Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, January 1922 · page 53 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #29 — page 53: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This "Movie Hot Stuff" gossip column from *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang* contains three Hollywood scandal items from the 1920s: 1. **Clara Smith Hamon**: An actress whose film "Fate" flopped commercially, partly due to renewed film censorship following the Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle scandal (a major 1921-22 controversy involving rape allegations that damaged Hollywood's reputation and triggered industry self-regulation). 2. **Charlie Chaplin**: The column debunks newspaper rumors of romance between Chaplin and actress Claire Windsor, claiming investigators discovered he was actually spending time with young May Collins and her mother—implying Chaplin was courting May, not Claire. The "Pretty foxie, Charlie!" is sarcastic commentary on his discretion. 3. **Western crime**: A brief joke that California criminals and con artists migrate west seasonally to prey on wealthy tourists. The column's tone is gossipy and cynical, using "astute investigators" to frame itself as exposing Hollywood's true doings behind publicized stories.
📄 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 51 Movie Hot Stuff CLARA SMITH HAMON, now Mrs. John Gorman, is no longer in possession of her $2,500 automobile. The car was recently attached for payments overdue. Her picture “Fate” was given its final death blow as a money producer when the Arbuckle affair roused the censorship broil anew. *** BECAUSE his old friend Claire Windsor met Charlie Chaplin at the depot in Los Angeles on his recent return from Europe, the newspapers hinted a new romance. However, Whiz Bang’s astute investigators did not go to the depot, but upon taking a chance peek into Charlie’s drawing room, discovered among a very few close friends, little May Collins and her mama. Evidently the little Collins-Chaplin romance is still on. Pretty foxie, Charlie! *** MARRIED men out west are having an awful time. You know the cleverest hold-up men and crooks in the U. S. A. beat it for California every fall to keep abreast to the tourist wealth which goes west as well.