Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, May 1922 · page 8 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #33 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a humorous letter column entry, not a political cartoon. "Captain Billy's Whiz Bang" was an early 20th-century American humor magazine. The joke centers on **Gus**, a former farmhand who aspired to become a silent film star (referencing Douglas Fairbanks and Tom Mix, popular actors of that era). He moved to Los Angeles to work in movie studios but has returned to manual labor—painting houses—a comedown from his ambitions. The satire mocks Gus's failed Hollywood dreams while poking fun at rural attitudes: he complains about working without food ("No Indian guide for me on an empty stomach") and gossips about a neighbor's daughter's scandalous "coming out" dress, suggesting small-town prudishness. The editor's note about the "X" being "not a kiss" is a cheeky joke about Gus signing off his letter—playing on the common practice of X representing kisses in correspondence. The piece gently satirizes both Hollywood aspirations and rural simplicity.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
6 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang GUS, who at one time decorated our kitchen floor with mud dragged in from the barn- yard, has temporarily received a set back in his ambitions to be a Douglas Fairbanks or Tom Mix. We have just received a letter from Gus from Los Angeles. "I have been working at the studios since you were here, Bill, but I am back to painting houses again," Gus writes. "I promised you I would send in my original poem about 'The Effects of Pedro' and so I am enclosing it. Ex- pect to stay here this summer as it is too far to Breezy Point Lodge to work for my board, as you said in the December issue of Whiz Bang. No Indian guide for me on an empty stomach. Had a letter from Maggie (our cook who is responsible for Gus staying with us for four or five years) and she says it is a disgrace how our old neighbor's daughter, Lindy Miller, dresses. Maggie evidently saw Lindy in her "coming out" dress. Best regards to Deacon Miller and be sure and take good care of Pedro Junior." Your X hired man, GUS. (Bill: The X is not a kiss.) *Gus adds his address which we are giving so that our Los Angeles friends can look him up and perhaps get him back in the studios and relieve him of the monotonous job of painting colonial garages or Los Angeles barns, and that is 203 West Sixteenth Street, Apartment 11.*