Squirted With Seltzer

We're old enough to be aware that squirting people with seltzer water used to be a mainstay of early-20th-century slapstick comedy, but we're not old enough to understand quite why it was thought to be so amusing. Does it get funnier if the victim of the prank is a scantily-clad burlesque dancer?

This photo was, according to the captions, taken in a New York City nightclub. I found it in the May 1949 issue of Eyeful magazine.