"a nice girl like you"

[Garson O'Toole]

John O'Hara published the high-profile bestseller BUtterfield 8 in
1935. Google Books has placed the 1935 edition in "no preview" mode.
But it is possible to use "Amazon Look Inside" to search in the Modern
Library Classics edition. It contains a variant of the expression that
JL is asking about:

"What are you doing here. anyway?"
"You mean what is a nice girl like me doing in a place like this," said Eddie.

The response suggests that the phrase was already a cliche.
(This text is unverified in the 1935 edition, and it is possible that
the text was revised.)

Martin Scorsese wrote and directed a film with the this title in 1963:
What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?  So sayeth
IMDB.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057680/

Garson

On Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 12:41 PM, George Thompson
<george.thompson at nyu.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "a nice girl like you"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I'm quite sure that something similar to this appears in Polly Adler's
> autobiography, A House Is Not A Home, published in the mid 1950s.  As I
> recall, she instructed her employees that if they were asked such a question
> by a john, the proper answer was "just lucky, I guess".
>
> GAT

On Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 9:02 AM, Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "a nice girl like you"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Here's a 1958 newspaper use:
> http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=FrExAAAAIBAJ&sjid=znYDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5913,4846354&dq=what+sa+nice+girl+like+you+doing+in+a+place+like+this&hl=en
>
> Stephen Goranson
> http://www.duke.edu/~goranson
> ________________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Jonathan Lighter [wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM]
> Sent: Saturday, June 25, 2011 8:41 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: [ADS-L] "a nice girl like you"
>
> YBQ lacks the classic, facetious pick-up line, "What's a nice girl like you
> doing in a place like this?"
>
> But what's even worse is that GB searches don't take it back any earlier
> than the 1990s - despite the fact that I recall it well from high school,
> very probably because Martin Scorsese directed a short feature with that
> title in 1963. (I used the phrase frequently, and it got me nowhere.)
>
> I haven't checked elsewhere.
>
> But WTH's with GB?
>
> JL

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org