Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Dr. Seuss and Flit: "Theatrical Note"


I was beginning to wonder if Dr. Seuss had given up on being a media whore, but no! Here he is on January 5, 1929 with yet another "Flit" advertisement.

This picture gives us some crucial insight into vaudeville; we now know that these sorts of acts juggled cheese-balls, candles, flowers, piranhas, and "bowling-and-killing" implements, all while standing on the ass-faced pig-dog.

Why Groucho Marx is holding the Flit I have no idea.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Er - could the man pounding on the table (in your prior post) be killing a bug manually because he ran out of Flit?

Interesting name, Flit. It reminds me of a minor character is Dashiell Hammett's Maltese Falcon named Flitcraft. As this story-within-a-story goes, a man walking down the street is nearly killed by a falling beam. Due to this, he never returns home, instead starts life over in another city, but ends up in a very similar job and family like the one that he abandoned.

I've never found out why this filler story is in the Maltese Falcon story, but two things happen whenever I hear of Flit:

1. I feel like making a two-handed pump-gun gesture;

2. I think of Flitcraft.

The Flitcraft story reappeared in Paul Auster's novel, Oracle Nights - his protagonist, a struggling writer, decides to take up and finish the Flitcraft saga.

See how this death-spray has taken on a life of its own! And its association with the beloved Dr. Seuss is a real hoot.

Thank you for bringing it to our attention!

Adam Thornton said...

Flit, for me, automatically invokes the sort of thing moths do. I suppose that's the actual verb, "to flit," to fly in a sort of graceful, jumping manner.

Moths do it; flies and wasps and flying ants certainly don't.

I suppose it's a more catchy name than "Creep!"