Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, May 1922 · page 51 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #33 — page 51: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical column from *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang* (a 1920s humor magazine) attacks Hollywood's Lasky Studio for multiple scandals: the Arbuckle case (likely Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, involved in a actress's death), an unsolved poisoning of a female screenwriter, director Paul Kramer's murder (his mother-in-law arrested), and an unnamed "Taylor's death" (possibly director William Desmond Taylor, famously murdered in 1922). The second section mocks director Erich von Stroheim and Universal Studios over censored footage from *Foolish Wives*—scenes of von Stroheim giving a woman a massage and "oriental abandon" in another film. A showman allegedly offered $50,000 for these cut sequences, suggesting audiences valued the scandalous content. The satire's point: Hollywood's production quality couldn't offset its real-life scandals and exploitative sensationalism. "Better clean up the backyard" urges genuine reform over maintaining appearances.
📄 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 49 Movie Hot Stuff THE Lasky Studio seems to be furnishing its full quota of scandals for the whole industry to defend. First, Arbuckle, then the mysterious poisoning of the young girl scenario writer of the eastern Lasky studios and its subsequent “hushing up.” Then Paul Kramer, movie director, who was recently shot in Hollywood. Kramer’s mother-in-law is held for his murder. Then Taylor’s death. In quality of productions, Lasky stands supreme. Better clean up the backyard, Lasky. * * * VON STROHEIM and the Universal, you remember, had a lively set-to about the cutting of his production, “Foolish Wives.” Which brings to mind the fact that a show-man offered Carl Laemmle of Universal $50,000 for the expurgated portions of “Foolish Wives.” One of these interludes showed the eminent Mr. von Stroheim giving a cold cream body massage to a very pretty young thing, it is said. And they do say the scenes of oriental abandon in “The Mistress of the World,” the