[Ads-l] just "just a cigar, kiddo" 1946

[Stephen Goranson]

It is widely agreed that Freud did not write "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar," even though the psychoanalyst and writer Allen Wheelis in 1950 wrote that Freud had done. But Freud did influence comedians, some of them Jewish--Jack Benny, Groucho Marx, maybe George Burns and others--who did joke about cigars, sometimes in a Freudian-aware manner.
Maybe (or maybe not) Wheelis was aware of such jokes and presumed an explicit source for them.

On 1 February 1946, the Desert Sun [CA; Elephind] p. 1 col. a:

On the radio he [Jack Benny, and his writers are also mentioned] says L.S.M.F.T., but off the air he says J.A.C.K. And that doesn't mean his first name. It stands for "Just a Cigar, Kiddo."

Stephen Goranson
http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/



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