Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, April 1922 · page 49 of 67
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #32 — page 49: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is satirical prose rather than a cartoon—a risqué anecdote from a 1920s humor magazine. The piece mocks American tourists in Paris and their naïveté about Continental sophistication. The joke centers on two American men who attend the Bal des Quatz Arts (a real, notorious Paris student art ball known for loose morality) with two French models, Mimi and Fleurette. The Americans dress in "100 per cent Carthaginian" costumes as instructed, then are disappointed when the women arrive wearing only cloaks over dance slippers—expecting elaborate period costumes. The humor's punchline (cut off here) likely reveals the women wore *nothing* under those cloaks—playing on the Americans' prudish expectations versus Parisian libertinism. The satire targets American sexual repression and gullibility when encountering European hedonism. References to "monogrammed nighties" disappearing suggest changing sexual attitudes post-WWI.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
48 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang quiet little informal murder in Hollywood. Here we might add that the vogue for mono- grammed nighties has completely disappeared. We can't exactly blame anyone for going, not when we hear of the giddy, carefree life on the other side—if you have the necessary wherewithall. For instance, a chap just back from Paris told me the other day of the Bal des Quatz Arts, the annual student art revel of the Latin Quarter. Tickets are hard to get, for the real Quarter inhabitants decline to let it develop into a sight- seeing affair. However, a friend secured the tickets and the two chaps invited a duo of pretty little models of the studios. Everyone was supposed to go in Carthaginian costume— whatever that is. The Americans secured attire claimed by the renters to be strictly 100 per cent Carthaginian and then they went around after the models. Mimi and Fleurette were waiting when they drew up in one of those queer Paris taxis. And Mimi and Fleurette were attired in conventional cloaks. Dainty dance slippers gleamed from beneath. The Americans had been wondering what a feminine Carthaginian costume would be and they were disappointed—momentarily. Mimi and Fleurette expressed hunger on reaching the hall and the Americans gallantly proferred a supper invitation. Imagine their surprise when Mimi and Fleurette tossed aside their cloaks and revealed that their costumes