Part 2

_The following article, written by Rev. Golightly Morrill, was inspired by a tour he made of the movie camps two years ago. We cannot agree that Rev. Morrill’s description fits the present day Hollywood and Los Angeles. Indeed, we found the situation quite pleasing. It is true that Los Angeles is brimful of wim, wigor and witality, and why shouldn’t it be? If one was to take a thousand of the world’s most beautiful women and implant them on Robbinsdale’s virgin soil, or in any other town, Rev. Morrill would find as much to scorch his burning pen. So before you read this, gentle reader, let’s give three cheers for California.—The Editor._

BY REV. “GOLIGHTLY” MORRILL

Pastor, People’s Church, Minneapolis, Minn.

One night I went out from Los Angeles with my moral telescope to make some observations in the movie firmament. Music was playing, but the Muse of Music would never recognize it. In Collins’ Ode, Music was a “heavenly maid,” played in Greece and was Wisdom’s aid, chaste and sublime—perhaps, but not here. It was jazz gone drunk and crazy, to the great delight of prodigal sons and daughters.

Through clouds of cigarette smoke I saw the movie stars. These “heavenly bodies” have very earthly souls. Some were fixed stars at tables, others falling into partners’ arms, and shooting stars were shooting love glances at each other. Some other stars seemed votaries of Astarte, the licentious goddess to whom a temple has been erected in Hollywood, where I was entertained by a French countess, who regaled me with tea, fresh cakes and a veritable Madame de Stael (not stale) vivacious conversation on travel, music, art, literature and religion. Although she was French, I fully understood her good English accent and gesture, as I did the meaning of her charming sister who went to the piano and sang, “I love you.” Morals and movies are not inseparable. Hollywood is the modern Daphne Grove where the Seventh of the Ten Commandments is frequently forgotten or erased.

Southern California, the “land of the flea,” is also an artists’ paradise. The paint most advertised is cosmetics. The dearest paintings I noticed were those walking on the streets. The Angelenos are expert painters of scenery and theatre signs, of auto bodies, and of their own faces with liquor. But why is art necessary at all? They have climate, and that divides the honor with charity in covering a multitude of sins. Nature has placed all California artists in the shade by placing on her easel the matchless pieces of sea, field and mountain. Practical art is found in the “drawings” of gold ore from the soil and money from the pockets of the speculators. The water color is irrigation that turns the brown earth green. The “oil” is petroleum from which modern mining masters are making millions compared with the price the oils of the old masters bring. Murder is one of the fine arts of Los Angeles, promoted by autos which assume the pedestrian has no rights and deliberately knock him right and left and leave him bruised and bleeding. The trouble is not so much wine as auto-intoxication. There is an auto to every thirteen inhabitants, which may account for so many unlucky accidents. The auto roads in the state are the finest in the world. They can’t be called “rotten” even though they are made from decomposed granite.

Most attractive are the beaches near Los Angeles. Here caterpillar trams crawl along, sidewalks which swarm with gum-chewers, popcorn-munchers, gingerale-guzzlers, peanut-masticators, hawkers of red hot dogs, spitters of tobacco, ice cream cone venders, stylish freaks and freakish styles, nice and naughty men, good and bad girls, and roller skaters. I grew dizzy at Ferris wheels, aeroplanes, rollercoasters, the plunge bath of the great unwashed, pavilions of dirt, drink, dancing and dissipation. Over all there hung a Cologne variety of smells. Couples were swinging in pier dance halls to ragtime orchestras. There were high dives in the water, and low dives on the street where the innocent were doped, debauched and robbed. Noise was raised to the nth power. Instead of the sweet sea breeze there was the strong aroma of popcorn and perspiration.

At the beach you discover many things Columbus never found in his travels—peanut shells, dippy dippers, tin cans, can cans, tin horn sports, human lobsters and jelly fish, shell games, gulls and gullibles, papers, lunch boxes, bags, flasks, mermaids, mere men, kids with pails and shovels, playmates, families, spoony couples, kelp, garters, dead fish, fishermen, lines, nets, boats, cottages, hotels, resorts, boardwalks, promenades, bare legs, arms, feet, busts, driftwood and piers. Here one can find lost souls without exploring the shores of Phlegethon, Cocytus and Avernus.

