Life, 1929-06-21 · page 24 of 40
Life — June 21, 1929 — page 24: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This 1920s Life magazine page satirizes movie theater air-conditioning competition in New York City. The article lampoons theaters that have escalated cooling systems to absurd extremes in summer, creating arctic conditions to outcompete rivals. The satire works through exaggeration: patrons wear overcoats and carry hot water bottles to movies; one theater patron contracts frostbite; another's swollen ears block other viewers' sight lines. The humor peaks in the "Eskimovies" section, describing theaters with bonfires, St. Bernard rescue dogs carrying brandy, ushers in Eskimo costumes, and falling icicles causing injuries. The cartoons illustrate the contrast between tropical summer heat outside and frigid theater interiors. References to Arctic explorers (Amundsen, Peary, Byrd) emphasize the implausibility of the cold. The satire targets both theaters' competitive excess and moviegoers' willingness to endure extreme discomfort for entertainment—even bad "talkies" (early sound films). It's gentle social commentary on commercial one-upmanship and American consumer culture circa the late 1920s.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
North of 53° HAT formerly innocent remark, “Let’s go to the movies,” is now, at least in this great big city of refrigerated theatres, a clarion call heeded only by hardy adventurers and intrepid explorers . . . plunging from a soft tropical night into the frozen depths of a cinema palace is a deed requiring the courage of an Amundsen, the dare-devil recklessness of a Peary... Commander Byrd’s expedition into the Antarctic is but a tea-party compared to the present day movie fan’s trek into the interior of the Paramount or the Capitol. 20° Cooler Inside When movie theatres first started cooling systems they were perfectly contented with a modest drop of twenty degrees but, now that competition is getting keener, each one seems to be trying to outdo the other in making it cold for its customers .. . in fact, they are going entirely too far north with the idea, and it’s no uncommon sight these hot summer nights to see people starting out for the movies in overcoats and furs and carrying hot water bottles and oil stoves. Brrr! -Why, at the Rialto the other night, a friend of mine contracted a severe case of frost bite . . . and, to make it worse, his ears were so swollen that the people behind complained because they couldn’t see the picture... added to the intense cold there is the terrible danger of going to sleep, which means a freezing death, and when you think of some of these talkies you realize how hard it is to keep awake +» but that isn’t all . . . in most of these iced cinemas your breath comes out in great clouds of steam, making it almost impossible to see the picture, which, when you come to think of it, isn’t so bad at that. Eskimovies At the Capitol I saw two people really enjoying the movie in spite of the picture and the cold... they had built a small bonfire and were huddled around it. .. at the Rivoli they have St. Bernard dogs, with bottles of brandy strapped to their backs, running up and down the aisles rescuing customers, and the ushers are all dressed in Eskimo costume ...at the Strand several people were injured by icicles falling from the balcony . . . the man who used to have the hot dog con- cession outside “Strange In- terlude” has made a comicbooks.com ening