Life, 1922-04-20 · page 8 of 34
Life — April 20, 1922 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from *Life* magazine contains two distinct pieces: **Top Cartoon:** Two cowboys on horseback in a desert landscape. One complains about Western movies in town, saying he's "fed up on these Western pictures." This satirizes the early film industry's oversaturation of Western content—a popular but increasingly clichéd genre. **Story Section ("The Mot"):** A prose piece about social awkwardness. The narrator discusses Mrs. Follenshee calling someone a "sartorial moron" for wearing a loud, garish outfit. The accompanying illustration shows a pompous military figure. The humor stems from critiquing pretentious fashion judgment and social one-upmanship among the middle/upper classes. The story explores how absurd commentary about clothing and appearance circulates in polite society. Both pieces mock different aspects of American culture—mass entertainment and social pretension.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
AM no toddler, and the noise of the band seemed appalling, so I said to Patricia Follensbee, “Let us sit on the stairs and hold converse,” which we did. We talked of many things and presently Watts came into the conversation. Watts had not lived in Blahfield very long. We all won- dered why he ever conceived the idea of living in the suburbs, anyway. His disqualifications for country life were many and apparent, but the thing that projected him into our talk was his clothes. With Watts bad taste in dress had been raised to an art. He went with unerring instinct to all that was loud, expensive, incongruous and wrong. And so I said to her, “The man, my dear Mrs. Follensbee, is a sartorial moron.” She threw her head back and laughed and cooed over my mot. Now I'm not a clever man, and so when she said, “Oh, that is good, sartorial moron !”—well, natur- ally, I felt a pleasant glow steal over me. Perhaps, after all, I was not so dull as Alice would have me. That night when I was in bed I rehearsed the scene. ‘“Sartorial moron” certainly was not bad and Mrs. Follensbee was a most discern- ing woman. On the Friday follow- “Was there any good movies in town?” “Naw—I’m fed up on these Western pictures.” The Mot ing we had the Starkweathers and the Prentices in “for dinner. At one point the conversation lagged, and Starkweather remarked that he had ridden out on the 5:47 with Watts and that he (Watts) was wearing a fawn- colored velour hat with a green band. “The trouble with Watts is,” I said, He Who Gott Slapped “that he is a sartorial moron.” Mrs. Prentice muffed it, but the others (Alice, of course, excepted) rose beau- tifully and Mrs. Starkweather spoke of my bright way of putting things. Once more I felt the gentle glow. After that, where two or three were gathered to- gether, I found myself introducing Watts into the conversation. So proficient did I become that I could turn a talk on an operation or Henry Ford or the Town Club into a discussion of Watts and his clothes, and then, by suddenly throwing the switch, snap! would come my little success. I had no idea how the thing had got hold of me. Alice had, though. As I look back I can see her pained face. Dear old Alice. She has been a good wife to me. Well, to go on. I was sitting, one spring day, on the verandah of the golf club- house talking to Mrs. Follensbee when Watts passed clad in a three-alarm outfit that would have put anybody off. Mrs, Follensbee sniggered and I leaned over to- ward her and said in a low voice, “Did you ever see anything like that? Solomon in all his glory. The man is a sartorial moron.” Her smile died out and she looked at me quizzically. ! wondered why the thing hadn't come comicbooks.com