by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Founded in 1883, Life (sometimes stylized as LIFE) magazine employed humor while also examining current events as it rose to success during an era when massive American economic growth engendered a large middle class with more leisure time to devote to such publications. By the 1920s, when it began the decade with about a quarter million subscribers, Life was widely known for its remarkable illustrations including by artists who went on to great fame, including Charles Dana Gibson, Robert Ripley (later of Ripley’s Believe It or Not) and Norman Rockwell, while contributors included Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker and Robert Sherwood.
This blog has featured several issues of the magazine in previous posts, dating back to the 1880s and the featured object from the Museum’s collection for this one is from 8 March 1928 when Gibson was president, Sherwood the editor and Benchley a contributing editor. While most of the contents are of the type of humor for urban, well-educated sophisticates who Sherwood was trying to reach, there are some serious commentaries on the main editorial page, as well.
The stories and jokes that abound vary widely, much of which would almost certainly be proscribed in our own time. One example is a short one about “Sideshow Gossip” in which “First Circus Freak” remarks that “the contortionist is henpecked at home” and the “Second Freak” adds “and how! Why, his wife just winds him around her finger.”
A cartoon by Paul Webb shows what appear to be chorus girls in a changing room with “First Gold Digger” asking “have you finished with your banker friend yet?” while the second responds with “No—I’m just applying the finishing touches.” Finally, “Mexican Home Brew” from Walter J. Enright shows a stereotypical figure of a man, with a cone-shaped sombrero, patched trousers and a gun in a holster tap a cactus for liquor, which he drinks to excess and leaving him hungover.
Another bit of humor with an ethnic component is called “The Customer Is Always in the Right,” which has a New Orleans hotel guest telling the porter, it is assumed the employee was Black, “just put those bags down anywhere, boy” and then asking what date it was. Told it was 14 May, the gent replied, “Washington’s Birthday!” and then added “Theodore Washington, the Great Emancipator” before asking if “I suppose you’re all Republicans down here.” The patron continues, “all right, boy. Here’s a nickel for bringing up those eight bags,” but follows with “I suppose tipping is not encouraged at this hotel, though” and asks for his nickel back as the porter answers, as with all the comments and questions and trying to show that the customer, indeed, is always right, in the affirmative.
Because it was a presidential election year, Tracy Hammond Lewis offered a primer for young people, with helpful phonetic spellings of key words, regarding the election process and began with “in the summer the two big pol-it-i-cal parties wil hold their conventions to nom-i-nate a can-di-date. These parties are the Dem-o-crat-ic and the Re-pub-li-can.” It was added that the parties were very different, meaning by more than a million votes at national elections.
Another explanation was that “a candidate is a man with principles” though “he does not know what his principles are, however, until the plat-form has been chosen” and that the process for this was hat “when one party has chosen its platform, then the opposite party does like-wise (laughter).” Lewis informed his readers that,
The Democratic Party will come out flat-footed against white-slavery and hard time, and strongly in favor of free air, the starving Americans and the full dinner pail. This will be a bid for the flat-footed vote. The Republicans will pro-nounce themselves un-e-quiv-o-cal-ly (that was a tough one, kiddies) in favor of the farmers, America first, and universal peace.
Candidates were enlisted because no one was to be so blatant about seeking the nomination “of his own free will,” otherwise such impudence would mean that “the impression might get abroad that he wanted the job.” As for the campaign, it was noted that the goal was “to see who can utter the greatest number of plat-i-tudes before the election,” while “the ra-di-o will be a big help,” mainly because “a candidate can be shut off at any given time.”
Lewis ended his brief lesson with the observation, given in a decade when the G.O.P. won the presidency by large margins in each election,
An election is held and the nation enters into an era of prosperity, if you are talking to one of the winning party, or into an era of graft and incompetence, if you are talking to a Democrat.
Eddie Cantor, a multi-talented performer on vaudeville and Broadway, including several years in the Ziegfeld Follies, as well as on radio and in film, contributed “The Follies Leave” about closing night for the show in various areas. One exchange involved a bootlegger seeking $60 dollars for wine purchased a showgirl and her rejoinder of “all right, there’s your money, and go to hell” as well as a call of “Oscar, throw me a hammer!” Another involved a showgirl saying, “I’m glad we’re going to hit Cleveland. I have a rich uncle there,” to which a dancer told another, “I’ll bet that baby has a rich uncle in every town we play.”
A cartoon by Alfred Frueh titled “Everything is Zip-Zip-Zippy Now” played on the growing popularity from the time that Gideon Sundback, who worked for a fastener company, came up with his “Separate Fastener” in 1913 and patented it four years later. The rubber company B.F. Goodrich used it for a boot and gave it the name of “Zipper” as it fastened so quickly, though it was not until the late 1930s that it became common on clothing as on pants. The piece offered potential uses for padlocks, safes, doors and “the Zipper Marriage Knot,” which was considered “non-binding” and “may be unzipped at any time” so that either party could claim “Good-By Ball & Chain” and “Hello Freedom.”
