Part 1

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Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, Vol. II. No. 21, June, 1921

_It’s Coming!_

_A Laugh, a Sigh; a Smile, a Tear; a Giggle, a Sob; and full-page reproductions of the greatest collection of Art—The Whiz Bang Girls, in Sepia Colors._

THE WINTER ANNUAL of Captain Billy’s WHIZ BANG “_Pedigreed Follies of 1921-1922_” On Sale in October

All new jokes, jests and jingles; Captain Billy’s Advice to the Lovelorn; and Smokehouse Poetry comprising a collection of the best red-blooded poems in the world. Republication of “The Blue Velvet Band,” “The Face on the Barroom Floor,” “Toledo Slim,” “Lasca,” “Evolution,” and “Johnnie and Frankie.” Four times as large and four times as great. Only four months to wait.

* * * * *

+------------------------------- If you like our Farmyard / Capt. Billy’s Whiz Bang, Filosophy and Foolishness, / R.R.2, Robbinsdale, Minn. fill in this coupon. / Enclosed is money order (or / check) for subscription commencing $2.50 per / with .................. issue year. / MONTH / / Name ............................ / Street ........................... / City & State ......................

_Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang_

_America’s Magazine of Wit, Humor and Filosophy_

June, 1921 Vol. II. No. 21

Published Monthly 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.

Price 25 cents $2.50 per year

Contents of this magazine are copyrighted. Republication of any part permitted when properly credited to Capt. Billy’s Whiz Bang.

“We have room for but one soul loyalty and that is loyalty to the American People.”—Theodore Roosevelt.

Copyright 1921 By W. H. Fawcett

Edited by a Spanish and World War Veteran and dedicated to the fighting forces of the United States.

_Drippings From the Fawcett_

Oh, for a modern James Whitcomb Riley! Could the incomparable Hoosier poet be with us today, what a masterpiece he could make out of the ordinary news of the day. With such material at hand as this from the columns of the Chicago Herald-Examiner, he could bring tears to the eyes of those with fond reminiscences. Under a heading, “LAST ONE IN CHICAGO DESTROYED BY FIRE,” the newspaper states:

The last one in Chicago burned down last night. The fire engine got around to the back yard of 1102 Hastings st., too late.

Truly, brevity is the soul of wit!

* * * * *

A news article in the daily papers say a Chicago woman has filed suit against her husband on the ground that he refused to pare her toe nails, and the husband comes back with the counter-charge that she smeared her face with cold cream to such an extent that he’d get it tangled up in his hair during the night.

To our mind, this suit opens up some wonderful possibilities, especially, as Mr. Stillman would say, when the supply of Indian guides gives out. Supposing, as our London co-scribe says, a woman wedded to a highlander discovered after the nuptials that her husband refused to shave the hair off his calves, might she not be able to file her divorce with reasonable hope of success?

Again, we have the man who, when taking a bath, within earshot of his wife’s bedroom, insists on singing unbearable songs of the type the Yanks sang in France—

“She’s Mademoiselle from Armentieres, who hasn’t been kissed for forty years. Hinky Pinky Parley Vouz.”

Surely a Chicago court would grant her a split from her spouse. And a husband who would bite his wife’s mole also might be in danger of being divorced by a woman who believed she was entitled to a less emotional husband.

* * * * *

Twice, by urgent requests from ardent defenders of the fair sex, Whiz Bang has reproduced “The pedigreed Persian Cat” from its issue of May, last year. You’ll remember it—the story prose of the perfumed kitty who wandered out the back door for air and was lured away by an alley tom cat, and who, upon her return later, told her kittens their Pa was a traveling man.

We’ve been waiting patiently for some traveling man to register his protest and step up with straight dope to refute intimation that a feline member of the fraternity enticed the perfumed pussy over the primrose path. And now we have it—a poem in answer, from the pen of one who signs “Josh M. Allong.”

“I resent the intimation that a member of my profession was to blame,” he writes. “The original poem is propaganda to whitewash the reputation of a loose and unprincipled female, even if she is only a cat. Therefore, I am writing the following true version.”

