Life, 1923-06-07 · page 9 of 44
Life — June 7, 1923 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page presents two satirical pieces from Life magazine (circa 1930-40). **"Prenatal Influence"** mocks the pseudoscientific belief that pregnant women's experiences shape their unborn children's talents. The comic shows parents exposing themselves to art, music, and literature expecting gifted offspring. The punchline: their teenage son becomes an artist, but abandons it for a laundry job at fifteen dollars weekly—disappointing their cultured pretensions. **"Shame, for Shame!"** uses Henry William Hanemann's quote to satirize parental hypocrisy. A father boasts he's never engaged in crime or vice, yet his son questions what kind of "father" this makes him—suggesting the father's respectable mediocrity is itself a failure. The humor lies in inverting expectations: virtue becomes inadequacy. Both pieces critique middle-class values and generational disappointment.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
LIFE 7 JF HE COULD ONLY BE Line WcToR Huco / Prenatal Influence 1, Mr. and Mrs. Blank have been 2. Listening to music, too, has its 3. Reading good literature also helps told that looking at beautiful pic- beneficial influence. to produce an intelligent offspring. tures has a wholesome influence on the children to be. 4. The baby born is entranced by 5. At six years of age, he is very 6. At seventeen years of age, he is the artistic wall-paper, and other fond of music, literature and determined to be an artist— manifestations of art. painting, as expected. Father: Why doesn’t he do something sensible? Mother: Oh, dear! Only to-day he turned down a good job in a laundry at fifteen dollars a week. Shame, for Shame! Circa 1930-40 A. D. ‘P \PA, did you go overseas to fight?” taxi-cab driver, or lose money in a Wall Street led , “No, my child. . snot exactly.” fraud?” he “Papa, were you ever poisoned by bootleg whisky ?” “None of those, son.” an, “No, my child.” | “Well, Papa, were you ever caught in a subway ies “Papa, did you ever get held up by a bandit in panic?” er Central’ Park ?” “No, my dear, never.” “Never.” “What kind of a father have I got, anyway?” ! “Did you ever see the Prince of Wales, or hit a Henry William Hanemann, comicbooks.com