"Don't Make Waves"

[Laurence Horn]

>  I heard the same joke  in the '70s - without the Devil and the hydroplane.
>
>JL

Ditto, except I'm pretty sure it was the early or mid-60s, when I was
in college.  Wilson's version is a bit more elegantly fleshed out
than the one I recall, and ours just had the one-line three-word
punchline, but delivered very solemnly.

larry

>Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM> wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: Wilson Gray
>Subject: Re: "Don't Make Waves"
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>I first heard this phrase in 1957 as part of a joke that would never
>have appeared in any newspaper of the day.
>
>Dante is showing a group of tourists through hell. As the group
>proceeds, a strange kind of chant-like murmur begins to become audible.
>A tourist asks Dante about this phenomenon. Dante replies that he'll be
>be glad to let the tourists see it for themselves. No sooner said than
>done, Dante brings his charges to the shore of a lake of shit the size
>of Lake Superior. In this lake, with the foul liquor coming up to their
>lower lips, are standing thousands upon thousands of sinners, who are
>all chanting in unison, "Don't make waves! Don't make waves! Don't make
>waves!" And, at the dock, the tourists see the devil preparing start
>the engines of a hydroplane.
>
>-Wilson Gray
>
>
>On Sep 19, 2004, at 9:44 PM, Fred Shapiro wrote:
>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>  -----------------------
>>  Sender: American Dialect Society
>>  Poster: Fred Shapiro
>>  Subject: "Don't Make Waves"
>>  -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>  --------
>>
>>  Is anyone able to check ProQuest Historical Newspapers for me to find
>>  out
>>  the earliest occurrence there of the phrase "don't make waves"?
>>  Newspaperarchive shows it as the title of a 1964 television series.
>>
>>  Fred Shapiro
>>
>>
>>  -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>  ---
>>  Fred R. Shapiro Editor
>>  Associate Librarian for Collections and YALE DICTIONARY OF
>>  QUOTATIONS
>>  Access and Lecturer in Legal Research Yale University Press,
>>  Yale Law School forthcoming
>>  e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu
>>  http://quotationdictionary.com
>>  -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>  ---
>>
>
>
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