$10,000 If You Die Laughing
Insurance against laughicide is all in the day’s business for these Mad Hatters of the comic greeting-card industry.
By Edward Dembitz
“WHY don’t you write?” the card asks tenderly. “Is your hand broken?” You lift the cover and, wham, a miniature metal bear-trap clamps down on your finger!
“Well, now it is!” jeers the caption. “Now you’ve got a real excuse for not writing.”
If this card kills you, don’t worry about it. The Barker Greeting Card Company of Cincinnati even has that one figured out— they’ve taken out an insurance policy which pays $10,000 to the heirs of anyone who laughs himself to death over one of their products.
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I love how this guy makes such bold predictions about what the future of movie theaters will be like, but fails to anticipate little innovations like sound. The Jazz Singer came out only 4 years after this article was published and there were already short format talkies playing in NYC in 1923.
Famous Manager Predicts Egg-Shaped Playhouses
Plans to Paint Movie Theater Sets on Walls with Light THE day is coming soon when we shall not merely look at the movies; we shall live in them. By scientific blending of color-light painting with action and music, by consummate artistic realism, we shall be transported to a vivid land of drama, where pulsating, colorful life springs from the very walls of the theater in which we sit. While the drama unfolds before us, we shall be encompassed by ever changing lifelike scenes—now the crashing waves of a sea; now the shadows of a great forest; now the towering buildings and the crowded streets of a city—projected in color on the walls about us.
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I don’t really care about the space phone, but that outfit is awesome, not to mention the machine shop.
FOR THE KIDDIES
PHONY PONIES are miniature plastic race horses with Mexican Jumping beans strapped under saddles to propel them. Reveil Toys, Los Angeles. $1.
FIX-IT TRUCK carries its own tools, including a wrench, jack, screwdriver and hammer plus a spare tire. Ideal Toys, 200 Fifth Ave.. N.Y.C. $1.30.
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“SPIRIT TELEVISION” - Latest Trick of Fake Spiritualists
QUICK to adapt their technique to modern styles, fake spiritualists have now introduced “psychic television” to cajole money from those who have suffered bereavement. Promised a view of a loved one who has passed away, the medium’s intended victim is seated before a window in a small, ornate cabinet resembling a television receiver. He writes the name of the dead person upon a blank sheet of paper, which is handed to him on a frame and then placed in the machine. The room darkens. A humming sound is heard from the apparatus.
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Mickey Mouse Goes Classical
By ANDREW R. BOONE
MOVING sound has been added to moving pictures to bring greater realism to the screen. Accompanying Walt Disney’s newest Technicolor creation, “Fantasia,” in which Mickey Mouse and a host of new companions perform to the rhythms of classical music, this latest Hollywood invention made its first public appearance a few weeks ago at the Broadway Theater in New York.
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Toys from Discarded Lamp Bulbs
Spectacular Fireworks Amuse and delight the kiddies by hooking a lamp in which the filament has been broken in circuit with a spark coil. Brilliant, weird, light results.
Gravity Experiment To prove that cold air weighs more than warm, heat the air in one of two carefully balanced bulbs from which the tips have been broken. The cold end will sink.
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This looks like the grandpappy of all those fishing video games that are so popular right now.
Movie Trains Big-Game Anglers
ALL the thrills of deep-sea fishing, from hooking a giant swordfish to fighting it in toward a boat, are provided for the entertainment of sportsmen on land by an ingenious amusement device. Seated before a translucent motion-picture screen, the angler grasps an actual big-game fishing rod and reel fitted with a line that runs to a revolving drum placed just below the screen.
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Get in on Television
HERE is your chance to become an expert in the miracle field of sending pictures through the air. At present, George Waltz, author of this article, is not a television expert, but he will be before he gets through. Go with him and learn all that he means to learn about this absorbing subject.
By GEORGE H. WALTZ, JR.
I SAW something a few days ago that gave me a real kick. I saw, from behind the scenes, the opening night’s program broadcast from station W2XGR, the new $65,000 television broadcasting studio in New York City. Besides getting a real thrill out of it, I was inoculated with the television bug.
What if television still is a long way from perfection? What if the picture you see is small and fuzzy and none too bright? With all its present faults, and it has plenty, it still seems almost like a miracle to me.
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$97 Movie Made in Hollywood Kitchen
By A. L. WOOLDRIDGE Special Hollywood Correspondent
Stories of millions of dollars spent in producing ten-reel movie features have given the public an idea that only a big company could produce profit-making motion pictures. But Robert Florey, expending $97 produced a picture which is making him wealthy!
IF YOU have $100 or so, plus a few old cigar boxes, a motion picture camera, and a desire to break into the movies—as who hasn’t?—you can be your own director and cameraman and produce a motion picture worthy of exhibition in theaters throughout the country. That is, you can it you are as skillful and economical as Robert Florey, who cut his sets from cardboard and cigar boxes and produced in a Hollywood kitchen, at a total cost of $97, a movie which is being shown in United Artists theaters all over America.
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