Jeet Jet (1950s and 1958)

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:19 AM -0500 1/27/03, Laurence Horn wrote:
>At 8:40 AM -0600 1/27/03, Gerald Cohen wrote:
>>I don't know the date of Woody Allen's "Manhattan" movie, but I
>>distinctly remember saying "Jeet? No, Jew?" as a mild bit of humor to
>>my sister when we were still living in NYC.  I moved from NYC to
>>Missouri in 1968, and my sister had left a few years earlier. I
>>wasn't being creative in this mild bit of humor, but merely repeating
>>something I had recently come across in print--most likely in some
>>general treatment about language. It certainly wasn't in a Woody
>>Allen movie.
>>
>>
>>Gerald Cohen
>
>My claim was not that Woody Allen invented the exchange, which is
>simply a recognition of the common occurrrence of palatalization in
>fast speech.  What he invented, in "Manhattan" or "Play It Again,
>Sam" [the latter a nice example of an unappreciated genre, Movie
>Titles Based on Movie Misquotes],

or "Annie Hall" after all, as it appears from Matthew Gordon's evidence

>was the riff off the (mock-)claim
>that the "No Jew" part represents anti-Semitism.
>
>larry