 |
unearths some literary gems.
From Vanity Fair, January-June 1920:
***[I think we need to know more about this "code of signals"!]Just below Fourteenth Street George Browne conducted a small chop-house...much frequented by the [theatrical] profession, especially by members of the Union Square and Wallack companies....He played small parts in Wallack's company and had a code of signals by which he was wont to inform patrons in the audience what special dish would be served in his chop-house after the theatre.***Ah, here is Clifford!...No, it's a haddock. Our mistake.***Hansford Wilson was the man who put the Stop and Look in Listen, Lester! [Wodehouse]***Everybody has a friend...who is "more fun than a circus."***[Bonus: Thelma Cudlipp Grosvenor (a real illustrator's name)]Notes on some of the attachments:1. "Character Cars": Well, of course I want this to denote custom-designed vehicles for cartoon characters, e.g., Smoky Stover's Foomobile, Fred Flintstone's car, etc.2. "Conversely": My take on this brace of ads: "Use your belt as a tire! Or, Conversely, use your tire as a belt!"3. "pearls": Well, of course you can slip the artificials by us if you distract us with a hat plume as tall as the Eiffel Tower!4. He's made friends with winter, and all outdoors is calling to him. That's why he's reclining on a window ledge looking apprehensively at the wintry outdoors.5. Well, you know what they say: You can lead a person to the best pajamas in the world...but if he's not really tired and he'd rather spend the night perched on his windowsill grinning at the Woolworth Building, you can't make him sleep.6. Note how Wodehouse handled the end of the alphabet.
|