Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, August 1921 · page 15 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #23 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang* is Hollywood gossip-column satire targeting entertainment industry scandals of the 1920s. The text discusses: **Main figures**: Willard Mack (vaudeville performer), Barbara (actress at Goldwyn studio), an unnamed English actor, and Pauline/"Polly" (Mack's wife seeking divorce). **The satire**: The piece mocks the melodramatic entanglements of silent-film era celebrities—multiple engagements blocked by divorce decrees, affairs discovered on studio sets, and studio gossip machinery. An electrician's discovery of Barbara and the English actor in a "tempestuous love scene" becomes fodder for relentless interrogation by "Hollywood's best gossips." **The joke**: The breathless, scandal-hungry tone lampooning how trivial incidents (like learning to ride horses for a film) and romantic entanglements dominate entertainment reporting. The implication that Barbara's engagement to Mack persists despite his existing marriage to Polly highlights period divorce law complications and casual infidelity. No visible cartoon accompanies this text—it appears to be purely satirical prose.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang 13 Willard Mack's vaudeville acts, and it was reported was engaged to wed Mack. They, too, were prevented from carrying out an immediate marriage because of one of those bothersome final decrees. Barbara, by the way, while at the Goldwyn studio was one day discovered in a refined but tempestuous love scene with a tall, raven-haired English actor. Maybe it was part of a picture, but took place way out on a dark, deserted stage beneath a huge black cloth used to keep the dust off from the furniture! An electrician stumbled upon the romantic scene and when the story was whispered about the studio it is said the poor electrician was cross questioned and put through the third degree by Hollywood's best gossips. It seems that the English actor has a wife somewhere in the Empire—Australia or Ireland—so Barbara was daily reported to be infatuated with some other admirer. It seems her romantic passion for Mack "took," for she allowed the press to announce the fact that they intended to wed when he won his decree from the emotional Pauline, "Polly" as she is known. Another interesting angle of the case is to the effect that Pauline never rode a horse until last winter. One of the Goldwyn pictures required this feat, so one perfectly handsome cow-