L. A.’s Elysium Park is like the classic one in one respect. When Aeneas went through the Elysian fields all the objects were clothed in a purple light—here it is the haze from innumerable autos whose exhausts wrap everything in smoky pall and smell. The park is a good place to spend hours with the Houris, and to keep it from being a Paradise Lost, one is prohibited from spending the night there. Many enact here the myths of the nymphs and satyrs. Holiday guests are often found “star-scattered” on the grass, acting out the Rubaiyat.

There is only one “Lost” Angeles in all the world.

* * * * *

Dal’s Filosophy

It’s easy enough to be pleasant, With a lass and a glass and a song, But the man worth while is the guy who can smile, When he’s got the old woman along.

* * * * *

Oh, I Wisha Wuza Lightnin’ Bug!

(From Cortland, (N. Y.) Standard)

Mr. and Mrs. H. C. Tayntor entertained Mr. and Mrs. Charles Olds and son, Walter, of Syracuse, on Monday, and learned from them that Mr. Olds’ daughter, Mrs. Hazel Hammond, was struck by lightning during a recent thunder storm, the skin being burned from one leg some six inches, and then the lightning followed a water pipe and came out of a faucet.

* * * * *

Let’s Swell Up and Bust

A man took his wife out to dinner at a hotel restaurant the other night. A short-skirted damsel breezed in and, there being nobody else in sight, proceeded to vamp him.

“My dear,” grinned the fatuous chump to his wife, “that girl over there is smiling at me.”

“That’s nothing,” replied the better half, “when I first saw you I laughed like hell.”

* * * * *

Joys of Matrimony

Papa—“Has the young man who has been calling on you given you any encouragement?”

Daughter—“Oh, yes, father! Just think last night he asked me if you and mother were pleasant to live with.”

* * * * *

Scotty’s Wail

O wad some power the giftie gie ’em, To see their legs as others see ’em! It was frae monie a short skirt free ’em, And foolish notion, That toothpicks and piano legs Inspire devotion.

* * * * *

Did It Ever Happen to You?

Met a pretty girl one day, Took her down to see a play; Bought her candy, cake and cream, And other things that she had seen. Thought I was in good all right, When I took her home that night, Hung around and begged a kiss, And what think you she said, this miss? “Of all the cheap skates I ever lamped with my ‘once overs,’ You are the crustiest two by twice, hair-brained gazeke on Gawd’s earth, Shake those gunboats of yours and evaporate. GOOD NIGHT!”

* * * * *

Answer This One, Girls

He—“I am going to ask you a question. If you answer ‘yes,’ you mean ‘no,’ but if you do not answer, I am to have a kiss.”

She, after much deliberation—“All right, ‘shoot’.”

He—“If I should kiss you, would you be angry?”

She—“——”

_Limber Kicks_

Gal O’ Mine

_When first I kissed my little gal,_ _And felt her sweet embraces,_ _I knew I’d found an “only pal”_ _And would soon get down to cases._ _Alas, it proved a ghastly joke,_ _My friends began to snicker;_ _I found myself K. O.’d and broke,_ _Dang that gal. of liquor._

* * * * *

“I will be true while you’re away,” Thus ran the damsel’s song. “I will be true; but, oh, I say, Don’t be away too long.”

* * * * *

Beware, Oil Men!

By Casper Y. Homing.

Oh, mother, may I go out to swim, Way down behind the willers, I’ll hang my clothes on a hickory limb, And won’t go near the drillers.

* * * * *

Hibrow Poetry

_Her petticoat was georgette blue,_ _Her dress was cheese cloth red,_ _When she passes ’tween me and light,_ _I always turn my head._

* * * * *

Courting Up to Date

“The demure, shrinking type of maiden used to be able to walk to the altar with the matrimonial bacon,” complains Miss Etta Kette, “but the one who brings home the husband now-a-days seems to be the one who grabs him and bites her initials in his cheek.”

* * * * *

A Sundodger

Baby—“I want my bottle.”

Mother—“Keep quiet. You’re just like your father.”

