"Don't rock the boat!"

[Joel S. Berson]

What about "Guys and Dolls" (1950)?  ""Sit Down, [sit down,]You're
Rockin' the Boat".

G&D was based on two Runyon stories, "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown"
(1933) and "Blood Pressure" (n.d. -- no Wikipedia article).  Although
I strongly doubt that "rockin' the boat" is in either story.

Joel

At 10/11/2010 08:51 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>G. Legman traced the "Don't make waves!" joke at least back to the early
>'30s.  It was discussed here in 2004 (with a demonic hydroplane added in
>Wilson's 1957 hearing of it).
>
>It makes me wonder if "Don't rock the boat!" comes from a version of the
>same story, though that advice is undoubtedly more practical.  (If you're
>not in hell, anyway.)
>
>JL
>
>
>
>On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 8:36 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: "Stop digging."
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >  Laurence Horn wrote
> > > This is all very nice, but "When you're in a hole, stop digging" has
> > > always struck me as less evocative (and no sounder) advice than
> > > "(When you're buried to your neck in shit...,) don't make waves".  I
> > > seem to recall the latter is sometimes contextualized in Hell.
> >
> > In 1971 Isaac Asimov published a version of the tale Larry mentions
> > that is set in hell. This does predate the 1977 cite for the "stop
> > digging" adage, and I did not try to push the date further back. Below
> > is a link to the 1991 edition (instead of 1971) located in Google
> > Books because the text of the story is fully visible in the 1991
> > edition.
> >
> > The set up: Smith arrives in hell and must decide which room of
> > punishment he wishes to enter. He hears screams and shrieks from
> > behind some room doors. He hears gentle murmuring from behind one
> > door, and he selects it:
> >
> > Cite: 1991, Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor edited by Isaac Asimov,
> > Story: 491, Page 331, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York. [Reprint of
> > 1971 Houghton Mifflin edition]
> >
> > Instantly, the door was flung open, and he was propelled inside. He
> > found himself up to the lower lip in a vast sea of overwhelmingly
> > putrid sewage.
> >
> > With him were uncounted millions of others, and now the murmur he had
> > heard from outside the door resolved itself into words as everyone,
> > standing strainedly on tiptoe, kept muttering, without quite daring to
> > open his mouth, "Don't make waves! Don't make waves!"
> >
> >
> >
> http://books.google.com/books?id=nFdOG5JxWZoC&q=tiptoe#v=snippet&q=tiptoe&f=false
> >
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> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
>--
>"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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