Life, 1928-11-16 · page 23 of 44
Life — November 16, 1928 — page 23: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains three satirical pieces typical of Life's humor circa the 1920s-30s: **"The Fashionable Shade"** is a brief quip about a customer ordering "nude" stockings to match his wife—a double entendre playing on both hosiery fashion and marital commentary. **"One of Life's Little Tragedies"** depicts intellectual incompatibility. A wife quotes modernist poetry about nature's superiority to humanity, expressing existential despair and emptiness. Her husband responds with monosyllabic indifference ("Mph," "Yeh?," "Search me!"). The satire's punch: her philosophical anguish instantly vanishes when he mentions selling "a coupla hundred cases"—implying she's materially motivated, not genuinely intellectual. The mockery targets both pretentious modern philosophy and women's supposed superficiality. **"The Antique"** (cartoon) shows rural figures examining a horse, with one noting it will give their property a "meedy-evil pitcheresque" look—satirizing rustic affectation and fractured speech patterns. These pieces reflect period attitudes toward modernism, gender roles, and class.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
LIFE the new battalions of eyefuls selected by Ziegfeld for his new show, and they are all adorable. You might tell the family that | have gone for them in a big way. But what floored me was discovering that nine-tenths of the new crop of dreamy- eyed merry magdalens are not from New York! Imagine that, Willard. Most of them, it appears, hail from Dallas, Bos- ton, Peoria, Bellingham, Troy, Camden, Pittsburgh, South Bend and Paducah. I think I'd like to see the country, then. And I don’t know who said it, but they are describing a Broadway phony as a shiftless man who lives by the sweat of his frau, which is just as amusing as Sid- ney Skolsky’s quip: “Clara Bow certainly was a good kid when she had It!" THE FASHIONABLE SHADE Srockinc Counter Crerk (fo man customer): Silk stockings? Yes, sir. What shade, sir? Tue Customer: Nude, to match my wife. One of Life’s Little Tragedies The Husband Whose Intellectual Devel- opment Failed to Keep Pace with His Wife’s “You know, Hector, I heard Wurstin Greet read some of his new verse today, and I cannot help thinking, with some of the moderns, that trees are, after all, superior to people!” “Mph!” “Their lacy branches flung against a wintry sky—pure — beauty—astounding loveliness! Yet how seldom does one find beauty among humans! Ugh! The ugli- ness, the pettiness that smothers us! Trees are, it seems to me, so much more worth while.” “Oh—-yeh?” “And, after all, the things we strive for—what are they? Mere illusions—and is there anything so impermanent, so transitory, as an illusion?” “Search me!” “Emptiness! The mere shell of life! ....Don’t you sometimes feel, Hector, that you are a mere husk covering an in- finite variety of slow decay?” “Sure.” “Sometimes I am all one bitterness— one futility—one frustration! If I could only escape it all! If I could die!” “Say, listen, would a little check for one grand make you feel any better? I sold a coupla hundred cases today.” “Ooooo! You ole peach! Mama give Papa the greatest ole Aug!” Heman Fay, Jr. SETTING ‘EM UP Morner: What do you think, children —your father has ordered a new auto- mobile. . Cuivoren (in chorus): 1 want to bust the first fender! App Similes: “As furtive as a man setting a ninety-cight-cent watch by the chronometer in the window of a Fifth Avenue jeweler.” “Yeh, sure. You can just turn ‘er loose in yer medders and she'll five yer place a kind of meedy-evil pitcheresque sort of a look.’ comicbooks.com