* * * * *

Crossing the “Bar”

Midnight, a gleaming star, On one who pinches me, For hanging on a “soft drink” bar Till I can hardly see. Curled peacefully in ash barrel I would sleep And dream of foaming mug, But policeman with a bass voice deep, Tuts me in the jug.

* * * * *

Knock ’er On the Kiss!

A discussion on dancing became quite heated. The Girl in the case challenged her partner to prove his contention that any man could kiss a girl against her will. They clinched and after a brief but determined struggle, the girl was being ardently osculated. Upon being freed from the fervent hold the girl sighed and said, “Well, you won but it wasn’t fair. My foot slipped. Let’s try it again.”

_Questions and Answers_

=_Dear Captain Billy_=—Could you explain the latest dance called “The Horse Trot”?—=_White Capp._=

According to our New York correspondent, “The Horse Trot” is done with a little wagon behind.

* * * * *

=_Mon Captaine_=—What ees zis theeng zey call ze “all day suckair”?—=_Suzanne Lengthen._=

An “all day sucker,” Suzanne, is a poor simp who buys a girl’s lunch and supper; takes her to a show; puts on a midnight feed, and has the taxi wait while he bids her good night at the door of her flat.

* * * * *

=_Dear Captain Billy_=—Kissing causes my heart to flutter violently. What should I do when my sweetheart tries to kiss me?—=_May Leigh._=

Letter flutter.

* * * * *

=_Dear Keptin_=—What is the quickest lunch you ever heard of?—=_Pholush A. Ginn._=

Hasty pudding on a Jewish Fast day.

* * * * *

=_Dear Captain Billy_=—I have several gentlemen friends whom I would like to give presents to on Christmas. Would you kindly give me a list of suggestions?—=_Miss Goo C. Lou._=

Below are ten suggestions which I think would make gifts appreciated by almost any man:

1. A quart of hootch. 2. A quart of hootch. 3. A quart of hootch. 4. A quart of hootch. 5. A quart of hootch. 6. A quart of hootch. 7. A quart of hootch. 8. A quart of hootch. 9. A quart of hootch. 10. A quart of hootch.

* * * * *

=_Dear Captain Billy_=—What is a husband?—=_Little Willie._=

Something no respectable woman should be without.

* * * * *

=_Dear Captain Billy_=—What is steam?—=_Talo Pott._=

Steam is water gone crazy with the heat.

* * * * *

=_Dear Bilious Skipper_=—I am a bride of two weeks and my husband has broken my heart accusing me of extravagance and failure to economize in the home. I have tried lots of cheap dishes without success. Could you suggest a few menus which would enable me to make both ends meet?—=_Worried Marjorie._=

Well, Marj, I am not much of an expert at cooking so I have referred your question to Maggie the hired girl. She suggests as a cheap dish, beans, but if you have tried them without success, why not try serving tongue and eggs?

* * * * *

=_Dear Captain Billy_=—Can you tell me where moonshine comes from?—=_Hugo Chaser._=

No, that’s a secret still.

* * * * *

=_Dear Captain Billy_=—I am informed that it is absolutely proper for a lady to shake hands when sitting. If so, has the gentleman the same privilege?—=_Minnie Haha._=

When shaking hands in this glorious land of the free and the home of the Drys, a Gentleman does it standing, a lady has the privilege of shaking sitting down, and a Dog does it standing on three legs.

* * * * *

=_Dear Captain_=—What makes the ocean so blue?—=_T. N. T._=

Because it has to embrace so many objectionable people.

* * * * *

=_Dear Bill_=—Why does a chicken cross the road?—=_Slim Jim._=

Because she sees some fellow over there who looks like easy picking.

* * * * *

Pat, Lady Killer

A son of Erin wandered into a revival meeting one night. After listening to the revivalist catalogue the crimes and misdemeanors of which his hearers were guilty and enlarge upon the danger of spending eternity in a warm but insalubrious climate, the poor Irishman felt that he was “hair hung and breeze shaken over hell” as Elder Means said. Soon he was under deep “conviction” and in due time was soundly converted.

