"Match me, Sidney"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Fri, 8 Jul 2005 20:48:39 -0400, Benjamin Zimmer
<bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU> wrote:

>"Match me, Sidney" is a classic line from _The Sweet Smell of Success_
>(1957), delivered by J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) to Sidney Falco
>(Tony Curtis). It was one of the American Film Institute's 400 nominees
>for the greatest movie quotes of all time, but sadly it did not make the
>top 100.
>
>I don't see "match" = 'light a cigarette for (someone)' in OED, HDAS, or
>anywhere else. Was this a turn of phrase that the screenwriters (Clifford
>Odets and Ernest Lehman) came up with specifically for the movie?

Here's the only other example I've found so far, also a cinematic usage:

-----
New York Times, August 21, 1998, p. E1/3
As he is about to walk onstage, an aging Frank Sinatra stops to light a
cigarette, or more precisely to have one lighted for him. "Match me," he
tells a male lackey, only to have an off-camera woman with a sugary voice
give him a light instead. "Thanks, doll," he tells her, walking on. You
can hoot at this style as irredeemably tacky, or view it as the essence of
retro cool. You can even see it as both. Those possibilities suggest the
breadth of appeal behind the HBO film "The Rat Pack," which recreates a
dizzyingly energetic, near-mythic phase of American culture.
-----

I wouldn't be surprised if the _Rat Pack_ writers were paying homage
(perhaps unwittingly) to _SSoS_, since the two scenes are so similar
(Hunsecker asserts his authority over Sidney by using the "Match me"
command, just as Sinatra does to the offstage lackey).


--Ben Zimmer