Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, December 1924 · page 55 of 71
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #67 — page 55: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from the satirical magazine contains three celebrity gossip items targeting silent film and theater figures of the 1920s. The first item mocks actress Pola Negri, apparently a famous guest at a dinner who was embarrassed when introduced to someone else (Dudley Field Malone) after receiving elaborate praise—the joke being she wasn't the actual subject of honor. The second briefly notes actress Agnes Ayres's secret two-month marriage to a Mexican diplomat. The third targets Nina Potter Vesci, a would-be playwright and socialite (daughter of a Santa Barbara hotel owner). It satirizes her failed engagement to renowned playwright Eugene O'Neill, suggesting she lacks his genius but caught the writing bug from him—the misspelling "drammar" emphasizing her pretensions. The humor is typical 1920s gossip-column satire: mocking celebrity vanity, broken engagements, and social climbing among the Hollywood and theater set.
📄 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]= slipped into their seats without general introductions. One of these, toward the close of the dinner, rose and proposed a toast to “our brilliant, dazzling, distinguished, and magnetic guest.” Pola blushed and registered pleasure and gratitude, but she was thrown into an indignant panic when the speaker, at the close of his glowing toast, pointed to the gentlemen at his right and said, “allow me to introduce Dudley Field Malone!” Pola isn’t speaking to the man who played the scurvy trick! * * * Agnes Ayres pulled the secret bride stuff, too! The news came out the other day that she has been married for over two months to S. Manuel Reachi, commercial attache to the consul general of the Mexican government at San Francisco. The pair will soon go abroad. * * * A BUDDING dramatist, we learn, is pushing a steady pen out at the Hollywood Hotel. Nina Potter Vesci, whose father owned the famous Potter Hotel at Santa Barbara for many years, was divorced from her Austrian violinist-husband a year or so ago. Then, it seems, she became enamored and engaged to Eugene O’Neil, the well-known playwright. Nina, however, could not condone all the temperamental vagaries of genius, so the engagement was broken, but the young lady seems to have been left with a powerful urge to write “drammar” herself. =[50]=