Life — July 17, 1931 — page 1: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Life Magazine Cover Analysis **July 17, 1931** This cover illustration by Ely Culbertson depicts a dog drinking from a birdbath in a garden. The title references "Contract Bridge," indicating this is about the card game. The satire appears to target bridge's popularity during the early 1930s. The dog—standing upright on hind legs in an absurdly human manner—suggests how obsessively people were adopting bridge, even to ridiculous extremes. The formal garden setting and the dog's dignified posture create comic incongruity: a animal behaving with human refinement. Culbertson was a famous bridge expert of the era, so this likely mocks the bridge craze he helped popularize. The message seems to be that Americans had become so devoted to contract bridge that even dogs were adopting the pastime—a humorous exaggeration of the game's widespread social influence.