Life, 1921-07-07 · page 22 of 34
Life — July 7, 1921 — page 22: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains three separate humorous cartoons typical of early 20th-century satirical humor: 1. **"Delayed Sailing"**: A visual joke imagining Noah's ark delayed by a shipyard strike—combining biblical reference with contemporary labor disputes. 2. **Movie joke**: Satirizes how people attend films not for entertainment but to prevent family members from spoiling plot details by recounting them afterward—a commentary on social gossip and early cinema culture. 3. **Bigamy joke**: A wordplay gag where "Billy Benedik" is called "the meanest man" because he claims a man can have "one wife too many" without being a bigamist—joking that marriage itself is excessive. 4. **Fire chief cartoon**: Rural humor depicting a volunteer fire chief arriving too late to a fire, with the farmer sarcastically asking why he extinguished it since it's already out—poking fun at small-town volunteer emergency services. The page exemplifies Life's mix of verbal wit, visual gags, and social observation humor.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Wf Delayed Sailing “Can I take him for a walk, Mister, if I If there had been a strike in Noah’s shipyard. promise to bring him back?” “‘ TF you hate the movies, why do you go to them so much?” E: Why do you call Billy Benedik “the meanest man”? “Tt’s the only way I can stop the other members of the Sue: He says a man can have one wife too many family from telling the plots the next day.” without being a bigamist. Farmer Hawkins: Ye’re too late—Chief. Fire’s out. Volunteer Fire Chief: Well, doggone it! Ye heard us comin’! What did ye let it go out fer? comicbooks.com