Here's another old cartoon from many decades ago. It's not a bawdy postcard this time, just a single panel gag cartoon from 1937. I did find it rather puzzling though, but perhaps you can make some sense out of what's going on here:
At first glance, there's a lot of questions about this one. Where is this happening? What's behind the curtain? What job do these men have? Why is there light shining from their heads? Why does that one guy have such a perverse leer? Why have these people removed their shoes? Can someone explain any of this??
In the course of my 'research' I discovered that the most likely scenario is that these men are train conductors or porters, and that the setting here is a sleeper car on a train, although nothing in the artwork suggests this. (Unless the number '4' is meant to give it away?) That would explain the shoes. Oh, and one of the pairs is women's shoes, so there's something untoward going on here, Miss Marple.
The only visual element to this cartoon that I like is the dark-red ink wash for the curtain, although the use of red did make 'cinema ushers' or 'cops doing a brothel raid' a more likely scenario in my mind. Such is the suggestive power of a single colour.
This cartoon is credited to Frank Beaven. He was one of several contributors to Laff-A-Day, a daily gag cartoon panel that ran in American newspapers from 1936 all the way up to 1998, if you can believe that. When King Features revived the series in 2006, its promo statement included this line: "Older readers may get an extra chuckle from scenes of traveling salesmen, two-ton Chevies and women sporting funny hats."
I mean if you don't get a chuckle out of those things you have no soul, yeah?
Until next time.
