Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, Vol. 3, No. 25, October, 1921: America's Magazine of Wit, Humor and FilosophyVarious
General
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, Vol. 3, No. 25, October, 1921: America's Magazine of Wit, Humor and Filosophy
Various
American wit and humor -- Periodicals
Brethren and sisters, I don’t want to bring on another European war; but
we gotta have the truth about this French jane who came over here to mop
up the tennis courts with our American girls.
The real malady from which Mlle. Lenglen was suffering was an overdose
of publicity. They tell me that, at the time of the Olympic games in
Belgium, the French star had begun to believe that the rest of the
firmament where she was not was a comparatively dull affair.
One day, at Antwerp, she arrived at the stadium without her ticket of
admission. To the gatekeeper who held out his mit for the accustomed
cardboard, she said with freezing hauteur, “I am the great Lenglen.” I
don’t know what the gatekeeper did; I suppose he dropped dead and was
carried out by the heels; but anyhow, that is what she said.
When she arrived in America, the little French girl did a very foolish
thing. She gave out an interview loftily pooh-poohing all the American
stars—especially Molla Bjurstedt Mallory, whom she said she had defeated
without trying.
Now it happens that Molla is a sweet, kind-hearted, unaffected,
courageous little Norwegian girl. She was a professional masseuse when
she came to America; but disarmed the snobbery of the Newport tennis set
by her good sportsmanship.
She read the catty remarks that Lenglen had said about her and she came
out on the tennis courts at Forest Hills looking for blood. The dander of
her Norse Viking ancestors was up. The way she lit into the French girl
filled the latter with dismay. In the face of the tornado, the “great
Lenglen” retired shivering to the back courts and straightway developed a
sensational cough.
At the end of the first set, she threw up her hands and quit cold,
leaving the courts in tears. Molla retired from the battle in high
dignity; but as soon as the club house doors closed upon her, she was
almost smothered by the kisses and hugs of the other girl tennis players
who had gathered for the tournament. Mlle. Lenglen during her brief stay
of two days had managed to make herself thoroughly unpopular.
It is predicted that the other French champion, Carpentier, will not be
basking in quite such a halo of hero worship when he comes back again,
next winter, to fight Tom Gibbons.
Georges made a gallant and inspiring fight against Jack Dempsey but,
around the neighborhood, they were not quite so strong for him.
It is certainly an awful thing to contemplate; but if the new picture
censors of New York have their way, the world is due to be a lonely void
without any one-piece bathing suit girls.
The first thing they did on taking office recently was to throw out the
picture of some Dallas, Texas, young ladies who won the prizes for having
the best—well, y’ know—bathing suits and so on.
Hardly had the metropolis recovered from this shock when the censors
ruthlessly stepped on Hope Hampton’s thousand dollar bathing suit which
recently gave Atlantic City a thrill.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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