Saturday, March 27, 1920

Quite cloudy mild day. Arose 7:30 A.M. To college 9-12:15 M. Shot pool etc. Home in P.M. Studied in P.M. Fooled around. Cleaned up etc. To Van Curler Opera House with Dorothea Reynolds at night. Good play. "Johnny get your gun." Went after and returned her to her Aunts. To bed 1:15 A.M.

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The play, Johnny Get Your Gun, was a comedy written by Edmund Lawrence Burke, premiered in New York in 1917, then after a successful run went on tour. The play went on to be made into a movie that opened in 1919. Here is some information about the play (taken from TCM website) and a still.

While Bill Burnham is jailed for drunkenly shooting up the town, he receives a letter saying that his father has died, his sister Janet is about to marry a worthless count, and the family fortune is in danger. Unable to leave, he convinces his friend, Johnny Wiggins, a motion picture cowboy, to go to his home in Palm Beach, which Bill left as a boy, and impersonate him. Although Johnny's Western manner irritates Janet and her aunt, they put up with him because Bill's sanction for Janet's marriage is needed for her to receive her inheritance. When the count discovers that Johnny is not Bill, he tries to elope with Janet, but is prevented when Johnny lassoes him from his moving automobile. After Johnny forces crooked broker Milton C. Milton, at gunpoint, to make restitution for the losses Janet suffered through Milton's bad stock investments, Johnny marries Ruth, the maid, and leaves, promising that when Bill returns, things will get livelier.

The man who played Johnny Wiggins in both the play and the movie was Louis Bennison, a popular actor of both stage and film. He was known as "the smiling cowboy" because he had worked as a cowboy at one time. Below is his picture, taken from the Betzwood Movie Database website. I think he kind of looks like Jim Nabors.