"Rush Hour" & "Carnegie Hall joke" (UNCLASSIFIED)
Stephen Goranson
goranson at DUKE.EDU
Wed Oct 28 15:51:23 UTC 2009
If NY train 'rush hours" are of interest, e.g.:
Headline: A Remedy Much Needed; Article Type: News/Opinion
Paper: New York Herald; Date: 12-18-1878; Volume: XLIII; Issue: 352; Page: 6;
col. 4 [America's Historical Newspapers] Location: New York, New York
...There are several points along the road where central tracks could be laid
which would afford facilities for the operation of special trains that would
carry off the crowds that collect at some of the way stations during
the "rush"
hours....
Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson
Quoting "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>:
> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
> Barry Popik recently fielded a request for background on "Rush Hour".
> An antedating:
>
> "The Bob-Tail Car Nuisance" New York Times, Jan 21 1882 p. 5 col 3
> "He stated that the company was negotiating with the Stephenson Car
> Works, and that double cars would be put on the road within four
> weeks,a nd would be run regularly during the working or "rush" hours,
> if not all the time."
>
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Barry Popik [mailto:bapopik at aol.com]
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 3:08 AM
>> To: pollakm at nytimes.com
>> Cc: sclements at neo.rr.com; Mullins, Bill AMRDEC; bgzimmer at gmail.com;
>> jester at panix.com; fred.shapiro at yale.edu
>> Subject: "Rush Hour" & "Carnegie Hall joke"
>>
>> http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/rush_hour/
>> <blockedhttp://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/rush_ho
>> ur/>
>> http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/how_do_you_get_
>> to_carnegie_hall/
>> <blockedhttp://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/how_do_
>> you_get_to_carnegie_hall/>
>> ...
>> These two entries date back to the beginning of my website in 2004
>> (five years ago), so I revised them a little. I've found earlier
>> citations for "rush hour" that pre-date the opening of the Brooklyn
>> Bridge in 1883.
>> ...
>> If my colleagues can do better, they'll let you know.
>> ...
>> Barry Popik
>> Round Rock, TX
>> www.barrypopik.com
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Michael Pollak <pollakm at nytimes.com>
>> To: 'Barry Popik' <bapopik at aol.com>
>> Sent: Tue, Oct 27, 2009 3:49 pm
>> Subject: RE: "Gold Digger" etymology
>>
>>
>> Dear Mr. Popik:
>>
>> May I take you up on your kind offer and ask you about two New York
>> expressions?
>>
>> One is "rush hour." I see the NYT entry about the Brooklyn Bridge on
>> your Web site, and I've asked our research department to see if they
>> can come up with anything earlier.
>>
>> The other one has stumped me for several years. What is the origin of
>> the familiar joke about Carnegie Hall whose punch line is "Practice,
>> practice, practice"? Carnegie Hall's own archives department doesn't
>> know. Nor do the people at the Friars
>> Club; nor is it in compilations of Friars Club jokes that I could find.
>> I suspect it may have come from vaudeville or burlesque, but I don't
>> have any evidence. Carnegie Hall opened, I believe, in 1895, and I
>> don't know if the joke preceded it.
>>
>> Thank you for your help.
>>
>>
>> Michael Pollak
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> From: Barry Popik [mailto:bapopik at aol.com]
>> Sent: Sunday, October 25, 2009 5:41 AM
>> To: fyi at nytimes.com
>> Cc: bgzimmer at gmail.com; jester at panix.com; sclements at neo.rr.com;
>> Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil; gcohen at mst.edu
>> Subject: "Gold Digger" etymology
>>
>>
>>
>> I enjoyed Sunday's "FYI" in the New York Times, as always. But
>> please, e-mail our little gang when anyone asks about words. I work for
>> free!
>> ...
>> "Gold-digger" appears in print before 1919.
>> ...
>> Barry Popik
>> Round Rock, TX
>> www.barrypopik.com
>> ...
>> ...
>> http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/gold_digg
>> er/
>> Entry from October 25, 2009
>> Gold-digger
>> A “gold-digger” (or “gold digger") is someone who digs for gold.
