Graffito: "To Be Is To Do" "To Do Is To Be" "Do Be Do Be Do"

[David A. Daniel]

Your note prompted me to listen to many different versions. Some sounded
like Doodie Doobie Doo, some like Doobie Doodie Doo, and some like Doobie
Doobie Doo. It is of course only the first line, as the other lines go into
other do do's and da's. But I suspect that, in fact I know that, at the
time, the public's perception of what he was saying was Doobie Doobie Doo.
For one thing, there would have been no joke otherwise. Check this out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3ksf3Oe8cU. If it is what the marketing
folks at Budweiser picked up on, you can bet it was the popular
interpretation, whether or not such interpretation was always accurate.
DAD

Poster:       ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Graffito: "To Be Is To Do" "To Do Is To Be" "Do Be Do Be
Do"
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DAD: Thanks for pointing to Strangers in the Night. I listened to a
youtube version and at the end I heard something that differed
slightly from the canonical rendition in the joke:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlSbSKNk9f0

do de do be do
do do do de dah

I might be mishearing the syllables, or Sinatra might sing different
strings of syllables at different times (or for different songs). Of
course, the joke creators/tellers probably did not examine
Harmonographs.   Garson

On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 11:47 AM, David A. Daniel <dad at pokerwiz.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "David A. Daniel" <dad at POKERWIZ.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Graffito: "To Be Is To Do" "To Do Is To Be" "Do Be Do Be
>               Do"
>
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>
> "Do be do be do" or "doobie doobie doo" famously comes at the end of
> Strangers in the Night, 1966. We were telling the Socrates-Sartre-Sinatra
> joke when I was in college, 67-71. In 1978 I nicknamed my then-future (and
> still) wife "Doobie Doo", inspired partly by Sinatra.
> DAD
>
> Poster:       Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Graffito: "To Be Is To Do" "To Do Is To Be" "Do Be Do Be
>               Do"
>
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> ---
>
> According to Google Books
> "frank sinatra" socrates sartre "to be is to do" "to do is to be" "do be
do
> be do"
> are found in The Butterfly Kid by Chester Anderson (1967),
> but I have not seen to book to attempt to confirm this.
>
> Stephen Goranson
> http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/
>
> The 1982 novel "Deadeye Dick" by Kurt Vonnegut mentioned the following
> piece of graffiti:
>
>     To be is to do - Socrates.
>     To do is to be - Jean-Paul Sartre.
>     Do be do be do - Frank Sinatra.
>
> There are many versions of this graffito. It is listed in Cassell's
> Humorous Quotations (2001), Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations
> (1980) and Encyclopedia of Graffiti (1974).
>
> Victor Steinbok contacted me off-list and suggested this would be an
> interesting topic for research. Thanks Victor!
>
> The earliest relevant cite I have located appeared in the Dallas
> Morning News on Januarys 29, 1968. Here is a link to the QI article:
>
> http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/09/16/do-be-do/
>
> The graffito evolved over several decades and many philosophers and
> authors have been substituted into the template including: Dale
> Carnegie, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus,
> John Stuart Mill, William James, William Shakespeare, and Bertrand
> Russell. The punchline ascribed to Frank Sinatra, in some form, is
> usually preserved.
>
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