_This Persian Kitty, perfumed and fair,_ _Did not go out on the porch for air,_ _But she saw that tom cat taking a stroll_ _And she laid a plan to get his roll._

_For she saw that he was a country swell_ _Who would fall for any tale she’d tell,_ _And, while acting so sweet and innocent,_ _She was full of guile and devilment._

_Then she led him along to a quiet spot_ _Where they bring it along at a dollar a “Bot”_ _And, while he spent his hard earned tin,_ _She stole his watch and his diamond pin._

_And, when she had him as clean as a bone,_ _Sneaked off with her lover and left him alone,_ _Hungry and footsore, to trod the way_ _Back to the farm and the new mown hay._

* * * * *

After reading the accounts in the Saturday Blade of the Stillman divorce case, our hired man, Gus, asks me if he can have the job as “Indian” guide at my Pequot, Minnesota, cabin resort this summer and fall. Gus, however, is doomed to disappointment, because I have engaged a real half breed Indian for the job.

* * * * *

Although, as Gus, our hired man, says, Deacon Miller, my neighbor, doesn’t like my Whiz Bang and claims he tears it up outside his door and lets the wind scatter the pieces of paper all over his wheat field, we’ll have to give the Deacon credit for rearing a bunch of ladylike cows. One of the Deacon’s bossies broke through the barbed-wire fence which separates his pasture from mine, while I was at Pequot. The cow unceremoniously walked into my house through the open door, looked at the pictures on the wall and then walked up to the mirror to see if her horns were on straight.

Not finding anyone at home, the cow, as is the custom, left her card and departed.

* * * * *

Johnny Beaton, noted Minnesota Bohemian, told a rather good story the other day while he and I were shopping for schnapps in Minneapolis. During the inspection of our purchases, Johnny, who hails from Ranier, Minn., on the Canadian boundary, said he had recently engaged in a rip-roaring poker game. In this game were two Englishmen from the Canuck side of the line. The Englishmen always referred to a five-dollar bill as “a pound.” “I’ll raise you two pounds,” said the first Englishman. “I’ll make it five bloody more pounds,” replied the second. About this time a local bootlegger, who had been testing his own product, blurted out as he pushed in his wad of money in the center of the table: “I’ll raise you three tons.” The bootlegger hauled in the pot.

_Our Movie Gossips_

_Elinor Glyn is pursued by the ghost of “Three Weeks” and the gossips are trying to catch her flirting! Mary and Doug aid Bennie Ziedman in courtship for Marjorie Daw! Rudolph Valentino turns the tables of his separation-wife, Jane Acker! Bill Hart and Jane Novak may get married and live in Spanish “duplex”! My, my, what morsels of gossip we hear from our bevy of Hollywood and Los Angeles correspondents!_

Pity Poor Elinor Glyn! Screen folk, suspicious because England’s titian-haired authoress wrote “Three Weeks,” are reported sleuthing around the Los Angeles hotels and cafes and the Lasky studio, trying to catch Mrs. Glyn flirting! Leastwise, the gossips are busy, and the dainty morsel upon which they are chewing is none other than Mrs. Glyn’s purported fondness for dancing.

“Where’s Mrs. Glyn?” they ask around the Lasky studio.

“Oh, somewhere dancing, I suppose,” comes a reply in much the same tone as was used during the war when the ladies danced while friend husband dodged Whiz Bangs in France.

Mrs. Glyn’s famous novel, “Three Weeks,” might have been her worst personal faux pas. At the great Navy ball in the Ambassador hotel, she remained for the most part of the evening on the balcony overlooking the ball-room floor, accompanied by one of her youthful actor admirers, and as her gaze passed over the heads of mere ensigns, four-stripers looked up, but feared to tread, maybe. At least, Mrs. Glyn did not dance with many, according to the correspondent of this great family journal.