>> The Broadway play The Gold Diggers, a comedy in three acts by Avery
>> Hopwood that starred Ina Claire, opened on September 30, 1919 and
>> popularized another kind of “gold-digger”—a woman who sought to marry a
>> rich husband. The 1929 production The Gold Diggers of Broadway
>> introduced the song “Tip-toe thru’ the tulips with me.” The film Gold
>> Diggers of 1933 featured the song “We’re in the money,” while the film
>> Gold Diggers of 1935 introduced the New York City standard song,
>> “Lullaby of Broadway.”
>>
>> “Gold-digger” (in the second sense of a person desiring another
>> person’s money or gold) is cited in print from 1912, 1915 and 1918, so
>> the term was in use at least a few years before the 1919 comedy.
>>
>>
>> Wikipedia: The Gold Diggers
>> The Gold Diggers can refer to:
>>
>> . The Gold Diggers (play), a 1919 play by Avery Hopwood, the
>> source material for the 1923 film, as well as Gold Diggers of Broadway
>> and Gold Diggers of 1933
>> . The Gold Diggers (1923 film), a Warner Bros. silent film
>> . The Gold Diggers (1983 film), a film directed by Sally Potter,
>> starring Julie Christie
>> . The Gold Diggers (book), a 1954 book of poetry by Robert
>> Creeley
>> . The Golddiggers, an all-girl singing and dancing troupe that
>> appeared on The Dean Martin Show
>>
>> (Historical Dictionary of American Slang)
>> gold-digger n.
>> a woman who associates with or marries a man solely for his
>> wealth.
>> 1915-1916 Lait Beef, Iron & WIne 77: Now don’t get me wrong. I’m
>> no gold digger.
>> 1918 Gutterson Granville 156: The same way that other girls are
>> classified as “Gold-diggers,” or :Dinner hounds,” or “Bricks.”
>> 1925 Weaver Collected Poems 152: I didn’t want Mr. Kirby to think
>> I was tryin’/Any gold-digger tricks. I ain’t that kind.
>> 1926 Dunning & Abbott Broadway 234: ROY (contemptuously). A gold-
>> digger.
>> 1926 Springs Nocturne Militaire 232: She always considered all
>> our other friends black-mailers, dope fiends, gold diggers, and
>> octogenarians, but was seldom specific in her charges.
>> 1927 American Speech II (Mar.) 276: Gold digger. A woman student
>> who gets the maximum amount of entertainment at meximum expense from a
>> man student.
>>
>> Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary
>> Main Entry: gold digger
>> Function: noun
>> Date: 1830
>> 1 : one who digs for gold
>> 2 : a person who uses charm to extract money or gifts from others
>>
>> (Oxford English Dictionary)
>> gold-digger
>> A girl or woman who attaches herself to a man merely for gain.
>> slang (orig. U.S.).
>> 1920 B. MANTLE in Best Plays of 1919-20 360 ‘Jerry’ Lamar is one
>> of a band of pretty little salamanders known to Broadway as ‘gold
>> diggers’, because they ‘dig’ for the gold of their gentlemen friends
>> and spend it being good to their mothers and their pet dogs.
>> 1928 Sunday Dispatch 19 Aug. 20 The professional gold-digger is
>> generally a girl of good family who finds she can supplement her
>> allowance by going out with, say, half-a-dozen men.
>> 1934 G. B. SHAW On Rocks II. 263 All I can get out of her is that
>> she is not a gold digger, and wouldnt be seen at a wedding with a lousy
>> viscount.
>>
>> 9 December 1912, Kansas City (MO) Star, “The Ne’er Do Well” by
>> Rex Beach, pg. 15:
>> “These people are money mad, aren’t they? Worst bunch of gold-
>> diggers I ever saw.”
>>
>> Google Books
>> My Battles With Vice
>> By Virginia Brooks
>> New York, NY: Macauley Company
>> 1915
>> Pg. 114:
>> “They don’t want any girl to come to these doin’s unless she’s
>> playing the game all the way down the line. Most of ‘em are gold
>> diggers, at that.”
>> Pg. 115:
>> “What’s a gold digger?” I queried.
>>
>> “Say,” answered my young friend, “maybe you come from the hills
>> around Gary, but I don’t know any of that bunch that talks the way you
>> do. A gold digger is a miner.”
>>
>> “Yes,” I agreed, “but how does being a ‘miner’ and a ‘gold
>> digger’ apply to that little girl over there, for instance?”