A few evenings later he arose to give his “testimony” and said: “Ladies and gintlemen; Oh, Oi beg yer pardon—My Dear Sisters an’ Brothers; you know Oi’m not used to spakin’ in meetin’s like this. But Oi want to tell you that Oi’m glad Oi’m saved. An’ be the way, it took a helluva lot of grace to save me, for Oi was a dom bad man. Oi lied an’ dhrank an’ swore an’ stole an’ gambled an’ did everyt’ing that was low and vile an’ mean. An’ more than that, Oi was a ‘killer’ among the women, as many of the sisters here present kin testify.”

* * * * *

A Chaplin Prayer

Danny was a good boy.

Jimmy was not.

Danny said his prayers—“Give us this day our daily bread.”

But Jimmy interrupted—“Strike him for pie, Danny.”

* * * * *

The Bray of An Ass

A man who was walking through a train inadvertently left the door of one of the cars open. A big man sitting in a seat in the middle of the car yelled: “Shut the door, you fool! Were you raised in a barn?”

The man who had left the door open closed it and then, dropping into a seat, buried his face in his hands and began to weep. The big man looked somewhat uncomfortable and, rising finally walked up to the weeper and tapped him on the shoulder.

“My friend,” he said, “I didn’t intend to hurt your feelings. I just wanted you to close the door.”

The man who was weeping raised his head and grinned. “Old man,” he said, “I am not crying because you hurt my feelings, but because you asked me if I was raised in a barn. The fact is that I was raised in a barn, and every time I hear an ass bray it makes me homesick.”

* * * * *

‘Throw Out the Life Line’

“How did you like the banquet last night?”

“Fine. There was a lady at the table across from me who had one of those ‘table line gowns’ on. She looked like Venus.”

“How do you know she had on a gown, then?”

“I dropped my fork.”

_Whiz Bang Editorials_

“_The Bull is Mightier Than the Bullet._”

There are many “Calamity Janes” in the U. S. A. One of their stock cries, just after a crime has been committed is, “If she gets off, she’s going in the movies!”

Let us look at the real facts. Searching the history of the moving picture business, in not a single instance has a murder been starred in pictures.

About seven or eight years ago a wealthy married man in Virginia was shot by his wife (or was it by a girl in the case?)—Beulah Binford—because he had trifled with her affections. The courts proved the man a rotter, and because Beulah was a very young girl, she was released without a prison sentence. Beulah’s heart and life were broken and she wanted to bury herself in her little home town and try to start over again, but she needed money. An unscrupulous promoter from New York who thought he could profit by the notoriety caused by the crime, made her an offer to be starred in pictures. Beulah went to New York. The picture was taken but the police closed Madison Square Garden when it was scheduled to show there. Even in those early days of picturedom, movie companies of any standing were bitterly incensed against promoters who wanted to make money by exploiting crime.

The tragic figure in this case was Beulah Binford herself. When the picture failed to bring in receipts she was left alone and penniless in a strange city. She went from studio to studio asking for work, but despite the fact that she was beautiful, no one wanted to take a chance with her. Finally the Republic Film Company, of New York, gave her a job sorting papers in their office. She went through countless hardships in the city. What has become of her, we do not know.

A few years later, in Wisconsin, a boy student killed his sweetheart in a lonely wooded section not far from the state university buildings. The case was never proved to have been premeditated murder and he was not given a prison sentence. A well known New York syndicate writer, a woman went out to Wisconsin and tied up the boy’s services for pictures. She then hastened back to New York to sell the contract for a profit. Every picture company in New York turned down her proposition to star the boy!

After Marie Edwards shot Senator Lyons a year or so ago in California, she visited all the studios in Los Angeles in an attempt to get into the movies. Not a single position was offered her.

Mrs. Louise Peete, who was recently sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of J. C. Denton at his home in Los Angeles, made overtures to the picture companies during the time she thought she was going to be freed. Not a single studio executive paid the slightest attention to her attempts to be exploited on the screen.

The “son” of Senator New, who brutally killed his sweetheart in Topanga Canyon near Los Angeles about a year ago, also thought he might follow a picture career, but this was cut short when he was sentenced to twenty years in the penitentiary.

