Various

“ Grace Godwin—of course, she has a husband named Sperry, but that doesn’t count—runs the place, she says, more as a harbor for lonely souls than as a depot for eats. Well, the other day, five or six lonely souls happened in for a dish of tea; but all the said lonely souls were inhabiting black bodies. Grace called the lightest colored one aside and told him how it was. Of course, the Village is awfully democratic and all that but—well, he ought to be able to see for himself—with so many of the other lonely souls being hot-headed Southerners and all. ”

“ In addition to republication of gems of earlier issues of Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, the first complete Winter Annual of this great family journal will contain a large variety of brand new jokes, jests, jingled, pot pourri, stories, and smokehouse poetry. This book, Pedigreed Follies of 1921-22, will contain four times as much reading matter as the regular issue of the Whiz Bang and will sell for one dollar per copy. It will be a book which will be cherished by the readers for years to come, and will contain the greatest collection of red-blooded poetry yet put in print. ”

“ Before her downfall Rome could spend millions on her royal tables, support the dignity of a single senator at $80,000 a year, employ courts for sycophants and flatterers, impose taxes at the pleasure of her ruler, declare any complaint treason, marry her daughters for money and titles, employ notaries to attest the fatness of her banquet fowls, punish men with death for trivial offenses and make slaves and menials of the profoundest philosophers. ”

“ After an eye opener or two, my hired man asked the genial barkeep for the location of the wash-room. He was shown an ante-room which bore the sign: “Gentlemen.” He walked right in anyway. Nothing in New York seemed to deter this faithful, simple Minnesota farm-hand.
That night we received a telegram from Robbinsdale cautioning us to make reservations in the Schlitz Hotel at Atlantic City, as that institution might be full on account of the convention. Gus read the message to me, threw it in the waste basket as he nonchalantly remarked: “If the Schlitz Hotel is full it has nothing on me.” ”

“ Our Movie Gossip BY RICHMOND
The Whiz Bang is hearing all sorts of rumors and gossip wheezes from the movie camps surrounding the City of Angels, regarding the antics of Clara Smith Hamon, who recently was freed in the Ardmore, Oklahoma, shooting case and who is now attempting to break into the picture game with her “life-story” to teach young girls to beware of oil kings and others.
According to the consensus of whisperings, Clara is having a difficult time getting studio artists to work for her in the production of the alleged “reform” photoplay. ”

“ The little newcomer says that nearly all the lovely beauties whom we have imagined as dining on lark’s tongues and poetry have appetites like traffic cops.
What they need in New York right now is a new country for the movie stars to be born in. They have a dreadful time trying to get Pola Negri located. Ever since the foreign pictures began to pour in with this Negri lady in the leading part of most of the plays, they have been trying to get her born in some inoffensive place. ”

“ Garret” has given the Village solemn warning that if any more dark tinged lonely souls come along she is going to close “The Garret” and move out of the Village.
But if it comes to that, everybody else is moving out of the Village anyhow. So many purse-proud outsiders have invaded New York’s Latin Quarter that the rents are murder in the first degree. The real Villagers are moving out to Brooklyn—than which there could be no worse fate for a Villager. ”

“ Now it has occurred to them that censorship is the only protection the American film industry has against being swept to destruction by cheap but beautiful German pictures.
The competition is almost murderous. “Passion,” the super film in which Negri first appeared in America and which would have cost at least half a million dollars in the United States, was made for $22,000 in Berlin. Pola Negri gets a salary whose bigness has made Germany open its eyes; in our money it would be only $45 a week. ”

“ A bum of an Englishman seeking a fortune in the Judson Bay country hears from home that his fiancee has not married another man as he had hoped she would. He is led to believe his own family had deliberately planned to go against his plans. To be even with them he drinks a pint of likker, marries an Indian girl, Lali, the daughter of old Fry-on-the-moon, and ships her to England as his wife. The good sports of the English family, dismayed and shocked, take the savage in hand and, of course, turn her out a raving beauty in two reels. ”

“ A little movie girl of my acquaintance has recently joined the Follies and what she sees behind the scenes at the Famous beauty show fills her with awe for the human appetite.
[21]
“To tell you the truth,” she says, “Those girls don’t care much about millionaires. They infinitely prefer to go around with chauffeurs because they don’t have to worry about which fork to eat with. They have to have millionaires around on account of their appetites. No ordinary fortune could keep those girls filled up. In a previous existence most of them must have been boa constrictors. They eat all the time. ”

“ Dear Captain Billy—I am a young married man. There is a handsome married woman, the wife of a traveling man, across the hall. She has a phonograph and each evening when he is away she plays such records as: “Lonesome,” “I Know That You Are Married,” “Won’t You Come Over to My House,” “Won’t You Come Over and Play?” Do you think I should take a chance?—Phical Phil.
You are hereby referred to the poem “Johnny and Frankie,” which appears in the Smokehouse section of this issue. ”

“ The new summer home of Pedro, Marigold, Gus the hired man, and Ye Editor has been established among the big pines of northern Minnesota, on the sandy shore of Big Pelican Lake, and invites the summer vacationists to come and enjoy life in the open. Twenty new log cabins completely furnished for housekeeping, electric lights, running water, large cabin club house, bathing, canoeing, motor boating, fishing, trap shooting, wild game hunting in season, dancing, tennis and aerial sports. ”

