Read Ebook: Captain Billy's Whiz Bang Vol. 2. No. 16 January 1921 America's Magazine of Wit Humor and Filosophy by Various Fawcett W H Wilford Hamilton Editor

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Ebook has 412 lines and 24448 words, and 9 pages

Editor: W. H. Fawcett

If the day looks kinder gloomy And chances kinder slim, If the situation's puzzlin' And the prospect's awful grim; And perplexities keep pressin'-- If hope is nearly gone, Jest bristle up and grit your teeth And keep on keepin' on.

OUR MOTTO:

Published Monthly by W. H. Fawcett, Rural Route No. 2 at Robbinsdale, Minnesota

Entered as second-class matter May 1, 1920, at the post office at Robbinsdale, Minnesota, under the Act of March 3, 1879.

Things started off wrong in the beginning when Adam had to give up one of his ribs for Eve, but in spite of this, he, like a game sport, tipped his fig leaf to her upon their first introduction. All ran smoothly until Eve raised Cain, and thus our ancestors kept up a constant increase until Noah got inside dope about the flood, whereupon he built the Ark.

Our troubles might have been relegated to the word finis, but Noah stuck up a good old boat and saved his wife, his animals, and their wives. Then Nero played havoc with Rome and made the fiddle famous as the city burned. We've been fiddling ever since.

Job next started showing his rights with the off shoots of the chosen people and they said they would stone him to death if he didn't stop. He came right back by saying, "If you do I'll turn my bears loose and they will eat you." The people did, Job did and the bears did. Then Job was King.

I'd like to take some of your time and present the argument between Anthony and Cleopatra, but there was so little between them that it is hardly worth while.

In the days when Cleopatra and Anthony were such good friends, Anthony had just won a big battle and he sent his runners to Cleopatra to tell her to doll up in her glad rags and they would go out stepping. On the way to her flat he met his runners returning. They announced, "Oh, Kind Sir: Cleopatra is down with Tonsilitis."

"Darn those Greeks," said Anthony, "I shall declare war on Athens tomorrow."

Henry Ford started one thing that he played wrong , when he decided to end the World's War by taking a lot of men and old maids to France and Germany. If he'd taken some of Ziegfield's chorus girls the war would have been over and President Wilson would still have been a great man. Just march those girls up No Man's land, and there would have been so many soldiers following them that a Burroughs adding machine couldn't count them in the time it takes light to travel from the Sun to Jupiter. Army recruiting stations would have been as popular as senators' cellars, and the sentiment between the two would have been much stronger than the antagonism between the Bolshevists and the anti-saloon league. But here we are presenting this valuable dope several years too late. Tell your children about it, and they can stop the next war though .

Then a bunch of senators, with big cellars and stills in their attics, passed a law that the combination of wine, women and song must be reduced to women and song. Suppose we substitute nut-sundays, women and song. Substitute your eye, we'll just play the two undeceased members of the combination a little stronger, unless we get into some senator's cellar.

Don't cry, little children, the war is over, and so is a lot of your money, but Uncle Sam will make a lot more, and the Brigadier Generals and the movie actors will get it.

At present we can assume that this is the Movie Age and Out-rage. We walk right past a speech made by the President or some other vote-made man, and several miles to see "Doug" Fairbanks skin his shins by walking up the side of a seven-story building on his hands or to see Charlie Chaplin swing a broom at the villain and hit the Queen of Russia, who is dressed in sackcloth and ashes because of the murder of her last thirty-three husbands.

Movie actors are all right, though. Why, they make more money than we ever hear about. Figures compiled by the Secretary of the Treasury show that a man and wife and family of seventeen children and pets, could live on what Mary Pickford spends for silk stockings, but that is the reason we go to the movies, says the henpecked man as his wife drags him home to their little boiler factory where rolling pins are used as sledgehammers.

If prices keep increasing and clothes decreasing, we will be restricted as to the number of leaves we can wear, and they will be fastened to our shivering yet magnanimous anatomy with paper fasteners of the Henry Ford type. Shimmying will then be automatically abandoned, while courting will only take place over the telephone. When we think of Theda Bara it will be as a heavily clad woman.

Just one thing further, and that is, if this world keeps increasing its speed as it has in the past, our heads will be going so fast that they will look like fish bowls. Everything will just work backwards, our nose will run and our feet smell. Just now we're traveling so fast that our hip pockets dip sand as we go around corners, and our feet come up so often that people will think we are laying down. Put on your brakes, dear old United Statesers, and let's slow down to 100 per, or we'll skid into Mexico.

You Win Rubber Pajamas

Lecturer --I venture to assert there isn't a man in this audience who has ever done anything to prevent the destruction of our vast forests.

Man in the audience --I've shot woodpeckers.

January First

The other day Adam approached Peter at the pearly gates and said:

"I should very much like, Peter, to get a pass the first of the year to revisit my old haunts on earth."

"Nothing doing, Adam. You started too much trouble down there when you were a young man."

"Aw, Pete, be a good sport and let me go."

"What do you want to go down there for anyhow?"

"I want to turn over a new leaf."

Gus, our hired man, one of those lucky birds that had imbibed rather too freely of the sacred liquid, had fallen into a watering trough. When I tried to help him as he floundered about, he said: "Offzer, I ken save m'self, you save the womin'n shildern."

If You Look That Way

It's oft been said that woman is a mystery to us that we will never quite see through, no matter how we fuss. It's said that woman is a book forever closed to man, though now and then she condescends slightly to lift the ban. It's oft been said we cannot hope to fathom womankind and to that fact the other sex might well make up its mind. But we have called the libel out and dragged it in the dirt. We see right through her now with ease--thanks to the modern skirt.

