Obscurity of the Day: What's The Use?

 

Hard for me to believe that we've not offered George Westcott a moment in the spotlight yet. He penned a goodly number of series for the New York Evening Telegram from 1905 to 1911. Oh, well, I suppose that would be the reason ... finding tearsheets of Evening Telegram material is like discovering a double-yolk egg -- it happens, but it's a mighty rare occurrence. The paper's material was offered in syndication, but it is so rarely seen I'd guess that there was little effort put into marketing. 

I don't know much about Mr. Westcott. A few tidbits have surfaced, though -- in 1905 when he debuted with the Telegram he was supposedly just 19 years old. He graduated from Yale with honours. He claims to have penned and published a duplicate of Charles Dana Gibson's famed "The Eternal Question" before Mr. Gibson did his. All these factoids come from a promotional piece done for Evening Telegram features in 1907, the only bit of marketing I've ever seen. 

Today we look at What's The Use?, an inspired bit of off-the-wall slapstick and wordplay that should whet anyone's appetite for more of Mr. Westcott's offerings. Sadly, this is the only decent sample I have to show -- the rest in my files are blurry microfilm prints. In each installment the unnamed fella in the stove-pipe hat corners some unlucky mark and proceeds to rhyme his way into their bad graces, generally ending up physically assaulted. The feature ran on occasional weekdays from April 25 to September 12 1910.