"little green men" / "take me to your leader" origin?

[Jonathan Lighter]

Thanks, Jesse.  So the phrase antedates interest in "flying saucers" by a number of years.

JL

Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Jesse Sheidlower
Subject: Re: "little green men" / "take me to your leader" origin?
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On Fri, Jun 24, 2005 at 05:03:34AM -0700, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> Can anyone establish an early date for "little green men"?
> OED no have. I suspect it comes from the pulp sf days of the
> interwar period, because I've never heard of a UFO case that
> seriously reported "little green men" hopping from a landed
> saucer.

The OED science-fiction project has a relatively full entry on
this, with a first citation (in this sense) from 1940 (not
currently shown on the site). By the 1946 quote it was already
being regarded as a cliche: "I thought it was just a phrase, a
gag, one of those things you say."

http://www.jessesword.com/sf/view/304

No entry on "take me to your leader" though.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

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