Life, 1914-12-10 · page 29 of 40
Life — December 10, 1914 — page 29: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The top cartoon satirizes wartime labor shortages. A street wall displays multiple "Help Wanted" signs desperately seeking girl workers for various trades—building apprentices, telegraph messengers, etc.—while explicitly stating "No Boys Need Apply." The joke's title asks rhetorically: who would want to be a boy in 1950, when girls are suddenly in such high demand for jobs traditionally reserved for men? This reflects post-WWII anxieties about gender roles. During the war, women entered the workforce en masse. By 1950, some industries still needed female labor, creating a reversal of typical employment discrimination—the page humorously treats this as emasculating for men. The lower content mocks pretentious opera-goers in 1950, imagining absurdly avant-garde performances (noisophone duets, riveting choruses in boiler factories, orchestras scattered throughout auditoriums) while audiences offer vapid, affected praise. It satirizes both modernist artistic pretension and the shallow social performance of attending "cultured" events.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
4 RUILDING _ 7 oe GIRL PPRENTICES APPRENTICES BRO YN BJONES aecirss 20 GIRLS WANTED. ¢!1); NO BOYS w& NEED APPLY *= WHO WOULD BE A BOY AGAIN? the hesitant amateur. Their latest volume, “The Charm of the Antique” (Hearst's International Library Com- pany, $2.50), is an attractive book which shows them at their best, for what they essentially are, specialists in emo- tion and experts in enthusiasm, J. B. Kerfoot. At the Opera in 1950 “QMITH is in good voice to-night. perfectly placed, and his guttural grunts couldn't be improved upon.” “Ah, the sweet simplicity of Schénberg and Richard His high cough is Strauss! How old-fashioned they sound nowadays!” “What a beautiful ring, Mrs. Dooley! The middle one on the left foot, I mean.” “Yes, it was my wedding-ring. No, not James. The cne just before James.” “Cholmondeley-Jones really has remarkably good Eng- lish diction. One would scarcely suspect that she was an Englishwoman.” “How original to have a mad scene! And singing it with a single trombone for accompaniment brings out the full beauty of the voice.” “That is quite the most becoming shade of hair you wear, Miss Dolan, It matches your light-blue girdle Leautifully.” “T adore the scene in the boiler factory. The riveting chorus has such a charming rhythm.” “But, oh, that entrancing duet of the noisophone and the fog-horn d'amore!" “And what a great improvement it is to have the orchestra’ spread out over the entire auditorium! You can hear every one of the five hundred and sixty-four in- struments perfectly!" SS. HE: Didn't you think the people at Mrs. Gander’s reception were all extremely dull? “Yes. But, you know, it was authors’ day.” FOOTBALL EXPRESSIONS LEADING THE INTERFERENCE comicbooks.com