Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, February 1922 · page 30 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #30 — page 30: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a gossip/satirical column from *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang*, a 1920s humor magazine. It critiques Hollywood censorship and celebrity culture through three items: **"Kiki"** — The writer mocks film censors' hypocrisy: they cut bathing scenes and avoid depicting childbirth, yet allow the actress Kiki to be tossed around in semi-transparent pajamas in a "somnambulist" act. The satire highlights arbitrary moral standards. **Charlie Ray** — A silent film actor famous for playing a simple "country boy" character. The joke is that in real life, the ornately dressed, pretentious Ray is unrecognizable on Fifth Avenue—his public persona contrasts sharply with his actual personality and his self-serious "mission in life" philosophy. **Jack Pickford** — Gossip linking the actor to Marilyn Miller of the Follies (a Broadway revue), a recent widow. The column treats celebrity romance rumors as entertainment fodder. The overall tone mocks both Hollywood's artificial morality and celebrities' self-importance.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
28 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang marks “The men are like cats—they follows us as though our veins were full of catnip!” Then there is a whole act in which Kiki—posing as a rigid somnambulist—is carried and tossed about by the various members of the cast, all the time dressed only in a simple pair of open work pajamas. We aren’t intimating that “Kiki” isn’t enter- taining. It is. But, the latitude they get away with! Meanwhile the censors go on cutting out bathing girls from our films and making sure there is no indication ever shown that babies are born. * * * CHARLIE RAY, spats, cane, trick over- coat with its fur collar, et al., has been making his first visit to New York and not creating a ripple of interest. Of course, friend wife was along. We saw Ray strolling up Fifth Avenue the other day—and nobody knew the ornate pedestrian as the simple coun- try boy of the films. They tell me that Ray takes himself very seriously and left the cynical New York reporters dizzy with his confessions about his “mission in life.” * * * JACK PICKFORD continues to loiter about New York. There are all sorts of rumors linking Jack up with pretty Marilyn Miller o’ the Follies. Marilyn lost her husband, Frank Carter, in an auto accident some time ago and is as pleasant a little widow as the White