Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, August 1921 · page 25 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #23 — page 25: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang* (a 1920s satirical magazine) contains three separate items mocking contemporary culture: 1. **Italian film censorship**: The piece sarcastically suggests American censors "cut the gizzards out" of imported Italian films—likely referring to sexual or violent content deemed immoral. It notes a recent Italian production paid extras only four cents daily, criticizing both exploitative labor and the need for censorship to make such films acceptable. 2. **Evelyn Nesbit's retirement**: The actress/dancer, famous for scandal and her "message to young girls" (likely about morality or sexual propriety), has opened a novelty shop in Manhattan's theater district. The satire mocks her failed attempt at moral influence. 3. **"Sweet Essence of Prune Juice"**: This excerpt from a novel titled "Rainbow" is florid, sexually suggestive prose about kissing and physical union. The title suggests the passage is overwrought, pretentious purple prose—likely mocking contemporary "serious" literature for its overwrought sexuality masquerading as art.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang 23 The American censors may save the situation by cutting the gizzards out of them. A big Italian picture recently arrived in New York wherein the extra people were paid four cents a day. It was a very beautiful and very fine picture. There's no denying it. Only the cen- sors can save the movies. That long suffering and modest soul, Evelyn Nesbit, has finally retired from the stage after some years spent in a vain attempt to startle the world with her “message” to young girls. She has opened a novelty store in the “roaring fifties” in New York City and will manage it in person. * * * Sweet Essence of Prune Juice From “Rainbow,” a Novel He kissed her with his soft enveloping kisses and she responded to them completely; her mind, her soul gone out. Darkness cleaving to darkness, she hung close to him, pressed herself into the soft flow of his kiss, pressed herself down, down to the source, and core of his kiss, herself covered and enveloped in the warm, fecund flow of his kiss that traveled over her, flowed over the last fiber of her, so they were one stream, one dark fecundity and she clung at the core of him with lips holding open the very bottomest source of her.