"Have XXX Will Travel"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Admittedly I  heard this long after 1954, and long after Paladin, but the "vaudeville" version I'm familiar with from the 1970s is "Have Trunk, Will Travel."  Worth checking.

JL

"Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Arnold M. Zwicky"
Subject: Re: "Have XXX Will Travel"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Feb 3, 2005, at 6:38 AM, Larry Horn wrote:

> I can confirm that for many of those in the relevant generation, it
> was indeed Bob Hope's book title in the mid-1950s that introduced us
> to the "Have Tux, Will Travel" formula...

on Language Log on 4/25/04, Mark Liberman noted huge numbers of
versions of this snowclone, but took it back only to tv's Paladin and
not earlier than that to Bob Hope:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000818.html

> with precisely the meaning
> indicated, and that "Have Gun Will Travel" (still remember "Paladin"
> and that chess-knight logo) was recognized as a variation on that
> theme. Only a few years elapsed between the appearance of the Hope
> book and the TV show. How long the expression was in circulation in
> the vaudeville (or, more generally, show biz) world before Hope used
> it for his autobiography I have no idea.

arnold


---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Search presents - Jib Jab's 'Second Term'