer and his stenographer in the melodramas— The problem play idea of how a husband accepts his wife's infidelity— 12 and the hero taking supper in an actual New York cabaret. and the bathing beach of the news-reels on any warm afternoon. and the relations that seem to exist between them if one reads the newspapers. and a real life version of how he accepts her too, too rigid fidelity.