Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, December 1921 · page 36 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #28 — page 36: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains satirical commentary on Hollywood's treatment of criminals, not a visual cartoon. The satire targets the movie industry's hypocrisy and opportunism. The piece documents several real murder cases from Los Angeles (Louise Peete, Senator New's son, Marie Bailey) where the accused or convicted criminals attempted to leverage their notoriety for film careers. The satire's point: studios initially ignored or rejected these individuals, yet the final cryptic reference to Clara Lamon's unreleased film "Fate" suggests studios might paradoxically profit from crime-related material anyway. The closing line—"Burning kisses always go with sparks"—appears to be a cynical quip implying that scandal and sensationalism (sparks) naturally accompany passionate drama (burning kisses) in Hollywood. The satire exposes Hollywood's pretense of moral standards while acknowledging its actual appetite for scandal-adjacent content.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
34 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang all the studios in Los Angeles in an attempt to get into the movies. Not a single position was offered her. Mrs. Louise Peete, who was recently sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of J. C. Denton at his home in Los Angeles, made overtures to the picture companies during the time she thought she was going to be freed. Not a single studio executive paid the slightest attention to her attempts to be exploited on the screen. The "son" of Senator New, who brutally killed his sweetheart in Topanga Canyon near Los Angeles about a year ago, also thought he might follow a picture career, but this was cut short when he was sentenced to twenty years in the penitentiary. Mrs. Marie Bailey, who shot her sweetheart, Clarence Hogan, in Pasadena last December, told all reporters that she was going to be featured in pictures as soon as she was released. Mrs. Bailey had previously played in pictures, but when she was arrested, picture studios all made the notation that she would never again be hired even as an "extra." Marie has gone "up" for ten years. The Clara Lamon picture, "Fate," although already produced, has not been exhibited in the theatres. In the light of the history of past cases has it a chance? * * * Burning kisses always go with sparks.