[Ads-l] Horticulture pun ascribed to Dorothy Parker (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Laurence Horn]

> On Nov 23, 2015, at 10:49 AM, Mullins, Bill CIV (US) <william.d.mullins18.civ at MAIL.MIL> wrote:
> 
> CLASSIFICATION: UNCLASSIFIED
> 
>> 
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Mullins, Bill CIV (US)" <william.d.mullins18.civ at MAIL.MIL>
>> Subject:      Re: Horticulture pun ascribed to Dorothy Parker
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
> 
>> From the _Nassau [Long Island, NY] Daily Review_ 4/18/1935, p 19 (fultonhis=
>> tory.com)
>> 
>> "What was Dorothy Parker's priceless offering when the gang at the James Gl=
>> eason=20
>> party were playing one of those "make a sentence with a word" games and=20 someone suggested "horticulture"?"
>> (In Harrison Carroll's "Behind the Scenes in Hollywood" column)
>> 
>> 
> 
> And Walter Winchell picked it up in his "On Broadway" column shortly
> before:
> 
> _Reading [PA] Times_ 3/1/1935 p 28 (newspapers.com)
> "Dorothy Parker can make up a sentence containing the word
> "horticulture," but hardly here."


Interesting exercise to try to guess how WW might have hinted more generously at Parker's solution without arising the presumed ire of the syndicate censors--perhaps

You can **** * horticulture but you can't **** *** think.


LH
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