Whiz-Banger

In the smoking room of the S.S. President Hayes, steaming westward across the warm Pacific last week a stocky, owlish man with horn-rimmed spectacles regaled his fellow male passengers with the sort of stories told in smoking-rooms. When one of the others would tell a "good one" which the stocky man by chance did not already know, the stocky man promptly filed it in his inexhaustible mental library. His interest was professional, not queasy, for he was Wilford H. ("Captain Billy") Fawcett, founder and publisher of Captain Billy's Whiz Bang. He and his wife .Annette were bound for Manila, thence for Australia and New Zealand, China and Japan in quest of big game. That they can and do often make such trips is testimony to the rich success of Publisher Fawcett's simple plan: to harness the smoking-room story and make it work for him. Further testimony is the fact that Fawcett magazines (all monthly) now number twelve. Publisher Fawcett returned from the War to Minneapolis (where he had long been police reporter on the Journal) broke and jobless. He borrowed a typewriter and, half for amusement, half with a vague hope of profit, began dashing off "hot" jokes and verses for his Army friends. Popularity was immediate. "Captain Billy" had to mimeograph his "stuff" to meet the demand, giving the sheet the title which persists: Captain Billy's Whiz Bang: "Explosion of Pedigreed Bull." With the backing of a small printer, the magazine went like wildfire. Ex-soldiers, salesmen, sporting men, bellhops and curious schoolboys bought Whiz Bang. The price--25-c---soon was bringing Captain Billy $35,000 to $40,000 a month. Whiz Bang never carried advertising but by 1923 it was said to have reached a circulation of 425,000. It now claims about 150,000. Editorially, Whiz Bang was built around the rousing escapades and shady epigrams of the characters of "Whiz Bang Farm" (supposedly at Robbinsdale, suburb of Minneapolis): Gus, the hired man, Olaf, Deacon Callahan, his daughter Lizzie (whose virtue was always being designed upon) and Pedro, the Whiz Bang bull. (Rejection slips to authors explained that "Pedro, the Whiz Bang bull, didn't like this one.") It was and is a collection of frankly bawdy lines and pictures, or innocent double-entendres dependent upon reader-knowledge of an unprintable joke. While Whiz Bang has never been barred from the mails, occasional issues have been held up until they were made passable; and there are sporadic brushes with local authorities over its sale. But in its pages, "hell" appears "h--," or "heck." With the money earned in two years by Whiz Bang, Publisher Fawcett launched upon a largely successful series of publishing ventures, assisted by his brothers Roscoe and (the late) Harvey. The first, True Confessions, began by giving actual confessions of criminals and other big figures in the news (e.g. Evelyn Nesbit Thaw), but later turned to the usual anonymous-girl-gone-wrong narrative. At its sexiest stage it claimed 400,000 circulation, but a mistaken (and temporary) effort to "clean it up" under the name of Fawcett's nearly ruined the book. It is doing well again (230,000). Judge Ben Lindsey is a contributor.

Next was born TripleX. Under the same basic title, the magazine would follow public taste like a weather vane, giving in turn stories of war, flying, crime, etc. Currently it is Triple-X Western (115,000). Author Jim Tully got his start when Triple-X first published his Beggars of Life.

Battle Stories (132,000) and Screen Secrets (140,000) came in 1926. The latter began as Paris & Hollywood, consisting of pictures of females. Next month it is to become Screen Play, a "high class fan magazine." Also in 1926 Whiz Bang's poetry column budded off as Smokehouse Monthly, ". . . dedicated to all glorious guzzlers, woozy warblers, rakes, scallawags, and other good people who still be lieve in the joy of living." The "smoke house" in the masthead is drawn to re semble a backhouse. Strangely out of keeping with its unmannered fellows is Amateur Golfer & Sportsmen, a smart, tasteful magazine of regional appeal in the Northwest. It was started in 1927 chiefly as a hobby, and partly because Brother Roscoe Fawcett was onetime state golf champion. Whiz Bang had competition of a sort in the older, equally unchaste Jim Jam Jems. When, in 1928, Jim Jam Jems' Editor Sam Clark attacked him in his magazine, Captain Billy bought him out. There after came Modern Mechanics and Inventions (later sued by Popular Mechanics on its title, and by Fritz von Opel, the German rocketeer, for an article concerning him) ; Startling Detective Adventures (sued by a North Dakota sheriff for an article which he claimed he did not write), Hollywood and two months ago, Mystic Magazine, an idea conceived in Paris by Mrs. Fawcett. Mystic Magazine capitalizes the current faddish interest in astrology and (to quote Variety) "mitt-reading." Its first issue carried an "exclusive" spirit message from the late Conan Doyle --"scooping the Cosmopolitan by a full month." Captain Billy is frankly worshipful toward his Whiz Bang. Wherever he travels he sends back great sheaves of ribald jokes and also, with intense pride, hist monthly editorial: "Drippings from the Fawcett." In elaborate metaphor he voices his love for the common people, liquor and the "pleasures of living"; his hate for Prohibition, reformers, censors, etc. etc. He enjoys referring to himself as "this bristle-whiskered old sodbuster." to his wife as "the henna-haired heckler." or "my weazened old Red Head." He relishes a reputation as a benevolent reprobate. His glory is a stag party. Famously hospitable. Publisher Fawcett built a lodge in the wilderness on the shores: of Pelican Lake, 170 mi. west of Duluth, to entertain his friends (among his guests have been Vice President Charles Curtis & son). But they came in such droves that he made it into a resort--Breezy Point--now one of the most elaborate showplaces in Minnesota-A crack marksman (manager of victorious U. S. trap-shooters in the 1924 Olympic Games), he keeps at Pelican Lake his countless trophies and his guns, among them a $2,000 elephant gun. Also he maintains there a zoo. In his editors, Publisher Fawcett insists upon what he calls "the divine spark." If one must be discharged, it is with reluctance--"to have his divine spark adjusted."

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