Saying: Writers are schmucks with typewriters. (1961)

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Powerful studio boss Jack Warner reportedly referred to writers as
"schmucks with Underwoods". Underwood was a typewriter manufacturer.
I've been asked to trace this saying.

The earliest evidence I've located consists of two citations in 1961
(which I hope to verify on paper soon). Both cites were written by
Bill Davidson but the two quotations differed.

1) "schmucks with typewriters"
2) "schleps with typewriters"

I would particularly welcome help with evidence before 1961; also
interested in ascriptions to Samuel Goldwyn before 1986 and
ascriptions to Lewis B. Mayer before 1987.

Below are four selected citations.

Year: 1961
Title: The Real and the Unreal
Author: Bill Davidson
Quote Page: 198
Publisher: Harper, New York
(Google Books snippet only; data may be inaccurate; not yet verified on paper)

[Begin extracted text]
One of the Warner brothers, for example, used to call all writers--even
William Faulkner, who was once under his command--"schmucks with
typewriters" (schmuck is a derisive Yiddish expression for a bumpkin,
an idiot). He used to make all his writers punch a time clock as they
entered and left the studio, and it was only the ingenuity of Harry
Brown, a former prize-winning poet who discovered a back exit down a
fire escape, which led to the occasional emancipation of some twenty
million dollars' worth of writing talent from their cubicles.
[End extracted text]

Year: 1961
Periodocal: Show: The Magazine of the Arts
Volume: 1
Month (Guess): October or November
Article Title (Guess): Hollywood: A cultural anthropologist's view
Author (Guess): Bill Davidson
Quote Page: 81
Publisher: Hartford Publications, New York.
(Google Books snippet only; data may be inaccurate; not yet verified on paper)

[Begin extracted text]
The talented are considered untrustworthy interlopers. One of the
Warner brothers, for example, used to call all writers--even William
Faulkner, who was once under his command--"schleps with typewriters"
(schlep is a derisive Yiddish expression for a bumpkin, an idiot).
[End extracted text]


[ref] 1976 July 25, Los Angeles Times, Hollywood 'Hacks' Reconsidered
by Robert Kirsch, (Book Review of "Some Time in the Sun" by Tom
Dardis), Quote Page B1, Column 1, Los Angeles, California.
(ProQuest)[/ref]

[Begin extracted text]
Behind this fresh and readable study is an understanding of
screenwriting, a respect for it that will not allow the patronizing
and condescending attitudes to stand unchallenged. This doesn't mean
that all screenwriting is good or that there aren't people who have
sold out or that the Philistine producers (Jack Warner was reputed to
have snarled that writers were just "schmucks with Underwoods") are
products of the imagination.
[End extracted text]


[ref] 1978 September 11, Washington Post, "Jack Warner, Last of
First-Generation Movie Tycoons, Dies" by Gary Arnold, Quote Page C4,
Column 6, [Washington, D.C. (ProQuest)[/ref]

[Begin extracted text]
Noted for flamboyant and often off-color comments ("Writers are
schmucks with Underwoods" has achieved immortality). Jack Warner
recalled his career in an autobiography, "My First Hundred Years in
Hollywood."
[End extracted text]

Thanks,
Garson

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