"outside of a dog"

[Dan Goncharoff]

If someone has access to the LA Times archive, there is a 1942 story
written by Groucho entitled "My best friend is a dog", which might be
the source.
DanG

On 6/14/2010 3:31 PM, Mark Mandel wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Mark Mandel<thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "outside of a dog"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I forwarded this (with Garson's link) to my wife, a retired librarian. She
> replies:
>
> Objects produced for sale by the American Library Association attribute the
>
>> remark to Groucho Marx. I wouldn't mess with the ALA when it comes to
>> citations.
>>
>>
> Which may mean they know something we haven't come up with, or that they're
> not immune to pop attribution, or that it doesn't matter to them in this
> case.
>
> Do any of the Groucho attributions offer checkable citations? By 1954
> Groucho was sixty and his career was largely over. (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx)
>
> m a m
>
> On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 11:35 PM, Baker, John M.<JMB at stradley.com>  wrote:
>
> Google Books has an earlier example of this, in full text, from Boys' Life,
>
>> p. 78 (Feb. 1954).  It's on the magazine's Think and Grin page, which
>> appears to be a collection of jokes sent in by readers (though I don't see a
>> specific invitation to readers to contribute).  The quip is in more or less
>> the canonical form:
>>
>>      A book is man's best friend outside of a dog, and inside of a dog it's
>> too dark to read.--_Jim Brewer, Cleveland, O._
>>
>> If, as I suppose, this was submitted by one of the magazine's juvenile
>> readers (presumably Jim Brewer of Cleveland), then it is likely that he
>> heard it elsewhere, rather than making it up.  Be that as it may, Boys' Life
>> had a large circulation and is a plausible avenue for the phrase's initial
>> popularization.
>>
>> John Baker
>>
>>
>>
>>> ________________________________
>>>
>>> From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Arnold Zwicky
>>> Sent: Sun 6/13/2010 10:47 PM
>>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>> Subject: "outside of a dog"
>>>
>>> with citation of ADS-L, at the end of this posting on my blog:
>>>
>>> http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2010/06/13/the-commencement-pun-crop/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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