"Take Me to Your Leader"

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

This is from hazy recollection, but I thought the expression arose from Martians who (supposedly) landed on earth.
In this connection I remember hearing a joke from ca. 1958:  A space ship from Mars landed on earth, and the first person the space-travelers met was Brigitte Bardot.  The Martian told her: "Take me to your leader [slight pause]later."
 
Gerald Cohen

________________________________

From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Fred Shapiro
Sent: Thu 2/8/2007 1:01 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: "Take Me to Your Leader"



See Yale Book of Quotations, page 320, for apparent source of this
expression in a 1953 New Yorker cartoon ("Kindly take us to your
President!").  The exact phrase "Take us to your leader!" appears in
Washington Post and Times Herald, July 14, 1955, page 43, in Walter
Winchell's column (I am coming to believe that Walter Winchell was a major
but uncredited originator of important quotations).

In a non-science-fiction context, "now take us to your leader" (American
soldier to Resistance fighters) appears in the Scorchy Smith comic strip as
found in The Evening Tribune (Albert Lea, Minnesota), 23 March 1944, page 14.

I would welcome any improvements on the above evidence.

Fred Shapiro

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org