Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, September 1921 · page 52 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #27 — page 52: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page discusses theatre industry figures and satirizes artistic versus commercial priorities in entertainment. **Al Woods** (theatre producer): The satire mocks Woods's abandonment of "high-brow" artistic plays after losing $75,000, pivoting instead to profitable bedroom farces like "Finding Gertie's Garter"—a work condemned by critics and preachers but commercially successful. **Irving Berlin** (songwriter/producer): Presented as a self-made success story, rising from waiter in an East Side café to millionaire songwriter and theatre owner. The passage humorously notes his romantic "distinction" as one of several men engaged to actress **Constance Talmadge** before she married a wealthy Greek millionaire, with Berlin being "the last of the jilted ones." **The satire's point**: Commercial entertainment wins over artistic integrity; talent and persistence overcome humble origins, but romantic disappointment follows even wealth.
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50 Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang their corns and performing the other manifest, but not thrilling or interesting, duties of life. If we are going to be realistic, b’gosh let’s be really so. One of the few real successes of the theatre season is a coy and refined young comedy for the pure and young; it is called “Finding Gertie’s Garter.” Al Woods, the promoter thereof, cheerfully admits all the rough things the papers and the preachers say about it. Al says that last year he listened to the critics who spurred him on to do his duty toward art and refinement. Result, he lost $75,000 on two high-brow plays. Hereafter, he is for bedroom farces “first, last and alla time” as politicians say. Which brings us to Irving Berlin, the song writer who is just about to blossom out as a producer with a beautiful theatre of his own. Irving began where Fatty Arbuckle did— or nearly there. He was a waiter and song shouter in a tough cafe on the East Side. In Berlin’s case, however, he went stead- fastly to work and began writing songs. At first he sang his own songs in the cafe; then he got them published. Now he is a millionaire and has the additional distinction of being one of the men who were engaged to Constance Talmadge before she was carried off by a fascinating Greek millionaire. In fact, Irving was the last of the jilted ones. He got his dismissal from Connie down