Off the Cuff

Fri Aug 17 05:40:05 UTC 2012

In the domain of moviemaking the expression "shoot from the cuff" was
used. The film was created without an advance script. The director
relied on improvisation and on an incrementally constructed script.

Here is one cite in 1927 and two in 1929 that help to explain the
phrase. It may be relevant to the evolution of the phrase "off the
cuff". (The phrase and variants were mentioned in the Language Log
blog.)

Cite: 1927 July 17, Los Angeles Times, What Will Academy Achieve?,
Page C9, Column 2, Los Angeles, California. (ProQuest)

[Begin excerpt]
Some decision should be arrived at for a practical plan for a
scenario. There seems to be no accepted form at this time. Some
directors shoot from the cuff, and others want a script running into
thousands and thousands of words.
[End excerpt]

Cite: 1929 March 10, Los Angeles Times, Soundies on Sound Basis:
"Shooting from the Cuff" Thing of Past by Philip K. Scheuer, Page C11,
Los Angeles, California. (ProQuest)

[Begin excerpt]
They used to "shoot" silent pictures from the cuff, as they called it.
In other words, a director with little or no script to guide him would
start grinding away on the opening sequence of "Dreadful Daughters" at
9 o'clock on the morning of September 1 because exhibitors had been
promised delivery of a movie of that name on October 15, and a promise
was a promise. The fact that no one, the director probably least of
all, knew whether "Dreadful Daughters" was to reveal Sadye Le Fevre in
the arms  of Tom, Dick or Harry in the final fade-out, never made, any
difference. What were continuity writers and gagmen good for, if not
to figure that out when the time came?
[End excerpt]

Cite: 1929 March 10, New York Times, Desert Springs Stirs Reporter to
Poesy by Chapin Hall, Page 55, New York. (ProQuest)

[Begin excerpt]
The "beautiful but dumb" little girl has had her day, and is taking a
business college course, while the director who "shot from the cuff"
is either unlearning his trade or passing  on.

"Shooting from the  cuff"  means making up the plot as the picture
progresses. Some of these have gone into the last reel with no one,
least of all the director, knowing just how he was going to get out of
the mess, but confident that the continuity department would somehow
solve the problem.
[End excerpt]

Typos are likely

Garson

On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 6:39 PM, Baker, John <JBAKER at stradley.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Baker, John" <JBAKER at STRADLEY.COM>
> Subject:      Off the Cuff
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Mark Liberman, writing in Language Log, http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4130, today has a post on the term "off the cuff," which the post antedates to 1936.  Mark quotes the OED gloss:  "off the cuff (as if from notes made on the shirt-cuff) orig. U.S., extempore, on the spur of the moment, unrehearsed."  He notes that, although men once wore disposable paper cuffs on which they could write notes, the fad ended before 1900.  He suggests four possibilities:
>
> 1.      Disposable paper cuffs remained in use, at least in certain groups, right up through 1950 or so;
> 2.      Movie directors, entertainment journalists, and politicians continued to write on their cuffs long after the cuffs ceased to be disposable;
> 3.      The expression "off the cuff" originated at some point around 1875, but managed to avoid appearing in print until 1936, and did not become common until the late 1940s, when the physical basis of the metaphor was long dead;
> 4.      The expression was born when the metaphor was already long dead.
>
> Mark adds that his  feeling is that (1) is implausible, (2) is silly, (3) is unlikely, and (4) is weird.
>
> My own view is that it's quite common for metaphors to achieve popularity - indeed, as far as we can tell, for them initially to emerge - only after the literal thing to which the metaphor refers has passed out of use.  Accordingly, I wouldn't find it at all surprising if people started saying "off the cuff" only after disposable cuffs were only a cultural memory.  This thought did not, however, convince me that "off the cuff," meaning spontaneous, necessarily derives from reading notes from a cuff, which implies little but not no preparation.
>
> To the archives!  I thought I might be able to beat Mark's 1936 antedating, and I did, using Access Newspaper Archive.  The earliest example is from the San Antonio Light (July 2, 1926).  This is not the modern sense, but it may be relevant anyway.  "They [sc. some girls] can't seem to see that a lot of these white collar guys are just swivel chair chauffeurs dry-docked to a desk for the rest of their lives, and will still be taking office orders off the cuff when the guy with the grimy mitt owns the works!"
>
> Five years later is an example from a fictional serial.  This is still not the "spontaneous" sense; I think it means to pay cash, as a negation of "on the cuff,"  on credit.  The story is serialized in a number of newspapers, with the earliest apparently being the Manitowoc (Wisc.) Herald News (Nov. 2, 1931).  "That's why we're dining in this dump tonight instead of in a joint that would fit those swell clothes of yours.  I'm eating off the cuff this week."
>
> The spontaneous sense of "off the cuff" emerges shortly thereafter, in an article in the Corsicana (Tex.) Daily Sun (Dec. 18, 1931).  "The latest formulae for insuring movie hits - an air-tight script perfected before a camera is set up, with director and writer working together as a team - has been successful in a number of instances, relieving to some extent the worries of executives who feel keenly the need of money-makers. [para] Yet one picture that his [sic; probably should be has] its makers doing joyous nip-ups has been shot "off the cuff" in old quickie fashion - tha tis [sic], the director shot each day what the writer had finished the day before."
>
> Beginning in 1932, "Off the Cuff" appears several times as a heading in In New York with Gilbert Swan, which appears to have been a syndicated column.  The earliest I see is from the Times Evening Herald (Olean, New York) (May 12, 1932).  After the "Off the Cuff" heading, the column begins:  "New York, May 12.  Notes from a convenient cuff . . . ." (ellipsis original).
>
> So it appears that "off the cuff," meaning spontaneous, dates at least to 1931, and that early users were thinking of the analogy to disposable collars, with Gilbert Swan making the connection explicit in 1932.  The 1926 example from the San Antonio Light probably also refers to men writing on their cuffs.  I assume that the 1931 fiction is an outlier.
>
>
> John Baker
>
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