Life, 1927-03-31 · page 23 of 35
Life — March 31, 1927 — page 23: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains **Mrs. Pep's Diary** (a humor column) and several cartoon jokes reflecting upper-class anxieties of the era. **The main diary entry** satirizes wealthy women's materialism and moral flexibility. A woman arranges her husband's commitment to a sanatorium (claiming he suffers detective delusions), then uses his absence to purchase a $30,000 fur coat by deceiving the furrier into thinking the husband approved it. **The cartoons below mock marital discord:** 1. **"Ultimate Straw"** jokes about a man (Slyce) driven to suicide by his wife's infidelity—even hardship couldn't break him, but *divorce* did. 2. **The piano scene** depicts a husband telling his sister-in-law he should have married *her* instead, because she understands him better. Her response reveals the joke's sting: she only knows him so well because his wife (Clara) tells her everything about him. These satirize the period's anxieties about divorce, infidelity, and women's financial independence and cunning within marriage.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Li March My newest silken frock arrived this morning, arc) the skirt laid out in box plaits on which I 8th do dread to sit, for fear of undoing their precision, reminding me that albeit the initial cost of this garment be bad enough, the upkeep of it will be still worse. But in swishing about when I did it on, I was taken back to the days of my youth when an accordion plaited skirt rep- ATR resented for me 7 the acme of sar- torial elegance. To luncheon at an inn with Marge Booth- by, and she did tell me a tale of a woman who ar- ranged with one of our more sedate private sanato- riums to bring her husband that af- ternoon to stop there for observa- tion on the grounds that he suffered occasional hallucinations — of being a detective, when he became violent and must needs * be _ seized and calmed down. Then she did go to one of our lead- ing furriers and select a thirty- thousand-dollar coat, taking one of the firm's men, well as the coat, home with her to arrange for pay But en route to her house she did stop at the sanatorium, which looked much like a private dwelling, and the minute they were ushered within did say pis my husband, Dr. Blank. Whereupon the fur firt sentative did “Her hus- band! Um a private dete itavailed him nought could free himself suffi cure proper identific was on a boat bound for South America, where God only knows what she could want of a fur coat, but it was that kind of story. I could sec, moreover, that Marge was in- clined to credit it, so T considered it noble her not to add that it had come straight to her from Mrs. Jaeckel or Madame Revillon, An- swering my inquiry as to how she had made out with some strangers who had come to dine with her under steamboat-acquaintance aus pices, (Continued on page 28) TRYING HARD TO GET RID OF AN OLD HABIT. ently to se- ion, the woman He: “IT MAY SOUND NAIVE, DEAR, BUT IS THERE A PARTICULAR SEASON IN WHICIL ONE SHOULD BE DIVORCED?” Ultimate Straw “f EAR about poor old Slyce? Why did he do it? He'd stood up under all sorts of hard luck.” “T know it. re, shipwreck, panics, divorces—we figured he was case-hardened, and now he’s gon “Jumped off that cliff by the third tee, didn’t Ii “Yes—just scrawled a note and left it with his clut “What'd it say “It said, “This is too much. in onc, without a single witness. Have just made a hole Good-by N FRANCISCO firm offers bathers “Axle grease in all the popular shades.” He (to sister-in-law): 1 SHOULD HAVE MARRIED you. Sister-in-Law: wiv? YOU UNDERSTAND ME SO MUCH BETTER THAN CLARA, Sister-in-Lawo: OU, THAT’S BECAUSE CLARA TELLS ME ALL ABouT you! comicbooks.com