Mrs. Glyn is writing a new story for the Lasky company. Of course the Lasky people aren’t telling around just yet what the story is to be about, but the gossips whisper that it’s to be like this:

A girl, born of a Russian dancer mother, and a staid American father, grows up into a beautiful woman. However, everyone who knew of her mother’s wild, wild life, fear the girl will develop into the same sort of female. But she never does, until, way out west, she is bitten by a snake. Then she becomes so, so wild! Just what form her wildness takes, has not yet been ascertained. At any rate, the hero is right there at the climax wishing she wasn’t wild (?) so he heroically sucks the poison from her wound and quiets her nerves again! It’s called “The Great Moment.”

* * * * *

It seems that since “Mary” and “Doug.” have been married, they have turned into regular old match-makers. They are working on all their friends. Can it be they are just now concentrating on sweet, blonde Marjorie Daw, who is one of Mary Pickford’s most intimate friends?

Marcel De Sano, the dark, handsome and entirely morose Universal director is believed infatuated with the fair Marjorie just now. He recently attended an informal little house dance in Hollywood and lurked in a shadowy corner all evening because Marjorie was not with him. Mary and Doug. are quietly and intensively working overtime to interest Marjorie in Bennie Ziedman, business manager for “Doug.” Now, Bennie is entirely cheerful, he’s a nice unaffected little chap whom everyone likes and they say Doug. pays him some fat salary! Bennie hasn’t his supposed rival’s mysterious South-of-Europe eyes and hair, but he’s an enterprising, live-wire Yankee. Now, Mary and Doug. are a couple of sly, old match-makers. Maybe they know they will spoil everything if they urge Marjorie to choose Bennie, or if they knock any of her other suitors, so they adroitly throw Bennie and Marjorie together on many occasions. Whether Bennie and Marjorie are aware of this or not is a mystery.

Quite recently, Doug. was frightfully interested in purchasing a home at Santa Barbara. Of course, it being a business matter, Ziedman, the business manager, must needs go along to inspect the property. I think they even kidded several hopeful real estate dealers into believing that Mr. Fairbanks was really intending removing his famous family to Santa Barbara. At any rate, it made it possible for them to take Marjorie and Bennie to Santa Barbara for a week-end trip and throw them together for three complete days.

Nothing has developed yet, but all know Bennie’s blush and his chronic suffering from shyness. Perhaps he hasn’t yet roused his courage, or is handsome De Sano getting in his quiet, intense deep stuff? All Hollywood wonders!

* * * * *

Rudolph Valentino, the handsome young Italian actor who plays the lead in “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” is the husband of Jane Acker, who also plays leads in pictures. Valentino, it will be remembered, once was Joan Sawyer’s dancing partner in vaudeville.

Well, anyhow, the Valentino family separated about a year ago. For a time, Rudolph was heartbroken over the separation and urged his mutual friends to help him make up the difference. Just then, Jane had offers galore from film companies and she was believed upstage and independent, and to have refused to consider Valentino for a second session. Now, lately, the tables have turned. Valentino has made a great hit in the Metro photoplay taken from the biggest seller of last year. He can just about command his own salary in filmdom from now on. And, wife Janie hasn’t had such an easy winner. With dozens of companies ceasing to produce, offers haven’t come bounding in at an alarming rate. Or perhaps Jane didn’t know husband was such a capable actor and could make such a hit? Can it be she at last realizes what a precious jewel she has lost, and that now it is Jane’s turn to hope they make up, and Valentino’s to assert manly indifference toward the fair sex entirely? Hollywood wonders how it will come out.

* * * * *

Close friends of Bill Hart say he is to marry beautiful Jane Novak, who has played so many leads in Hart pictures. All the evidence seems to point that way. Bill declared through the press that April 2 last, was his final day in motion pictures.

Jane will receive her final decree of divorce within a few weeks now. Bill is building on to his lovely home in Hacienda Park. The Spanish mansion now is divided into two sections with a long roofed corridor running between. The new wing of rooms has lately been added to the lovely mansion. Is Bill going to be a truly modern husband and keep his own sanctum sanctorum at one end of the mansion for himself and allow his wife to have a number of rooms in which she, of her own free will, may roam as she pleases? Most wives would never be bored with the sort of Bill who planned his romantic nest with such nicety!

