Movie anachronisms: gold-digger [Was: WYSIWYG]

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Mon, Jul 30, 2007 at 12:25:12AM -0400, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
> On 7/29/07, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> >
> > The time one can waste!  A 2000 TV dramatization of "Lady Audley's
> > Secret" (? 1862, but there seem to be plays based on it as early as
> > 1850) had one character refer to her as a "gold
> > digger"  (OED2:  1920).  I actually bought and tried to read the book.
> >
> > Now that I have been educated, I consult Gutenberg.  Gold (from
> > Australia) is an element of the plot, and the material and color are
> > recurrent images and metaphors, particularly for Lady Audley with her
> > "golden" hair and alleged marriage for money.  But I do not find
> > "gold-digger" -- only "gold-diggings"  (OED2:  1852, 1869).  I can
> > imagine the TV script writer extending the theme to "gold-digger".
>
> I'd wager "gold-digger" in the relevant sense doesn't go back much
> further than 1920. It seems to have been popularized by Avery
> Hopwood's 1919 Broadway play "The Gold Diggers" starring Ina Claire.

Note that HDAS has two pre-1920 quotes, from 1916 and 1918
(which probably fall into the "not much further back than
1920" category, but).

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

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