Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, September 1921 · page 20 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #27 — page 20: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains Hollywood gossip items from an early 1920s satirical magazine. The content mocks film industry figures through brief, catty anecdotes: **Key subjects include:** - **Thompson Buchanan** (Lasky studio scenario chief) and actress Helene Chadwick - **Kathleen Clifford** meeting mysterious men - **Herbert Rawlinson** vacationing without his wife Roberta Arnold while attracting admiration from schoolgirls—implying infidelity or impropriety - **Lucita Squire**, a scenario (screenwriter) for director Marshall Neilan - **Ruth Wightman**, another scenario writer being promoted by Gouverneur Morris **The satire's point:** The magazine ridicules Hollywood's romantic entanglements, absent spouses, and the rapidly emerging profession of "scenario writers" (screenwriters)—treating them as disposable commodities ("all in a minute"). The tone is gossipy and insinuating rather than explicitly scandalous, typical of early 1920s fan magazines mixing genuine industry news with innuendo.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
18 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang and often dined with a tanned, slender, and quiet young man. Star and escort looked decidedly bored. * * * THOMPSON BUCHANAN, Lasky scenario chieftain, is encouraging Helene Chadwick in her film career. * * * KATHLEEN CLIFFORD, clad in sports clothes and sandals, steps nights with a handsome dark stranger. * * * HERBERT RAWLINSON, with a couple of minor actor friends in tow, spent a month at Catalina. Roberta Arnold, Herbert's wife, seemed to be “somewhere on location” for she was not in those parts. The adoration of some hundreds of grammar school girls seemed centered on handsome Herb and his marvelous physique. * * * MARSHALL NEILAN'S “all in a minute” scenario writer, Lucita Squire, is still in the game. * * * WE KNOW nothing about the scenario business but it is reported from the camps that Gouverneur Morris has discovered one of those “all in a minute” scenario writers in Ruth Wightman, and that she is now adapting his stories for the screen.