Life, 1913-09-04 · page 9 of 40
Life — September 4, 1913 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The page contains two separate pieces of satirical content: **"An Annual Return"** discusses theater manager Marcus Cohenberger's upcoming season, featuring French plays emphasizing "realism." The satire critiques conventional theater and business attitudes. **"Assuredly"** depicts a marriage proposal where the woman rejects a conventional man, stating she seeks a "true feminist" who embraces radical new ideas and "highest self-expression" rather than traditional marriage. The man agrees to marry her anyway. **"A Wasted Blessing"** (right cartoon) shows a man asking his wife why their son is crying on vacation. Her reply—"he's schoolhouse-bound"—satirizes parental anxiety about education. The cartoons mock emerging early 20th-century social movements: feminist ideology, modernism in arts, and anxieties about children's education, positioning these progressive ideas as somewhat absurd or impractical.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Cupid: An Annual Retum R. MARCUS COHENBERGER, the world-famous __ theatrical manager, returned yesterday from Lon- don and Paris. He brought with him nine hundred and ninety-nine plays, which will be put on the sixty or more stages in New York during the com- ing winter, as fast as the newspapers can advertise them. “The coming season,” said Mr. Cohenberger, “ will be the best we have ever had, except the one which will come next year. I have several French plays of exquisite realism, which will maintain the high standards of dramatic art in which New York leads the rest of the country. One of my ‘masterpieces is by a new Polish decadent, the scene being laid in a smallpox hospital during an epidemic. It is highly fundamental.” On Sunday afternoon Mr. Cohen- berger will give a reception to the New York police, after which the theatrical season will open. ‘GG NG down "—Kentucky straight. Assuredly “wit you marry me?" he asked. She paused for a moment be- fore she replied. Then she said: “Listen carefully, please. You are a man of ordinary abilities and per- fectly conventional ideas. You haven't the slightest conception of the new world movement which is now taking place. You are intensely blind to all of its radicalism, intensely unoriginal, satisfied to be an intellectual nonenity, engrossed in that horrible, stagnating thing known as business, and a mental slave to the opinions put forth by your daily paper. I am a true feminist, an individual searcher, bound by no ties, seeking the highest self-expression in advanced art forms and acknowledg- ing no preconceived standards. Will I marry you? Of course I will; you're just the man I want.” “T)O you think they will ever be able to make newspapers out of anything but trees?” “Why, they are already making them out of whole cloth.” “WHEN SHALL WE THREE MEET AGAIN?" A Wasted Blessing “WWJHAT’S the matter with your small boy? Crying, is he, be- cause the schoolhouse burned down?” “Yes—in vacation.” “0, HAROLD, PAPA SAYS HE'LI. CONSENT TO OUR MARRIAGE JUST AS SOON AS YOU PASS THE BOARD OF EUGENICS.” comicbooks.com