Hitchcock's McGuffin story possibly derived from a story about an imaginary mongoose

[Stephen Goranson]

Interesting. Thanks. FWIW, the same sentence--I forget who was the creator of "McGuffin," but a "McGuffin" is a gift that is not to be opened until Christmas--appears in Robert Haven Schauffler, "Some Words We Need," The Century Magazine, vol. 109 no. 5, March 1925 [the vol. is 1924-1925; GB no preview gives the 1924 date] 671-8 here 677, confirmed on paper.

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson
________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Garson O'Toole [adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2010 7:37 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Hitchcock's McGuffin story possibly derived from a              story              about an imaginary mongoose

Nice find. There is a recent slang dictionary that refers to this gift
sense of McGuffin when discussing the sense popularized by Hitchcock.

Dictionary of American Slang 4th edition edited by Barbara Ann Kipfer
and Robert L. Chapman

The entry for MacGuffin includes the following:

[1930s+; first used by director Alfred Hitchcock, and perhaps
suggested by McGuffin, "a gift that is not to be opened until
Christmas," hence something tantalizing, found by 1925]

At Amazon you can look inside one particular paperback edition of this
slang dictionary and see the entry for MacGuffin:
Collins Reference; 4 Reprint edition (August 19, 2008).
The page is blocked in Google Books.


On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 2:30 PM, Douglas G. Wilson <douglas at nb.net> wrote:
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> Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Hitchcock's McGuffin story possibly derived from a story
>              about an imaginary mongoose
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  On 10/17/2010 8:19 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter<wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: Hitchcock's McGuffin story possibly derived from a story
>>                about an imaginary mongoose
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Not just interesting and entertaining: brilliant!
>>
>> It isn't clear whether _Time_ got their version of the story directly or
>> indirectly from Hitchcock himself.
>>
>> Surely Hitchock, like most literate Britons, knew the difference between a
>> mongoose and a McGuffin. (Mongooses figure prominently in both Kipling and
>> Saki.) This, even more than the footnote, suggests that he'd heard the stor=
>> y
>> with "McGuffin" already in it, especially since in his version the animal o=
>> r
>> apparatus is used to catch tigers, which is beyond the capability of
>> mongooses.
> --
>
> No doubt Hitchcock's story was equivalent to the mongoose story (I've
> heard a few variants myself).
>
> But of course it's possible that the story actually had nothing at all
> to do with the origin of the term "McGuffin", but was only connected to
> this "McGuffin" as a retrospective guess or error (by Hitchcock or
> somebody else).
>
> At G-books, apparently the same passage twice, in disgusting snippet
> form, dated 1925 and 1926 (of course the date etc. should be checked):
>
> <<I forget who was the creator of "McGuffin," but a "McGuffin" is a gift
> that is not to be opened until Christmas.>>
>
> This appears to be in a light/humorous piece about newly-coined words or
> new words which are needed, so it's not clear (to me) whether "McGuffin"
> referring to a Christmas present really existed previously.
>
> Anyway, assuming this passage is what it seems to be and correctly
> dated, we have a candidate for the ancestral "McGuffin", surely
> appropriate in form and perhaps appropriate in sense also. I suppose
> that the necklace or document or whatever item is called for by a story
> plot is something which for suspense purposes is not to be revealed
> until a certain point ... so it's "do not reveal until the
> climax/denouement/whatever", a good analogy to "do not open until Xmas".
>
> Pardon me if this quotation has appeared here before; I don't see it in
> the archive.
>
> -- Doug Wilson
>
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