Are Married Policemen Safe?

In an era of burgeoning modernity, Henry Lehrman’s 1917 satire, 'Are Married Policemen Safe?', functions as a feverish commentary on the intersection of Victorian prudery and the burgeoning liberation of the jazz age's precursor. The narrative follows a stern, perhaps performatively righteous, crusade against women whose attire defies the rigid, abbreviated legal standards of the day. This moralistic dragnet, intended to sanitize the public sphere, instead precipitates a comedic collapse of authority. As the guardians of law and order—policemen and jurists alike—confront the very 'indecency' they seek to suppress, the professional gaze dissolves into a libidinous one. The hunters become the hunted, ensnared by the aesthetic and personal charms of their captives. It is a quintessential study in the fallibility of the badge when confronted with the undeniable pull of human attraction, wrapped in the frantic, kinetic energy of early Fox Sunshine slapstick.