Motion Picture Magazine: Ads from 1924 ~ Friday, July 19, 2019

The February 1924 issue of Motion Picture Magazine contains Installment II (out of an unknown total) of "Thistledown, the Serial Written Around the Younger Generation". Since the story is a romance you can pretty well tell where it's going without any further installments--though I am a little curious what led a movie star to move to a small town under an assumed name, work as a diner waitress, and take up residence in an abandoned mansion. These questions will have to remain mysteries.

I liked the bit quoted below, not necessarily for its literary merit but because it's a nice description of a scene you could have encountered a century ago on the fringes of any American city, where a trolley line has been built along a still-rural road in speculation that development will bring future business.

Dolly spoke but once, briefly, to remind him to let her out at Three Corners.

"Very well," acquiesced young Daggett, just as briefly.

But when they came to the place where the cross-roads reveal naught by starlight save a dim trolley-track and ghostly bill-boards and telegraph poles and on one corner a fringe of woods stretching out more dim and spectral--then the young man unbent a little.

"It looks pretty lonely out here--sure you won't be afraid?"

...

Dolly watched the disappearing tail-light until it became an imagined speck; then, instead of waiting for the trolley, or for whatever she might expect to encounter at Three Corners, she started walking up that road which leads by the old De Bossert place. After walking about a hundred yards she turned into the woods where an ancient and overgrown avenue disclosed itself.

The ads are interesting. There are ads for beauty products, for both genders, and for correspondence courses and self-help books to launch a career in the movies (acting and "scenario"-writing), other entertainment fields like music and cartooning, and even unrelated professions such as hotel manager and railroad traffic engineer. "How-to books" were a bit of a running gag in the silent movie era. There are also ads for potentially entertainment-related items such as typewriters and musical instruments, and random things like bicycles.

(Click on images to see an enlarged version).