Mrs. Marie Bailey, who shot her sweetheart, Clarence Hogan, in Pasadena last December, told all reporters that she was going to be featured in pictures as soon as she was released. Mrs. Bailey had previously played in pictures, but when she was arrested, picture studios all made the notation that she would never again be hired even as an “extra.” Marie has gone “up” for ten years.

The Clara Hamon picture, “Fate,” although already produced, has not been exhibited in the theatres. In the light of the history of past cases has it a chance?

* * * * *

Burning kisses always go with sparks.

* * * * *

An authority once established is hard to controvert. That is why it is going to be one heck of a job to knock any kind of a dent into the present Volstead law prohibiting even a smelling acquaintance with wine, beer or regular hard “licker.” Organized minorities vote solidly in politics; the vote of the majority is scattered. There is nothing more easily swayed than popular opinion and popular “passion” with the right kind of propaganda.

I remember when Carpentier, the French fight champ, came across to get his bump on the beak, Gus and I were discussing the antics of the New York society women who “literally” fought with each other for the privilege of kissing him at a garden party. It is the human nature of the female of the specie to kiss the male brute at every opportune occasion, and, under stress of easily aroused emotions, under other conditions as well.

Emotion is a primitive human instinct and if women swarm to kiss a prize fighter in these enlightened days, it is easy to understand how an unorganized majority of males, as well as females, might be moulded by proper propaganda to a conviction that this country will go to the bow wows unless booze of all character and description is kicked into the discard.

We must admit that the prohibition minority did not slip anything over on the majority when it wasn’t looking. First they sneaked into a few legislatures and then they put it through Congress and had it ratified by their legislatures. The majority found out about it when it was too late. All the majority can do now is to defy the Volstead law and vote down the enforcement provisions of it. Some of them are doing this—while others are becoming Cunard addicts and going to Europe and Havana.

Europe used to be a continent of kings—now it is only America’s corner saloon.

We have never held any particular briefs for Squirrel whisky and other forms of 100 proof “hootch.” But even our former president, Woodrow—what was his name?—Wilson, is strong for wines and beers and we are willing to stack with him on this question, at least. It is going to be a hard job—getting any concessions from the prohibitionists. We believe Gus has the right idea, however, when he says the day of the “bum voyage” to Europe is nearing a close, and that the old familiar sign “Wines, Liquors and Segars” may soon be dusted off and tacked up outside the front door.

* * * * *

The Way They Sing It

We will now sing that little Nanny-goat song entitled “Mammy.” Also that well known ballad “Just a Japanese Ashcan.”

* * * * *

The stage contortionist leads a double life.

_Smokehouse Poetry_

_Every once in a while we get regular he-man verse prompted by dreams in some feather bed, but from the pen of Budd L. McKillips, Whiz Bang readers again are to be treated with a poem inspired by real life. In the Winter Annual of the Whiz Bang we reproduced Mr. McKillips’ poem “After the Raid,” inspired while Mr. McKillips, as a newspaper reporter, “covered” story of the raid on the National Dutch Room cabaret in Minneapolis. Recently pretty Zelda Crosby, picture scenario writer, of New York, committed suicide in a hotel by drinking poison, as a result of a prominent film magnate spurning her after teaching her the ways of love and folly. This magnate, like many other alleged reformers, has been a leading figure in the movement for purity in pictures. The title of Mr. McKillips poem, written exclusively for the Whiz Bang, is “The Girl From Over ‘There’.” In addition to that poem we are publishing a crackerjack rival to the “Gila Monster Route,” with which Winter Annual readers have fallen in love, called “The Blanket Stiff.”_

* * * * *

The Spirit of Mortal

Oh, Why should the spirit of mortal be proud? Like a swift-fleeting meteor, like a fast flying cloud, A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, He passeth from life to his rest in the grave.

The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade, And be scattered around and together be laid, And the old and the young and the low and the high, Shall molder to dust and together shall lie.

The infant a mother attended and loved, The mother that infant’s affection who proved, The husband that mother and infant who blessed, Each all are away to their dwellings of rest.

The hand of the king that the scepter hath borne, The brow of the priest that the miter hath worn, The eye of the sage and the heart of the brave, Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave.