[Ads-l] "Who was Kilroy?" June 26, 1945 (in-print antedating?)

Sat Mar 27 13:32:15 UTC 2021

While I have no problem believing a 1943 or 1944 date for "Kilroy," the restored aircraft is not good evidence. For one thing, it has invasion stripes, but the aircraft in question was manufactured in 1945, some nine months after D-Day, and never left the United States, used for training. Clearly the restorers took some liberties and produced a "representative" paint scheme rather than an accurate one.

Similarly, the buttons aren't great evidence. All sorts of after-the-fact memorabilia are produced for sale (sometimes honestly sold as replicas, sometimes not). Or, they could genuinely be WWII-era, but the exact date an estimate. Without documentation of provenance, I wouldn't trust it.

>From my own experience recently researching Kilroy for my site, I had to give up finding a WWII-era photo to illustrate the entry. The only genuine ones I could find were a couple of poor-quality scans from newspaper archives—all from 1945. Virtually all those on the web are photoshopped or stills from WWII video games that look good at low resolution but are obviously CGI when examined closely. (My fave was a Sherman tank in Normandy that bore the words "Kilroy was here" and directly below that "Epstein was murdered.")

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> On Behalf Of Jonathan Lighter
Sent: Friday, March 26, 2021 11:40 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] "Who was Kilroy?" June 26, 1945 (in-print antedating?)

Not sure why someone would produce fake Kilroy buttons for War Bonds and subtly backdating them to 1943.  To fool us perhaps? Of course, nothing is impossible.

I don't see why the restorers would create a fake "Kilroy IS here" name for the C-47. Maybe the Museum possesses a 1944 photo.

As for the frequency of KIlroy's appearance during the war, I will add that I cannot recall many (or perhaps any) refs. to it in published wartime letters or memoirs.

It would probably take only two sightings in distant places to convince a person that Kilroy signs were "everywhere" in WW2.

Just as a data point: I checked with my wife about Gene Ahern's "Nov shmoz ka pop," and - without prompting from me - she immediately associated it with a cartoon of "a little man with a big nose looking over a fence."  I associate the phrase only with the "little hitch-hiker" in Ahern's "Squirrel Cage" strip.

JL

On Fri, Mar 26, 2021 at 11:13 AM Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:

> FWIW, eBay has listings for a few similar "Kilroy Was Here" buttons 
> dated to 1943:
>
>
> https://www.ebay.com/itm/RARE-amp-ORIGINAL-WW-II-PINBACK-OF-KILROY-LOO
> K-/203265273128
>
> https://www.ebay.com/itm/ORIGINAL-WWII-HOMEFRONT-KILROY-WAS-HERE-NYC-C
> LUB-1943-BUTTON-/143932728271
>
> https://www.ebay.com/itm/ORIGINAL-WWII-HOMEFRONT-KILROY-WAS-HERE-KILRO
> Y-CLUB-OF-NYC-1943-BUTTON-/143943559567
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 26, 2021 at 10:46 AM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > I want to be open-minded, but the 1943 button is just too early to 
> > be true, and perhaps the 1944 airplane name as well.  Also, to me 
> > the supposedly 1943 button seems to be founded on the saying being 
> > already well-known, which clearly it was not in 1943.
> >
> > Fred Shapiro
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of 
> > Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> > Sent: Friday, March 26, 2021 10:34 AM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Subject: Re: "Who was Kilroy?" June 26, 1945 (in-print antedating?)
> >
> > This photo of a button promoting war bond appears to show a "Kilroy" 
> > - complete with portrait - from 1943:
> >
> > http://www.kilroywashere.org/001-Pages/01-0KilroySightings-4.html
> > "BUY WAR BONDS   KILROY WAS HERE    WASH. DC 1943."
> >
> >
> > And here is a (restored) C-47 named "KILROY" IS HERE (with cartoon) 
> > that took part in the D-Day invasion in June, 1944:
> >
> > https://www.combatairmuseum.org/aircraft/douglasskytrain.html
> >
> > Regrettably, the site doesn't afford a contemporaneous photo of the
> plane.
> >
> > WW2 photos of the Kilroy sign appear to be almost nonexistent online.
> >
> > That leads me to believe its frequency during WW2 may have been 
> > considerably exaggerated.
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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

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