Life, 1921-08-25 · page 3 of 34
Life — August 25, 1921 — page 3: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page presents two character types as social commentary. "The Tired Business Man" mocks a specific American archetype: the exhausted urban professional who reads newspapers, whose wife suspects his infidelities, and who leaves entertainment to musicians and artists while he merely consumes culture passively. "The Actress" satirizes theatrical women as aging narcissists who exaggerate their stage personas offstage, surround themselves with male admirers, and cycle through marriages frequently. The illustration depicts her holding court with male suitors. The bottom cartoon, "Little Lessons for Little Minds," jokes that the indecisive "Poor Perkins" will be rejected by both women he's courting—a lesson that worrying accomplishes nothing. The satire targets both masculine anxiety and female capriciousness as folk wisdom.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
August 25 e Figures in American Folk Lore By Dorothy Parker The Tired Business Man E is invariably slightly bald. He believes that an actress’s beauty is only if (4) knee deep. Uy) He enjoys no form of entertainment save musi- PZiS cal comedies. At serious dramas, he promptly falls into audible slumber. He is wholly miserable when in the country, even though his stay is but an hour or two in duration. ads only the newspaper, and can’t get all the way through that. He ull out of touch with his wife’s endeavors to crash into s He concedes that Irving Berlin can write music and Rube Goldberg can draw, and that is as far as he goes. His stenographer is the constant object of his wife's suspicior Every evening finds him in a state of complete exhaustion, The Actress She is always at least twice as old as she looks on the stage. She is able to play emotional réles only after she has suf- fered. She takes personally all the tribulations of the heroine that she is impersonating. At the end of the big scene, she is a total wreck. She never rises until afternoon. A line of men in evening clothes, wearing silk hats and white mufflers, and carrying canes and paper-wrapped bou- quets, waits for her at the stage door, after every performance. She could have any millionaire that she happened to fancy It is a question of grave doubt whether or not her jewels are real. She has a daughter fourteen years old, and a son just about to enter Yale. She never stays married more than a year or so at a time. Little Lessons for Little Minds Poor Perkins is having a sad time trying to decide which lady to marry. In strict confi- dence we will tell you that both are going to refuse him. This shows the needlessness of worry. comicbooks.com