"Goodfellas," the book and the movie

[Mullins, Bill AMRDEC]

Just ran across this:

The Lingo of the Good-People
David W. Maurer
American Speech > Vol. 10, No. 1 (Feb., 1935), pp. 10-23

Which starts off:
"To the modern gangster an old-timer is good-people. . . .Even as the
countless generations of criminals who preceded them, the good-people
had their argot.  Around 1900 when the present-day elderly good-people
were criminal Dapper Dans, their lingo was the last word in linguistic
nobbiness."



> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society
> [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Jesse Sheidlower
> Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2006 11:35 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: "Goodfellas," the book and the movie
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 29, 2006 at 11:19:56AM -0500, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC wrote:
> >
> > "Goodfellas" (movie) was based on a book called "Wiseguy"
> by Nicholas
> > Pileggi.  I'm pretty sure I remember reading that the movie wasn't
> > also called "Wiseguy" because there was TV series of that
> name on the
> > air at that time.  So they changed the word to
> "goodfellas".  It was
> > made up for the movie.
>
> I had meant to point this out in my original post, but
> actually, as the OED entry shows, J. D. Pistone's _Donnie
> Brasco_ does contain a clear example of _good fellow_ (thus
> spelled) in this sense.
>
> 1987 J. D. PISTONE Donnie Brasco xvii. 310 Was Anthony Mirra
> a wiseguy then?.. If Mirra wasn't a good fellow at the time
> you was there, his argument is no good.
>
> It does seem, from Amazon searching, that no form of "goodfella"
> appears in Pileggi's 1985 _Wiseguys_, though.
>
> Jesse Sheidlower
> OED
>
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