"Will it play in Peoria?"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 17:45:29 -0800, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM> wrote:

>The phrase  must be considerably older in showbiz.  Berrey & Van Den Bark
>(1942) don't list this phrase, but they do offer "Peoria" as synonymous
>with "An imaginary [sic] 'hick' town."

There are a number of Proquest cites from the late '20s and early '30s
with Peoria as a "joke town" on the vaudeville circuit, like Kokomo and
Kalamazoo. The earliest jokey reference I can find is from the 1904
Broadway musical comedy "Piff! Paff!! Pouf!!!" starring Eddie Foy.  One of
the songs (music by Jean Schwartz, lyrics by William Jerome) is "The Ghost
That Never Walked," with the refrain, "I'm the ghost of a troupe that
disbanded in Peoria."


--Ben Zimmer