There was a reference to California in another rendering, by Don Herold, whose “A Recent Arrival In California Runs Amuck” lampooned “On One Of Those Cold, Miserable, Drizzly California Winter Days” with an angry visitor with a pistol in his hand and growing “You’re The Seventh Man Who Has Said That Today—The Unlucky Seventh” after gunning down a gent who “weakly” uttered “I Repeat That This Is Very Unusual Weather For California.”
One of the more striking images in the issue is C.H. Sykes’s “Waal, it suits me!” which shows Uncle Sam sitting next to an ice fishing hole and pulling a hook out of a caught fish labeled “Business Outlook” while a “Calamity Howler” with his face buried in a handkerchief holds up a gloved hand in protest and a “Super Optimist” levitating from the ground holds a giant magnifying class and yells out the caption. While there were indications that the national economy was weakening on multiple fronts at the time, no one could foresee the forthcoming financial failure that became the Great Depression.
The centerfold rendering was by Gibson, creator of famous “Gibson Girl” and who purchased Life in 1920 for a million dollars, and was titled “The Companionate Arts.” It shows a substantial and cluttered home study and depicts a couple with self-satisfied, if not snobbish, countenances, both with cigarettes in hand. The wife sits, with legs insouciantly outstretched from her chair placed before an artist’s easel, while her husband is perched before a desk, of which side drawers are opened and a typewriter is in use. Papers and books are scattered on the floor, with one titled “The Story of Philosophy,” this appearing to refer to Will Durant’s 1926 book of that title.
Residents of most American cities of any size where public works projects were undertaken with grand promises of widespread benefit to its denizens will certainly relate to William Gordon (Jack) Fall’s “Things We Read About But Never See.” The cartoon depicted a well-fed mayor declaiming that “This Stupendous Project—A Boon To The Entire Community—Will Cost Our Fair City A Mere $10,000,000” as city officials cling to that dollar figure and lift others to join them.
The “Life Confidential Guide” provided the briefest of reviews of theatrical performances, dramatic and comedic, “eye and ear entertainment,” meaning musicals, and “experiments” on the stage, though it offered the disclaimer that “readers should verify from the daily newspapers the continuance of the attractions at the theaters mentioned.” For the “more or less serious” theatricals, Coquette was highlighted because of Helen Hayes’ performance, while George Arliss and Peggy Wood starred in a version of The Merchant of Venice and Lynn Fontanne was in Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude and Porgy was briefly stated to be “a practically all-Negro cast in one of the season’s fine productions.”
On the comedy front, Basil Rathbone, later known for his film portrayals of Sherlock Holmes, was in The Command to Love, which involved “fun in an embassy” and in which “there is a certain element of sex.” O’Neill’s Marco Millions was an “elaborate satire on the Go-Getter” with Alfred Lunt playing Marco Polo. Madge Kennedy starred in Paris Bound with the magazine observing that the “smart and highly sophisticated” production concerned “what used to be known as adultery.”
For the musicals, there was A Connecticut Yankee, based on Mark Twain’s classic book, while Funny Face featured the amazing dancing of Fred Astaire, later a film star, while his older sister Adele, who retired in the early 1930s upon marrying, provided comedic effect in addition to being a dancing partner with her sibling. Another “Negro show” mentioned was Keep Shufflin’, which was “to be reviewed later” and the music for which was co-written by the great Thomas “Fats” Waller. Ed Wynn, deemed “quite enough for one show” and who also became famous in film, headed the cast of Manhattan Mary, while Show Boat was “probably the most important musical show in town to see” including because it featured “Old Man River,” soon made famous by Black actor and singer Paul Robeson.
Benchley’s “Drama” page featured another vaudevillian, though long forgotten, Joe Cook, who was born Joseph López (his father was Spanish and his mother was Irish). Benchley archly observed that anyone writing for a “serious” publication was scorned for writing about vaudeville performers on suspicion that they were claiming to make a great discovery. The critic, however, remarked that the “One-Man Circus,” who juggled, played a variety of instruments, wire-walked, and offered rapid-fire nonsensical verbal feats of comedy, though, after his brother Leo (they were orphaned as children) died in 1916, he retired.
Cook was coaxed back on the stage by impresario Earl Carroll for the latter’s Earl Carroll Vanities of 1923 and the performer’s Rain or Shine opened in early February at George M. Cohan’s Theatre where it ran through the rest of 1928 after 356 performances. Two years later, he starred in Fine and Dandy, and one of the cast for both productions was Dave Chasen, whose West Hollywood restaurant was later famous in our area. Benchley lauded Cook’s career and work in Rain or Shine, though he had a typically caustic complaint for “a highly offensive man” and “dear little scamp” who yelled “At-a-boy, Joe!” as the entertainer readied for a slack-wire feat requiring great concentration, which was broken by “such terrible people.”
