"Thanks! I Needed That!"

[Ben Zimmer]

In the clips of "The High and the Mighty" I can find on YouTube, John
Wayne slaps Robert Stack in the cockpit and mutters "Get a hold of
yourself, you yellow..." But there's no expression of gratitude from
Stack immediately after:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYVvIqclEMM
(trailer, scene starts about 2 minutes in)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnrTq9Y-uJY
(just the cockpit scene)

It's possible that Stack thanks Wayne a bit later, after the clip that
shows up in the trailer.

A few years later, in 1957, another plane crash movie was released --
"Zero Hour!", which served as the basis for "Airplane!" The makers of
"Airplane!" bought the rights to "Zero Hour!", so they were able to
crib dialogue verbatim. This video has a side-by-side comparison of
scenes from the two movies:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BjU-e01zQ4

About 2 minutes in there's a scene with a woman screaming, "I've got
to get out of here!" In "Zero Hour!" a man just shakes here, but in
the "Airplane!" version, she's shaken, slapped, and otherwise abused
by a series of passengers. Anyway, no "thanks" here either, so that
doesn't really help us.

--bgz


On Sun, Aug 22, 2010 at 9:13 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> People must have been saying the words, "Thanks, I needed that,"
> occasionally long before the invention of motion pictures - or of printing,
> if translation counts.
>
> The  proverbial or allusive nature of the phrase relates solely to the
> context of having been slapped back to one's senses. That makes it
> implausibly melodramatic: if somebody tried slapping me while I was going
> crazy, I'd bang them on the head. If I wasn't going crazy, I'd bang even
> harder.
>
> Now if it was John Wayne, and he was the star of the movie, I might think
> twice.  But I sure wouldn't say, "Thanks!  I needed that!"  Would anybody?
>
> Evidence trumps all, but I cannot imagine that so absurd a cliche' would
> have been put to serious use in a "major motion picture" in 1954 or at any
> other time.  It may have appeared earlier, however, in Ernest K. Gann's 1953
> novel, on which he based the screenplay.
>
> More people have seen the movie than read the book.
>
> JL
>
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 22, 2010 at 1:55 AM, Garson O'Toole
> <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: "Thanks! I Needed That!"
> >
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Garson O'Toole wrote
> > >> There is a discussion of cartoons on the Straightdope bulletin board
> > >> that mentions a scenario with a slap followed by thanks.  ...
> >
> > Ben Zimmer wrote:
> > > That sounds like "Lumber Jerks" (1955):
> > >
> > > http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048320/
> > >
> > > But there's no slapping and no thanks in that scene -- starting about 5
> > minutes
> > > in:
> > >
> > > http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5992488629105062971
> >
> > Yes, the description provided at the Straightdope bulletin board
> > appears to be inaccurate. The cartoon scene does not fit the pattern
> > that interests Jonathan. Many thanks, Ben, for tracing this cartoon
> > and discovering the discrepancy.
> > Garson
> >

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