* * * * *

Only Four Months

“The Blue Velvet Band,” “The Face on the Barroom Floor,” “Johnnie and Frankie” and scores of other red-blooded poems will appear in the Winter Annual of Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, “Pedigreed Follies of 1921-22,” which will be published in October. This year, Whiz Bang’s greatest entertainer will appear four times the regular monthly’s size, and will contain, for the most part, brand-new stuff, but for the benefit of new readers, stories and verse from early issues will be reprinted. Only four months to wait! Don’t write for last year’s Annual! It was sold out within thirty days!

* * * * *

A Short Story

His young wife laughed till she creaked as he slowly drank his iced tea.

“You are laughing,” he said, wiping his well-formed lips with the hem of the tablecloth. “Why?”

“I just happened to remember,” she said between gasps, “that I put the cyanide of potassium in the iced tea instead of the rat trap!”

It was too droll. He laughed heartily as he slid under the table.

* * * * *

A Single Woman’s Geography

Cape of Good Hope—Sixteen.

Cape Flattery—Twenty.

Cape Lookout—Twenty-five.

Cape Fear—Thirty.

Cape Farewell—Forty.

* * * * *

Men

Men are what women marry. They have two feet, two hands, and sometimes two wives, but never more than one collar button, or one idea at a time.

Like Turkish cigarettes, men are all made of the same material, the only difference being that some are a little better distinguished than others.

Generally speaking, they may be divided into three classes, husbands, bachelors, and widowers. Bachelors are a commodity, husbands a necessity, and widowers a luxury, especially when making love.

_Arthur Neale’s Page_

I took my girl out last night, but when I tried to kiss her she smacked my face and carried on something terrible. When I got back to her house with her again I said: “Katie, what’d you want to lose your head for like that tonight?” She said: “Well, maybe I did lose my head. But I kept my reputation, thank God!”

* * * * *

Something to Worry About

In the new Folies Bergere show, Paris, the girlies are clad entirely in paint, news dispatches state.

* * * * *

“Are your feet insured?” I asked A dancing girl from France. No answer. Then she said at last: “It’s not that kind of dance.”

* * * * *

In any newspaper you can find pictures of charming women underneath which it reads: “Miss So-and-So, 20 years of age.” (Why do those printers always leave out that word “was”?)

* * * * *

As I was toying with the N. Y. Coffee Cake in the Times Square Automat the other day, I sighted an old friend I hadn’t seen for several years. I went up to him and said: “Why, Billy, where have you been keeping yourself all these years?” He said: “Well, early in 1914 I went to Paris to study art.” “Is that so?” I said; “and did you get far with your studies?” “Well,” he said, “it was like this. When I arrived there in June, 1914, we began by taking studies from the head. In July it was head and shoulders; and in August, in August that darned war started. Bad luck to the Germans!”

* * * * *

_To make their dresses nowadays,_ _Girls use a lot of cloth._ _But looks as if in future days,_ _It’s hardship for the moth._

* * * * *

HE: “I’d be tickled to death to teach you to swim.”

SHE: “I’d be tickled to death if you did.”

* * * * *

_I saw a statue yesterday,_ _And on the quiet between us,_ _I think it’s quite correct to say_ _The lady’s name was Venus._ _Unveiled in such and such a year_ _Was written at the base._ _But those who took the veil, ’twas clear,_ _Did not again replace._

* * * * *

_If she has a past, she needn’t tell—_ _The girl in a musical show._ _But if she possesses a birth-mark as well,_ _It’s something the whole world will know._

* * * * *

They say that for a smart, wise lot of lads the New York hotel clerks are hard to beat. But not always. The other day I happened to be in the Astor lobby when a pair of young newlyweds came in from the street. The rice and confetti was still over them for all to see. The happy groom went up to the desk to register. In the course of the conversation I overheard this from the clerk: “Yes, sir; and do you want a room with twin beds?” Can you beat it!

