"Suffering doughnuts!"

[Donald M. Lance]

What I remember hearing from elders and using myself years ago is "deader'n a doornail."
Maybe the alliteration led to the substitution of doughnut for whatever the reference was
in doornail..
DMLance

Gerald Cohen wrote:

>     In a Sept.28 message Barry Popik cites the 1924 exclamations
> "Suffering doughnuts!" and "Great suffering doughnuts!" and asks "Why
> do doughnuts suffer so?"
>
>     I'm not sure, but Barry's quote jogged my mind, since I had
> recently  come across "deader than a doughnut":  _St. Louis Post
> Dispatch_, Sept. 8, 2001,
> pg. 4, cols.  1-5: (title) "DNA Match of Hair Is Seen As Break In
> Jimmy Hoffa Case." col. 5: "James Burdick, a lawyer in Michigan who
> represented O'Brien during the original investigation called O'Brien
> a 'notorious big mouth' who could not have kept such a secret.'
>         "'If (O'Brien) knew anything about it, he'd be deader than a
> doughnut 25 years ago,' Burdick said..."
>
>      Maybe a doughnut hole is somehow likened to a large bullet hole,
> and this would explain why the doughnut is dead or suffering.
>
>      Btw, there's some cartoon character (Roadrunner? Yosemite Sam?)
> who frequently says "Suffering succotash!" We deal of course with
> alliteration, but otherwise, is there any justification for succotash
> appearing in this exclamation? And is the exclamation used anywhere
> else besides the cartoon?
>
> ---Gerald Cohen
>
> >Date:         Fri, 28 Sep 2001
> >From: Bapopik at AOL.COM
> >Subject:      Confessions of a Twentieth Century Hobo (1924)
> >To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> >
> >CONFESSIONS OF A TWENTIETH CENTURY HOBO
> >by "Digit"
> >Herbert Jenkins, Limited, London
> >1924
> >
> >    A British man tramps the U. S.
> >...
> >Pg. 62:
> >    "Great suffering doughnuts!"
> >Pg. 173:
> >    "Suffering doughnuts!"
> >(Why do doughnuts suffer so?--ed.)