Life, 1922-08-10 · page 31 of 36
Life — August 10, 1922 — page 31: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a **Statler Hotels advertisement** from Life magazine (page 29), not political satire. It promotes the hotel chain's expansion and brand philosophy. The illustration shows a hotel room clerk (right, in formal attire) greeting a guest (left, in coat and hat). The accompanying text is the clerk's first-person statement defending his profession against stereotype—specifically, the "ancient jests" that hotel clerks were snobbish, money-grubbing, or unfriendly. The advertisement's point: Statler Hotels differentiate themselves through genuinely courteous, helpful service. The clerk emphasizes he follows simple instructions: fairness, courtesy, and saying "yes" to guests whenever possible. This challenges outdated caricatures of hotel staff as elitist or difficult. The ad references Statler's expansion (new Buffalo location opening 1923) and positions their Pennsylvania Terminal location as "The Largest Hotel in the World"—a competitive claim. The satire is gentle corporate branding: using the humor magazine *Life* to position Statler's customer service as refreshingly unpretentious.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
LIFE - 29 Hotels Statler Buffalo —- Cleveland ~ Detroit ~- St. Louis A new Hotel Statler (1100 rooms, 1100 baths) is now building at Buffalo, to open early in 1923; 500 more rooms will be added later. 0, [™M a Statler room-clerk. Meeting me in a » humorous paper, this way, maybe you'll be ; surprised to see that I don’t wear a big diamond, if and that I’m not uppish, and that I like people. I'm a living contradiction of those ancient jests, because my first business is to measure up to the Statler idea of being cheerful and obliging and easy to buy from. And if that is sometimes more ee difficult than it looks from the lobby-side of my counter, I work under instructions that are beau- tifully simple: play fair with every buyer; be sincerely courteous and gracious and helpful all the time; go to the very limit of my authority in saying “yes” instead of “no” to guests. Sev- eral of the Statler advertisements have been devoted to me—did you see any of those which had my instructions in them? | Pennsylvania - |} Opp. Pennsylvania Terminal, New York. The Largest Hotel in the World comicbooks.com