Fan Magazine Fun: “My goodness, don’t they look strange?”

So here’s a slightly baffling item from the quirky magazine Film Fun, which as you may recall is the gift that keeps on giving. I’ve decided that if Film Fun took human form, it would definitely be a starstruck teen with ADHD.

The June, 1926 issue included this two-page spread called “The Family Album.” Here’s the first page (rightclick and hit “open image in new tab” if you want to zoom in):

Which is all somewhat incomprehensible without context. Basically, stars posed for Victorian-style portraits meant to look like dead “relations” of yore, in a tongue-in-cheek manner, of course. Captions ramped up the fun by giving them old-fashioned sounding names like “Lulu Hicks” and “Hiram Bump.” Oh, you kids!

Here’s page two–yes, this is the photo spread where that one unusual photo of Buster comes from:

“Just to bring back those dear, dim, distant, dead days–when women bustled about in bustles, when men pulled their shirts over their heads, when no nice girl wore less than three petticoats, one of ’em flannel, and children were seen and not heard; just to return, in other words, to a simpler, more halycon time, the good old days which weren’t so good–if you ask us–we’ve dug up, disinterred and resurrected some rare specimens of the camera’s art–a few antique (well, if they ain’t, they look it) examples of photography such as you can’t get nowadays. (Who wants to?)” Guffaw!

Speaking of Buster, he would do a similar photoshoot for Photoplay (I think it was Photoplay–I had the link but it escaped me, anyone have it?), where he posed as various “relatives” for his “Family Album.” An example:

GAAAAHHHHHHHH!!

I think I need some time to recover.

Well, no one can say they weren’t creative back then…!

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