In his “Just Between Us Girls” feature, Lloyd Mayer attempted to mimic the breathless and heavily stressed and accented patter between a budding playwright and a silent friend, with a sample being
My deaR, I’m ACtually GURgling with GLEE at this point because I’m HONestly so exCITed I could BUTter BEETS, no less, because I mean I’m WRITing a PLAY at this point1can you BEAR it, my dear? GOSH, I’m SIMply THRILLED about the situation, my dear, because I mean I’ve ALways been all-of-a-SHIV-and TINGle to exPRESS myself, sort of, in some arTIStic MEdium or something because I REALly think the iDEA is TERribly inTRIguing—I mean I ACtually DO!
Another example of mockery is a short piece titled “Stream of Consciousness: During a Visit to an Art Museum with an Erudite Friend,” making fun of those self-appointed experts sharing their purported knowledge. A bit of the banter is:
Nothing is more remarkable than Rembrandt’s method chiaroscuro hep hep keep in step his ability to make light a medium for the expression of emotional feeling by surrounding it with roast beef medium and waves of darkness, a darkness which is realistic yet idealistic, transparent with every indication that it can never die die deedle dee dum dee dee die die I sigh I cry it’s just a bit of Heaven when my baby smiles at Tintoretto . . . Manet is great in “Girl With a Parrot” she doesn’t seem to mind but women can stand so much more oh polly polly wants a cracker wants a cracka wants a crack at your jaw jaw jaw presenting marvelous modulations of the chord of gray with clear vibrant note of yellow and black sports before the eyes black sports black blackety-black blankety-blank while Whistler though he learned much from Manet and the Japanese did not need the help help help help help help HELP . . .
Sherwood’s succinct reviews of recent movies includes his opinion that Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus was “the funniest picture, in fact, that any one has ever made,” though Douglas Fairbanks did not fare well in his The Gaucho as the critic groused “one can’t help wishing that [he] would leave the preaching to Cecil B. De Mille,” this apparently because the star had his wife, Mary Pickford, appear in a cameo as the Virgin Mary.
German auteur F.W. Murnau’ Sunrise, which incorporated music and sound effects as a transition to talking pictures and which was honored at the first Academy Awards for “Unique and Artistic Picture,” was lauded as “a extraordinary achievement” and that “its dramatic strength is increased materially by the fine work of Janet Gaynor and George O’Brien,” the former also taking home an Oscar for her efforts.
The last on the list was the World War I drama, Wings, starring Clara Bow, Buddy Rogers (who became Pickford’s husband after her divorce from Fairbanks) and Richard Arlen and which Sherwood adjudged as “a swift and rather gruesome melodrama of the war in the air” though it was “distinguished” by the work of the principal male actors.
In the editorial page, a lengthy critique of two well-known magazines was provided, with the opening observation that “our saddest papers are our critical weeklies, such as the New Republic and the Nation,” which, while interesting and full of information, established a conundrum in that “the trouble, as usual, is to determine how much of what they add [to public discourse] is worth the pains they take to do so.”
The New Republic was launched by liberal progressives in 1914 and it was asserted that it “produces in some readers a sense of entire ignorance about human affairs,” though it was added that “of course we are considerably in that state.” Moreover, it was asserted that,
When the New Republic is brought before the bar of Eternal Justice it will have to answer to the charge of knowing so much that no movement was ever good enough for it.
Dating back to 1865 and succeeding to a publication run by famed abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, The Nation was acquired about 15 years later Henry Villard, who owned the New York Post and was essentially the paper’s literary supplement. In 1918, Villard’s son Oswald, who was a co-founder of the NAACP took over the enterprises, sold the newspaper and recast The Nation as a public affairs magazine with a decidedly liberal bent, though he soured on President Woodrow Wilson and was against the United States joining the League of Nations. In the later 1930s, Villard turned conservative, including being an early member of the America First Committee.
Life called the publication “a very sad paper” that was apt “to point out that every one is fallible, that large numbers of people are crooked, that our prejudices in favor of keeping what we have are an obstacle to the path of getting what we ought to have, and that our prejudices in favor of being as we are are a hindrance to being what we ought to be.”
This was all felt to be helpful, but it was remarked that The Nation declared that it was “materially better than anybody else” and this “leaves one dejected about the culpability and selfishness of the powers that are,” though it was not clear “whether we would advance more rapidly to righteousness under the leaders that Mr. Villard might offer us.” The piece commented that “criticism is a job all by itself” while concluding that content in such publications as the ones discussed amounted to “warning readers who value their mental health not to find their sole diet in journals of criticism.”
For all the humor pervading this issue of Life, there are certainly some serious commentaries and trenchant observations that are useful in understanding some aspects of late 1920s America and for our interpretation of that time period when we cover the history of the Temple family at La Casa Nueva. We have more issues of the magazine and others of the time to return to in future posts on this blog, so be sure to check back for those.