Life, 1920-02-12 · page 17 of 44
Life — February 12, 1920 — page 17: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This comic strip satirizes the overwrought conventions of 1920s silent film melodrama. The narrative follows a classic formula: a young woman (Letta Gallagher) loses her purse in a blizzard, is rescued by a wealthy man (Lickett T. Splitt—a ridiculous name suggesting the character's absurdity), and they shelter together at an inn. The satire targets the genre's exaggerated emotional language ("her heart told her"), implausible coincidences, and stock situations—the storm, the mysterious stranger, romantic tension. The deliberately purple prose and overwrought panel descriptions mock how seriously these films treated their melodramatic plots. The final panel's caption "Why didn't mother come along, Father?" suggests the joke concludes with an unexpectedly mundane or anticlimactic revelation, deflating the accumulated romantic tension—the point being that these silent film plots were inherently ridiculous when examined closely.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE SHELTER OFA FRIENDLY DOORWAY. VENTUALLY THEY 2d ARRIVED AT “HE * LONE JACK INN AND HE USKERED WER INTO THE BRILLIANTLY uuTCD «DINING: ROOM G ) 6\ es LOOKED AT HIM HER HEART TOLD HER THAT HE WAS OF LICKETT T- SPLITT, WEALTHY SPEED MERCHANT, OUT OF THE HAZE OF ThE STORM A Ax! DROVE UP AND STOPPED AT & ING SNOW “THE “Txt WHIRLED FOR MILES AND MILES, AND YEARS AND YEARS IT SEEMED TO INCONSPICUOUS “TAGLE INA COSY CORNER, ANO FOR “HE FIRST OF HER COMPANIONS FACE. LIFE'S MOVIES comicbooks.com