Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, August 1922 · page 48 of 67
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #36 — page 48: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes two 1920s trends: **Hardy's Derby:** The joke mocks William Randolph Hearst's extravagance. Hearst reportedly spent $60,000 to remove actor Oliver Hardy's iconic grey derby hat from a film—an absurd expense exceeding even the Kentucky Derby's value. The satire ridicules both Hearst's wasteful power and the emerging film industry's excess. **Bathing Girls Craze:** The text lampoons New York's fad of featuring scantily-clad women ("bathing vamps") in restaurants and cabarets. References include Gilda Grey (famous "shimmie" dancer) and "Kellermanns" (one-piece swimsuits). The satirist notes that actual seaside resorts like Long Beach restrict such displays legally, yet attract crowds seeking to view women in minimal clothing—making it cheaper entertainment than Broadway theater tickets. Both sections mock 1920s consumer culture: the film industry's wasteful spending and the exploitation of women's bodies as commercial spectacle in Jazz Age venues.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
46 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang "It'll cost exactly $60,000 to cut out Hardy's grey derby," they reported. "Fine," said Hearst, "Go to it." They had to carry the technical experts out. Which seems to put Hardy's hat into the class of the world's most expensive derby. Even the Kentucky derby was only worth something like $55,000. * * * JUST now there's an epidemic of bathing girls—bless 'em—in the New York restaurants and cabarets. For instance, there is a new place, the Boardwalk, where "the original Hollywood Bathing Vamps" are featured. Search us about the original. Anyway, the vamps disport in a tank and tight fitting Kellermanns in front of the tables. The Rendezvous has Gilda Grey, of the quivering shimmie architecture, and her "bathing beauties," who wander among the diners in pulchritude and snappy one-piece suits. At the actual seaside resorts, the horny hand of the law has been showing itself. Only at Long Beach may the fair flapper affect one-piece suits with or without socks. This is the Sunday retreat of every metropolitan chorus girl and the revue of cuticle, unhampered from ankle to thigh by anything but tan, is a sight fit for the gods of Olympus. Why pay five dollars for a front row musical comedy seat when considerably less than two (for a railroad passage) takes you to Long Beach, where