Query: "I scream for ice-cream"

[George Thompson]

I posted the following items a year or so ago, and a lively if uninteresting (to me) discussion followed regarding the niceties of the pronunciation involved.

1825:   Met a strong-lunged fellow with a large tin bucket, shouting with hideous gesticulations, “I scream!”  Found he had ice-cream for sale.
Bayrd Still, “New York City in 1825: A Newly Discovered Description,” New-York Historical Society Quarterly, 46:2 (April, 1962):151, quoting a newspaper of 1825.

1872:   [it would] cause the warm blood to freeze in thy veins even like unto that of skimmed milk in an I scream freezer.
Isaac S. Lyon, Recollections of an Old Cartman  [Old New York Street Life]  Graham Hodges, ed., N. Y.: New York Bound, 1984, p. 6 [misnumbered as p. 9]

1997:   In "I Scream for Ice Cream," a nine and a half foot tall [statue]. . . .
New York Times, June 2, 1997, Section B, p. 9, in a story headed "In Texas, a Celebration of the Ephemeral Spirit."

[David Crystal, in his  Encyclopedic Dictionary of Language and Languages, under "Juncture" cited apopular song of the 1930s/1940s "I Scream for Ice Cream".]

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African
Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.

----- Original Message -----
From: Gerald Cohen <gcohen at UMR.EDU>
Date: Monday, August 26, 2002 10:51 pm
Subject: Query: "I scream for ice-cream"

>   I've received a request for the earliest datings of "I scream for
> ice-cream" and its variants. I remember hearing this at the Concord
> Hotel (Catskills) in the late '50's or early '60's but suspect it's
> older. Barry? Fred?
>
> Gerald Cohen
>