* * * * *

_“To follow horses isn’t right,”_ _My father always said._ _So what I follow every night_ _Is chickens round instead._

* * * * *

Reserved Seats

The Amorous One: Do you ever peep through the key-hole when I am sitting in there with your sister?

Small Brother: Sometimes. When mother ain’t there.

* * * * *

Tasty Stuff

“His lips moved lazily over her face. ‘You taste so good,’ he sighed, and held her closer.”—From “This Side of Paradise.” There is a great difference in tastes, however. No person of discrimination would compare the taste of a sunkissed, flower scented maiden of the prairies with the flavor of a sootladen damsel from Pittsburgh or South Chicago.

* * * * *

Musings of a Bachelor

Don’t kiss him with a snap; be coy about it. Don’t let him see the practice you’ve had.

Woman spends much time in thinking what she would do were she a man, while man spends much time knowing what he would do if he were a woman.

Some folk take pleasure in seeing that others have none.

A married man fell in a vat of moonshine mash and drowned, but the papers said he died in good spirits.

Love is an itching of the heart—a place where you can’t scratch.

Girls, you can always tell if a man really loves you. If he says, “I love you,” and drawls it out as if it hurt him, he’s silver plated goods. If he says it as if he were ordering a glass of beer, that shows he is sizing up your dad’s pocket book, but if he says “I love you,” and hugs as if he’d never let go, and flushes up like a lobster, nail him; he’s it.

* * * * *

A Telephone Retort

“Operator, if you will give me this number I will give you a nice, sweet kiss.”

“Go to it, kid, I am standing on the receiver.”

* * * * *

High Explosive

We have received a report of a New Orleans newspaperman who took a big swig of white mule hootch and then backed up against a bale of cotton and said: “Come on, big boy, let’s go!”

_Adventures of Sven_

May Dear Uncle Billy: Ay taking may pen in hand with may arm in sling from getting struck by lightning for $7.50. Ay bane working in gude moving picture they call “FADED OVERALLS” an Ay bane nature nobleman running ’round mountain ’bout saxteen mile an’ skol carry bull calf on may back Ay skol pull out from landslide by hind feets. After while it skol began to raining when faller turn fire hose on me. I skol be standing under weeping willow tree somewhere in Montana yust back of electric lights plant in Hollywood. When faller turn on hose, calf she getting mad an’ start to kick an’ beller. Director he holler “Hold it,” an’ By Golly! Ay bat your life Ay hold her lak Dickens so she aint yump away. They got to getting tree struck by lightning in big storm so Ay skol die hero after Ay bane cattle thief already so Director holler “Ready,” an’ feller turn on yuice in wire that bane running from tree to light plant. Bull calf she bane wet from hose lak me an’ yump round till she skol getting her tail caught in crotch of weeping willow tree an’ short circuit, so when faller throw in switch juice she run down calf’s tail an’ hit me in may neck so Ay see stars an’ moons an’ 670000.00 dollars worth moving pictures for two minutes an’ when Ay skol waking up Ay bane in Mercenary Hospital with blondy nurse girl giving may big shot home-made alcohol mixed with chile peppers. Ay swallowing quick an bane be knock out ’gan for sax hour till Ay getting sober up.

Ay meeting faller hyer name Yoe Martin they call Chimpanzy. He looking lak faller Ay used to know in St. Paul named Murphy. Yoe, he aint talk much but he looking lak hal. He bane quiet faller an’ never going out an’ get fresh with girls. He bane in Hollywood two year an’ not skol getting divorce yet.

Ay get introduction to girl name Sweet Patootie working on set in Universal City. She skol kom from Fon du Lak Wisconsin because she looking lak Theda Barrels an’ she aint skol making only nine dollar week in laundry. Ay aint know her only ten minutes before she swiping may watch an’ saxty cent lunch money so Ay got to walk back to Loose Angels from Universal City. She making gude allright Ay bat your life.