Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, September 1921 · page 45 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #27 — page 45: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a humorous anecdote from a 1920s satirical magazine comparing the celebrity draw of movie star Douglas Fairbanks and his wife Mary Pickford versus heavyweight boxing champion Jack Dempsey. **The figures:** "Doug" is Douglas Fairbanks (silent film star), "Mary" is Mary Pickford (actress/his wife), and "Charley" likely refers to Chaplin. Jack Dempsey was the era's most famous boxer. **The joke:** The author describes massive crowds gathering for Fairbanks' film premiere on Broadway, so huge that even the famous boxer Dempsey couldn't compete for attention. Women literally shoved Dempsey aside to see Fairbanks. The satire mocks how movie stardom had surpassed athletic celebrity—previously, crowds would abandon even the President to see a boxing champion, but now a film actor outranks them all. **Context:** This reflects 1920s Hollywood's meteoric rise in American culture and the public's obsession with silent film stars over traditional celebrities.
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Captain Billy's Whiz Bang 43 Naughty New York DOUG and Mary and Charley almost made Broadway forget to curse the landlords. The wildest crowd I have seen in New York since Armistice Day was the gang that jammed into Forty-second Street the day that Fairbanks' movie, “The Musketeers,” opened. Taxi cabs had to stop a block away and let the passengers fight their way into the theatre if they could. I saw two girls shove Jack Dempsey out of the way to get a look at Doug and his wife. They just dug their little elbows into the illustrious ribs of the Champ. and rough housed him to one side out of their line of vision. I guess the Fairbanks family can consider this to be about the summit of human fame. I once saw a big crowd run away from a reception to the President of the United States, leaving that august personage talking to the empty air in order to see a heavy weight champion; but I never imagined that anything could take a crowd away from a champ. Compared to Doug and Mary as rival attractions, Dempsey was nothing but a broad back that was difficult to see around.