Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, June 1922 · page 24 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #34 — page 24: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains gossip-column satire about Hollywood scandal and contracts, typical of *Whiz Bang* magazine's irreverent celebrity coverage. The first item discusses a broken engagement between an unnamed man (Dixon) and Mary Shelby, a film star. The author mocks Dixon for ending the engagement based on an old letter, portraying him as having poor judgment while praising Mary's careful upbringing by her protective mother (a former actress). The second section cynically explains how to read entertainment headlines. When magazines report that studios are "demanding" a star return to stage work, the author notes this typically masks a broken contract. The example given is Pauline Frederick, under a $36,000/month Robertson-Cole contract, whose mother warned her against overspending. The satire targets both Hollywood's contract disputes and the entertainment press's euphemistic coverage of such conflicts—suggesting readers shouldn't believe the romantic narratives studios promote.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
22 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang she had once written to him—which any of us might have done in our young teen days!— Dixon is no longer seen calling at Mary's home. It is said that he broke the engagement and that Mrs. Shelby, Mary's mother, is prostrated with grief. Everyone thinks Dixon has jumped at con- clusions, and shown unmanly poor judgment in breaking faith with his little sweetheart. Mary, you know, is one of the picture stars who has always been carefully chaperoned and guarded by a mother and grandmother. Mrs. Shelby, in her younger days, was a Frohman actress of no mean ability. She is essentially a lady, understands the demands and temptations of theatrical work and has wisely guarded her daughter accordingly. Whiz Bang doesn't think Dixon will find a nicer little girl among the overwise debutante sets he may mingle with in search of someone to take Mary's place. * * * WHEN you read headlines to the effect that "the stage is insistently demanding that such and such a picture star return to its fold," you can borrow a pinch of salt and figure that somebody had somebody's contract broken. Pauline Frederick is to return to the stage this fall. She had a five-year contract with Robertson-Cole at $36,000 a month. Mama Frederick kept warning Pauline not to spend money so fast and that this heavenly luck couldn't last forever, but Pauline thought it