Life — January 12, 1928 — page 17: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a comic strip titled "Off-Stage with Famous Vaudevillians: The Trick Flivver Outwits the Auto-Thief." The narrative follows a vaudeville performer in a rickety car ("flivver"—slang for an unreliable automobile, often referring to Model T Fords) who outwits a car thief through a series of comedic mishaps. The thief attempts various theft methods across eight panels, but the car's unpredictability works against him—it stalls, explodes, crashes, and launches him into a wall. The humor derives from the era's common frustration with early automobiles' mechanical unreliability, portrayed here as accidentally beneficial. The "vaudevillian" context references performers who used such gags in stage acts. This reflects 1920s-era anxiety about automobile technology while celebrating slapstick comedy conventions popular in vaudeville entertainment.