Ye Gods! What'd John L. Have Said to Hair Curling and Brow Arching?

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1920

My dears, you should see that pompadour!

And that isn't half of it. He's having his eyebrows daintily arched, too!

And, to cap it all, his cheeks are adorned with the best grade of milady's rouge carefully handpainted over a field of perfumed pink powder. 'Tis even hinted that for a time he considered wearing a lace-covered corset to accentuate the lines of his form-fitting suit of clothes, but this has later been indignantly denied.

No, Genevieve, your guess is wrong. It isn't Launcelot de Slushe, the hero of "Nine Oceans of Tears" in the movie — it's no less a personage, they say, than Jack Dempsey, heavyweight fistic champion of this universe.

Dempsey won't say whether it's the influence of his recent trial at the movies or the success of his next opponent, Georges Carpentier, the bearcat boulevardier of gay Paree, but —

The erstwhile training camp, 'tis whispered, exudes an odor of lilac toilet water and face powder. Electric curling irons are said to adorn the walls where boxing gloves once hung. Cauliflower-eared attendants no longer take to road work and handball — manicuring and eyebrow-arching is the order of the day now, according to latest reports.

So much did Dempsey admire his first marcel wave at the hands of a Los Angeles society barber that he returned to have his brows arched and has since made it a regular practice, if Los Angeles advices may be believed.

But, ye gods! What would the shades of John L. Sullivan and Bob Fitzsimmons say if they could return to earth and see a modern fistic champion?

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 10.