Antedating of "Flack"

[Shapiro, Fred]

Jon,

I'm taking these citations from snippets on the Variety website archives, so they're somewhat unclear, but it looks like at least some of these are being used as synonyms for "publicist".  The third citation seems clearly to be generic.  Perhaps your point is that the first two citations may simply be references to Gene Flack.

Fred Shapiro




________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Jonathan Lighter [wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Friday, March 08, 2013 8:36 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Antedating of "Flack"

HDAS: 1939.

Aren't these earlier exx. simply references to PR man Gene Flack rather
than common nouns?

JL

On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 8:18 AM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Shapiro, Fred" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Antedating of "Flack"
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> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> flack (OED, n.2., 1946)
>
> 1933 _Variety_ 20 Sept.  Peripatetic Flack Press agent at one of the
> downto=
> wn radio stations.
>
> 1933 _Variety_ 7 Oct.  Flack Writes Lyndsley Parsons, Monogram press agent.
>
> 1933 _Variety_ 24 Oct.  Flack Quits  Blake McVeigh resigned from the
> Paramo=
> unt publicity staff, effective Saturday.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
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