work 'plastic surgery'

[Joel S. Berson]

Not quite plastic surgery, but perhaps a predecessor:

In the 1963 movie "Mary, Mary", in the scene where Mary (Debbie
Reynolds) first appears, newly beautiful, about 15 minutes in, one of
the male characters remarks on her new appearance, "Clearly what we
have is a bit of work."  The work referred to includes hair, dress,
powder, and one or two other things I didn't catch because they were
named before my ears caught the "bit of work" quote; I can't say
therefore whether anything in the line of surgery -- such as a
remodeled nose or chin -- was actually mentioned.

"Bit of work" seems to have been common in that period as a reference
to various kinds of surgery.  That suggests to me that one of the
"improvements" I don't remember may have been plastic surgery.

The movie is based on the Jean Kerr play of 1961.  I haven't found
the scripts for either.

Joel

On Sun, 7 Aug 2011 18:22:07 -0400 Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Me too. Ten years? More?
>
>JL
>
>On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 6:16 PM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> > Subject:      Re: work 'plastic surgery'
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > I don't move at all in "plastic surgery" circles, but I have been familiar
> > with this usage for years.
> >
> > Fred Shapiro
> >
> >> Charles C Doyle [cdoyle at UGA.EDU]
> > Sent: Thursday, August 04, 2011 11:09 AM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > Subject: work 'plastic surgery'
> >
> > Has this newish usage been discussed here?  (I can't find any such
> > discussion in the ADS-L archive, and I don't see it in UrbanDictionary
> > either.)   Evidently, we are expected to understand "She (or He) has had
> > some (or a little) work done" to be a sort of euphemism for "Her face has
> > undergone surgical improvement."
> >

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