Life, 1921-05-26 · page 13 of 36
Life — May 26, 1921 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a satirical instructional page about movie character archetypes. The top illustrations present two stock cinema types with rhyming verse descriptions: **"The Bad Man"** (left): A violent, gun-slinging villain—the classic Western antagonist of silent films. The verse mockingly describes his criminal nature using exaggerated rhyming wordplay. **"The Ingenue"** (right): The innocent, virtuous young heroine—often portrayed as naive and easily manipulated. The text humorously suggests she's intellectually simple ("trifle Dumb Her-self"). The bottom comic strip, titled "Miss Hippo Introduces Smoking Into Jungle Society," shows an animal character introducing cigarettes to other jungle creatures—likely satirizing both mass-media influence on "primitive" societies and the advertising of harmful products. This reflects 1920s anxieties about cinema's cultural impact.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
fae Cinema Primer —— Verses by Robert E. Sherwood the Bad man This Fierce, Fe-ro-cious, Two-Gun Bul-ly Is (at the Start) quite Wild and Wool-ly, But, af-ter he has served his Time In ev’-ry well known Form of Crime, In-clud-ing Blas-phe-my and Ar-son, He “gets Re-li-gion” from a Par-son; And, though it’s Hard to Un-der-stand it, From that Day on this erst-while Ban-dit Be-comes a Sanc-ti-mon-ious Hick, And straight-way lo-ses all his Kick, And he re-minds us of the Song: “An-o-ther Good Bad-Man gone Wrong.” Drawings by John Held, Jr. the Ingenue This lit-tle La-dy is, I’m sure, At Least One Hun-dred Per Cent. Pure. She wears a Frock of Di-mi-ty, And reg-i-sters Sub-lim-i-ty ; She al-so knows a lot of Art, For she can wring the hard-est Heart When, on her well e-nam-eled Skin, She flash-es Tears of Gly-cer-ine. She of-ten has, as you will See, Dumb An-i-mals for Com-pa-ny,— Which is-n’t Strange, be-cause this Elf Is just a tri-fle Dumb Her-self. MISS HIPPO INTRODUCES SMOKING INTO JUNGLE SOCIETY. comicbooks.com