Movie Skeletons

Doug thinks he's married to Mary. Mary believes she is married to Doug. Owen Moore, Mary's former hubby, is quite certain he isn't married to Mary and what the state of Nevada thinks isn't causing any particular excitement. If Nevada proved a convenient place to arrange the legal break and figures her dear judges or lawmakers were slip-shoddy she should get some new judges and lawmakers. What is done is done.

What a flurry and flutter there was among the high-brows when they learned that the invites had gone out. Who had been asked? It did not occur to the high-brow ladies that D. W. Griffith is truly the master mind of pictures and that his use of Mrs. Belmont in the picture was smart bait to draw society. Mrs. Belmont really didn't have much to do but appear in an up-to-date gown and give Lillian Gish a haughty look.

But society here went daffy when it became known that some society women had been invited by Mr. Griffith's representatives, while others had not. Immediately there was a buzz of phones and considerable indignation, denouncements and heart-burnings seared the wires. "How came it that Mrs. Such and So had been invited and 'I' have not? It reflects upon my social standing."

How crafty old D. W. must have grinned as the reports went into him of the society ladies' wrath. For lack of brains, poise and downright self-respect society women cart off the well known cake. Newspaper women laughed themselves sick at the coy admissions discreetly tendered them that "Oh, by the way, Mr. Griffith sent me a personal invitation to be present at the opening of 'Way Down East.'" It possibly is stretching it to say that the paper gals laughed themselves sick. They have become so used to such situations that they scarcely laugh at all. They just grin and "bear it"--and proceed openly to kid society in the papers without society apparently becoming the wiser.

It is almost pitiable to watch fair and heavy matrons, who have done well, raising a family or starting one, long for a chance to see themselves upon the screen. They gaze upon Lillian Gish as some ravishly blessed mortal lifted by the Gods but they see no reason why they would not be just as good if given a chance.

Much of the nasty gossip which follows prominent picture folk emanates from the society morgues where every skeleton known to scandal is laid carefully away for future reference.

The fat ladies of wealth who are unable to fit into the screen take a girl, perhaps like Lillian Gish, and in seeming fury that the girl has succeeded, tear what they may of her character to pieces. About any fashionable hotel where gather the disappointed "widows" and dames whose husbands have let them come west for a "rest" may be heard the most intimate details concerning the private life of every person prominent on the screen. Nine times out of ten these details are featured by everything but the truth.

Every girl that ever worked for Griffith, whether she knows it or not, has been the victim of whispers relative to what price she paid for her success. Griffith is a muchly misunderstood man. He is shrewd, too smart for the average picture maker. His people appear to reverence him. Probably no girl regrets her experience and training under this particular director--though not as much can be said for many other directors.

The name of Lillian Gish and Griffith have been mentioned in unsavory tones more than once. The girl is a remarkably fine young woman who scarcely would know what was meant by the insinuations cast abroad concerning her and the director. Wherever Lillian goes her mother is not far away. The two sisters, Lillian and Dorothy, are among the hardest workers upon the screen. It is understood that the late Robert Harron was extremely fond of Dorothy and it is understood that this admiration was not returned in the way that young Harron would have wished.

Harron had a number of sisters, who spent much of their time about the studios where their brother worked. The Gish and Harron families were constantly together and a great friendship existed between them all. It is understood that Dorothy admired Harron tremendously but could not reciprocate his reported love for her. Bobby Harron was an exceptional young man from a moral standpoint. He was clean and wholesome. In fact a number of the Griffith stars have been marked for their personal virtues. In view of these facts it is a relief to point out that some of the unmentionable vices which beset Movieland are partially offset by the cleanliness of many really great stars.

One of the best known girls of the screen sat in one chair throughout a recent party and visitors remarked upon her serenity and refusal to rush the bar.

A wild woman from one of the comedies gave her the once over. "Say, Edna's been stewed for two hours and can't stand up. But she's got sense enough to keep still."

But, referring to the big party. It lasted several days. Some of the guests went home, changed their clothes and came back again. The affair must have cost thousands of dollars. The guests were not numerous but well selected. A number of orchestras were employed, one coming on as one went off shift.

The host was a man of parts. He employed chauffeurs with cars ready to grab any guest who wished to stumble home and might possibly not be deemed able to guide his own car had he come without a driver. Most of the drivers who came to the party left unceremoniously when the party waxed late into the next day. Even chauffeurs have feelings.

The newspaper accounts mostly were suave and soft pedally. But it is said that some of the best newspaper people remembered only the quietness of the opening hour or so and were in no editorial mood to recollect just everything that did happen.

Following his new matrimonial venture the matinee star found himself blessed one morning with a new baby. Just recently the former wife emerged from the east and took apartments at one of the most fashionable Hollywood hotels. She was accompanied by a flock of children.

The moment had come for the former husband to have his time portion of the children. Bright and early on the day after their arrival they made for the father's home, where they were happily received by the foster mother who showed them their half sister, her own child.

Kids will be kids, so it was no wonder that the mother of the flock was surprised and amazed during the course of the morning when one of her brightest young hopes trundled a baby carriage into her room and gaily announced that he had a new sister to show her. He had come down from the home of his father and foster mother with sure enough evidence that father still was raising children.

The papers stated that the mother was threatened with hysteria and bade her surprised child take his charge back to its father's home. For comedy and tragedy, go watch in the halls of childhood.

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