>>
>> “That kid with the red hat?” he inquired, pointing. “Why, she’s
>> the queen. That’s Chrissy Tate. Why, Kid, she’s got cards and spades on
>> ‘em all. She can get money from a ‘Gypshun’ mummy, believe me.”
>>
>> Google Books
>> February 1918, Munsey’s Magazine, pg. 60, col. 1:
>> “I got a wife somewhere—that blonde that used to sing in Faro
>> Jim’s place in Dawson. I don’t know where she is, but I guess she’s
>> still alive, and I ain’t going to give her a chance to get bigamy on
>> me. She’s a gold-digger, that one. If she got anything like that on me,
>> she’d wring me dry as a bone!”
>>
>> Google Books
>> The Winds of Chance
>> By Rex Beach
>> New York, NY: Harper & Brothers
>> 1918
>> Pg. 220:
>> “You dolls make me sick, grabbing at every nickel you see. beat
>> it, now! There’s plenty of young suckers for you to trim. If you can’t
>> respect an old man with gray hair, why—“
>> (...)
>> “I’m talking to this pink-faced gold-digger—“
>>
>> OCLC WorldCat record
>> “The gold diggers;” a comedy in three acts,
>> Author: Avery Hopwood
>> Publisher: [1919]
>> Edition/Format: Book : Manuscript : English
>>
>> 1 October 1919, New York (NY) Times, Alexander Woolcott review of
>> Avery Hopwood’s play The Gold Diggers starring Ina Claire, pg. 20:
>> The gold-diggers, according to Mr. Hopwood’s early 1884
>> philosophy, are women in general and chorus girls in particular. His
>> new comedy is all about chorus girls, and how a rich and monastic uncle
>> who hurries up to the Fascinating Fifties (or whatever that part of
>> town is called now) to rescue his nephew from the clutches of one,
>> falls into those clutches himself.
>>
>> OCLC WorldCat record
>> Tip-toe thru’ the tulips with me : (from “The gold diggers of
>> Broadway")
>> Author: Gay Ellis; Joe Burke; Al Dubin; Jay Gorney; E Y Harburg
>> Publisher: U.S.A. : Harmony, [1929]
>> Edition/Format: Music : 78 rpm : English
>>
>> OCLC WorldCat record
>> The gold diggers’s song : We’re in the money : from “Gold diggers
>> of 1933”
>> Author: Ted Lewis; Harry Warren; Al Dubin; Jerry Livingston;
>> Marty Symes; All authors
>> Publisher: U.S.A. : Columbia, [1933]
>> Edition/Format: Music : 78 rpm : Dance forms : Motion picture
>> music : Multiple forms : English
>>
>> OCLC WorldCat record
>> Lullaby of Broadway
>> Author: Harry Warren; Al Dubin
>> Publisher: Sydney : J. Albert & Son, ©1935.
>> Edition/Format: Musical score : English
>> Notes: “Warner Bros. present Gold diggers of 1935.”
>> Description: 1 score (4 p.) ; 31 cm.
>> Responsibility: lyric by Al Dubin ; music by Harry Warren.
>>
>> New York (NY) Times
>> F.Y.I
>> By MICHAEL POLLAK
>> Published: October 24, 2009
>> Q. Where did the term “gold digger,” for a woman seeking a rich
>> husband, come from?
>> A. In a word, Broadway.
>>
>> Its first appearance we could find in print was an announcement
>> of the Sept. 30, 1919, premiere of “The Gold Diggers,” a comedy by
>> Avery Hopwood, at the Lyceum Theater. Ina Claire, photo above, played
>> the role of the lead prospector, who isn’t really that kind of girl but
>> is just pretending to be a vamp to help out a friend. The show spawned
>> a silent film of the same name in 1923 and the “Gold Diggers” movie
>> musicals of the 1930s.
>>
>> “Gold digger” in the comedy’s narrower sense — a showgirl or
>> chorus girl seeking a rich husband — is believed to have entered
>> Broadway argot several years earlier. A major inspiration was Florenz
>> Ziegfeld’s popular “Follies,” with their heavily promoted,
>> spectacularly costumed revues, some of whose graduates ultimately
>> struck it rich.
>>
>> Posted by Barry Popik
>> New York City • Workers/People • (0) Comments • Sunday, October
>> 25, 2009 • Permalink
>
> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list