Manhattan slang (1936)

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

   The same article appears (uncut?) in NEWS (Frederick, Maryland), 6 October
1936, pg. 4, cols. 7-8.  I'll type some additions, found at the end of the
article.  From col. 8:

   With them it's "sticking it in somebody's ear."
   But leave it to Casey Stengel, the managerial genius of the doddering
Dodgers, to concoct the game's latest bit of idiom.  To Casey a fly-ball is a "can
o' corn."  Why?  Casey doesn't know himself.  (HDAS has Jan. 11, 1937 for
"can of corn"--ed.)
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_Theatrical phrases_
   But leave it to Broadway to spawn the most bewildering and colorful
contributions to Manhattan's collection of slang.
   For example: an actor is a "MacAvoy" when he steals bows, a "short con" is
a small time moocher, and all piano players are "organ grinders."  When a
stage director says "spot the doll" he means "throw the spotlight on the feminine
performer."  "Laying an egg" means that a show or entertainer flops badly;
and an acrobat has to go through life with the tag "kinker" attached to him.
   "Carrying the torch" is now--via Hollywood and the radio--familiar to
everyone but it's one of Broadway's oldest slang terms.  And when you hear a press
agent tell a companion that "they're shooting deer in the joint," he's
referring to the wide open spaces bereft of customers in the theater he's
exploiting.
   A newcomer isn't a greenhorn; he's a "Johnny-Come-Lately" and a "a luby"
is a dunce or clumsy performer.  Whern a Broadwayite is feeling low he's "got
the weeps."  The word "hot" along the roaring forties can mean a number of
things.  If a man is "hot" the odds are two to one he'll be shot before the week
is out.  When merchandise is "hot" everyone knows that it has been stolen--and
yet the sweetest compliment you can bestow upon a trumpeter is to tell him
he's "hot."
   Erudite debunkers of Broadway slang insist that most of it has been
adapted from convict jargon, and that it has arrived in the vicinity of Times Square
via Sing Sing, Dannemore and San Quentin.  But tell that to a loyal
Broadwayite and he's likely to retort: "Can that stuff, or I'll put the finger on you.
Now scram!"