"Doom and Gloom"

Fred Shapiro fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU
Thu Jun 2 17:40:47 UTC 2005


Oxford University Press reference works vary in quality from the
magnificent (like the Oxford English Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionary
of American Legal Quotations) to the less magnificent, so one is often
unsure of where in the spectrum a given new book lands.  I am looking at
the Oxford Dictionary of Idioms, s.v. "doom and gloom," and see the
following:

"This expression, sometimes found as _gloom and doom_, was particularly
pertinent to fears about a nuclear holocaust during the cold war period of
the 1950s and 1960s.  It became a catchphrase in the 1968 film _Finian's
Rainbow_."

I doesn't see anything about "gloom and doom" in the "memorable
quotations" listed for this film by Internet Movie Database.  Can anyone
supply any information about how this phrase was used in "Finian's
Rainbow"  and how it became a catchphrase?

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
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