“ Smokehouse Poetry
In the September issue Smokehouse Poetry will feature The Unwritten Law by Budd McKillips, author of After the Raid, which scored such a recent success in the Whiz Bang, and Angela Morgan’s poem, Betrayed.
Bad, hopelessly bad!
I yielded to love that sways mankind,
Not the mere measure of bodily pleasure,
But love that wakes in the soul and mind,
Born of the spirit at God’s behest ”

“ Outside the Sodom and Gemorrah cottage, big powerful aeroplanes waited to carry back to Los Angeles those who find that an air trip to be very clarifying after a night of social carnage. One man, it is reported, though brewed up like a boiled owl, landed his two passengers safely on one of the landing places near Hollywood. There is first-hand information that brewed up airplane drivers have operated in the vicinity. To date the motor bike cops have found the pave too hot for them to pinch any one. ”

“ In our references to Hollywood and Los Angeles society, we don’t wish to be accused of laying everything to the picture people. Far from it. The high society bunch sets a faster pace if anything. One of the wildest orgies ever attempted in this hextic community occurred recently in the vicinity of Elizabeth Lake, a distance of some 80 miles from Los Angeles. ”

“ Big men of the pictures and high social standings, who never bat an eye at certain queens of the amusement world when at work, joined in a carnival of revelry that surpassed most anything provided for jaded appetites hereabouts—not excepting the nude bathing parties for which Hollywood and Pasadena became famous with introduction of private bathing plunges, out of doors. ”

“ Any emotion that gives pleasure acts healthily on the heart and other organs, certain scientists have recently discovered. Brisk circulation, gnawing appetite and health ensue. Love, hope and happiness all produce these emotions and, contrary to the accepted notion, the ardent lover ought to enjoy his meals thoroughly. Despair, grief and fear are declared to have quite the opposite effect. They make the heart slower, and enfeeble the nervous system, often upsetting digestion. ”

“ Pedro’s death and my intermittent headaches rather dampened our spirits and so we started back for Robbinsdale. Waiting in Chicago for our connections to Minnesota, and wishing to cheer up Gus and to ease the pain of Pedro’s death I said to him, “Gus, you have done pretty good on the trip so I will get you something nice. What do you want?” We were just passing a bird store and Gus said, “Get me a pet monkey.” ”

“ Considering their natural limitations, those old boys set a pace that would keep anybody hustling to keep up with them. The sports of several generations back might have been veritable hicks compared to the modern brand, but those of several centuries back didn’t take a back seat for none—and don’t yet!
* * * In the May issue of last year, when Whiz Bang was a baby in the magazine field, we published a poem famed over the West Coast, “The Girl in the Blue Velvet Band,” which we obtained after much effort from a former convict of San Quentin penitentiary, wherein this masterpiece was written. ”

“ It seems that the young lady genii who inhabit the Village and have flights of soul and yearn and yearn, occasionally fall in love and get married and go to live in apartments with kitchenettes, dumb waiters, husbands and other furniture. ”

“ Now that Luther Reed has written a villainless play, the husband must be guilty of a bum cellar or something like that.
* * * A New Version Here’s to the short skirt and the street car steps. May they never meet.
* * *
The old fashioned woman who used to take her troubles to the Lord, has a daughter who now takes them to a lawyer.
* * * If at first some men don’t succeed they fail, and fail again.
* * *
A fat man has another advantage over his thin brethren—he knows exactly where his cigar ashes are going to land. ”

“ Even after the play is produced, if it ever is, Clara will find it a task to find theatres to exhibit it in.
Pauline Frederick is now on her way west again from a recent trip to New York. They say she whispered to a close friend in the depot in New York as she was leaving, that she and Willard Mack will again wed very soon.
This recalls to mind the gossip that revolved about their previous engagement when Pauline was playing at the Famous studio in New York City several years ago. ”

“ The wild parties still prevail though they are getting a little more exclusive. People are chosen who don’t have a reputation for bringing up reminders the next morning of everything that happened. This is a good idea. ”

“ Of course, there could be but one outcome to competition like that. Nearly all the German pictures and particularly all those of Pola Negri are decidedly “rough” in spots. They are very much bedroom, etc. [23] The American censors may save the situation by cutting the gizzards out of them. A big Italian picture recently arrived in New York wherein the extra people were paid four cents a day. It was a very beautiful and very fine picture. There’s no denying it. Only the censors can save the movies. ”

“ Either young lady, so far as appearances are concerned, would go a lot further and not meet up with a more promising gentleman, though marriage may be furthest from the mind of the trio. These youngsters work hard and have to attend pretty much to business. ”

“ It seems that the sacred inner circles of fashion and pictures found that the ground was being trampled upon too much by the plebeian element and that the ensuing gossip often ended [47] unpleasantly. Over canyon and mountains many of the guests were carried by aeroplanes. This item will be news to some who think they are on the “inside” of the jazz doings around Los Angeles. The ultra ultras are putting it on stronger than ever—but far away from home, husbands and wives. ”

“ One camera man said he was offered $500 a week, and Mason Litson, former Goldwyn director, was reported to have turned down an offer of $750 a week.
[12]
Los Angeles says that besides the Motion Picture Directors’ association voting to expel any member who aids Clara, the Screen Writers’ Guild has taken action against the Hamon photoplay. If all this dope is true, Clara will have a job on her hands illustrating her adventures to young girls via the screen play. ”

“ The solid man has no sediment in his makeup.
* * *
What is home without a cellar?
[17]
Bobbed Hair Genii Although the rest of New York can’t seem to see why they are so excited about it, all the high brow married ladies of Greenwich Village are in a lather of emotion. Ruth Hale has set ’em free. ”