Life, 1921-03-31 · page 23 of 34
Life — March 31, 1921 — page 23: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes silent film conventions through verses and drawings by Robert E. Sherwood and John Held Jr. **"The Bathing Girl"** mocks the popular bathing beauty genre, referencing producer Mack Sennett's famous swimsuit comedies. The joke: the "modern" flapper wears a scanty costume but ironically avoids water entirely—contradicting the purpose of bathing scenes. **"The Hero"** parodies melodramatic leading men: stoic, virtuous, poverty-stricken yet noble, who rescue situations through bold action. The satirical tone suggests these archetypal characters were already clichéd. The bottom comic strips appear to reference common silent film scenarios—a professor discovering specimens and a golfer's outburst—continuing the mockery of predictable plot devices. The piece reflects 1920s cinema's established visual language becoming recognizable enough to parody, suggesting silent film had already developed standardized character types and storylines.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
ANUP AT The Cinema Primer Verses by Robert E. Sherwood Lhe Bathing Girl This stric-tly mo-dern-ized Bac-chan-te, Clad in a Cos-tume gay but scan-ty, Has learned, no doubt, from Mo-zher Sen-nett, An old and just-ly fam-ous ten-et That those who don’t know how to Swim Should hang their Clothes on a Hick’-ry Limb, And be most Care-ful not to go An-y-where near the H-2-O. And so she fro-lics on the Beach Far from the rip-pling Wave-lets’ reach, And hangs her Clothes on Limbs, does she, But not on Limbs of Hick-o-ry. Drawings by John Held, Jr. the Hero A stal-wart Fel-low is the He-ro Who's eight De-grees more cool than Ze-ro, He boasts no high-toned Airs—but then He’s one of Na-ture’s No-ble-men. He causes Vil-lains deep Cha-grin Be-cause he tri-umphs over Sin. Al-though he’s might-y fierce when riled, He’s ten-der heart-ed as a Child. He looks his best when clad in Rags, And, when the Sit-u-a-tion lags, He bold-ly dash-es in and saves it; He risks his Neck (and also shaves it), Professor Neersite: LL “A RARE SPECIMEN COMES CROUCH WERE UNTIL ALONG, “tcor mim!” Golfer: Wat TH’ BLANKETY BLANK—! comicbooks.com