Judge, 1924-09-06 · page 12 of 37
Judge — September 6, 1924 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "A Modern Popular Song" - Judge Magazine Analysis This page satirizes romantic sentimentality and the commercialization of love in early 20th-century popular culture. The song "You and Your Girl and the Moon" mocks overwrought romantic clichés—corsetless waists, red lips, manicured hands, and moon-gazing—that were stock elements of sentimental popular songs of the era. The cartoons flanking the lyrics reinforce the satire: the top sketch shows couples in a crowded park (titled "Our Crowded Parks"), and the bottom features a couple in an automobile with a caption questioning whether a wife enjoys the radio. Together, these suggest the song's romantic fantasies clash with mundane domestic reality. The lyricist (Strickland Gillilan) uses parenthetical asides like "(this is what the boobs eat)" to mock audiences who accepted such saccharine sentiments uncritically, positioning Judge's readers as sophisticates above such sentimentality.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“Our Crowded Parks” A MODERN POPULAR SON 'HERE’S a corsetless waist there beside you, my boy; | ‘There are red-penciled lips near those lips of There’s a manicured hand you may hold, in your ‘There is bunk you may spill in a lover-like tone. And behold through the trees where the gentle night breeze | Is strutting its stuff about roses and June, The round moon is shining its blessings on you— | On you and your girl and the moon! Chorus Just you and your girl and the moon, my lad! (This waltz-time is surely the goods, my lad!) Nothing else is so sweet (this is what the boobs eat) ‘As you and your girl and the moon. n with the thought of the gleam he’s mascaraed for you. At your job, your heart through a rift in the trees, Her henna hair shining gold minted new. All the day you can hear her low-whispered ‘My dear!” And you whistle that Mendelssohn apple-sauce tune. No, you never forget when that trio last met— Your girl and yourself and the moon. ‘Through theday you're adi Of the moon on her e: You may cop off a kiss from those lips of the miss, And the moon will be vastly too sportin’ to tell. You may tell her the stuff that all galleries hi Yet the moon will sit tight, though he he: 4 You may quite lose your head and beseech her to wed; She may dash off a “yes” and insist it be soon. “Does your wife enjoy the radio?” Though the moon smile above he won't blow on your love— “Certainly not! Why should she? Ah, you and your girl and the moon! ’ She can’t tall: over it!” Strickland Gillilan comicbooks.com