[Ads-l] Pronunciation and antedating of "biopic"

[Ben Yagoda]

I’ve written a Substack piece about the currently fairly widespread pronunciation of “biopic,” the movie genre, to rhyme with “myopic.” I looked into the history of the word as well. The OED’s first citation is a July 1947 Variety article, but, writing in Mental Floss about this topic earlier this year, Ellen Gutoskey quoted an Associated Press article from the previous month, June 1947: 'In the smarty-pants talk of the trade press a saloon is a “cocktailery,” a studio chief is a “topper,” and a crew of “windjammers” or ‘musikers’ comprise an “ork” (orchestra). Press agents are “flacks,” dancehalls (palaces of Terpsichore) are “terpalaces,” pictures are “pix,” and a biographical film is a “biopic.”’ (I verified it on newspapers.com <http://newspapers.com/>.)

The quote doesn’t name Variety but suggests to me that the term was already in use there. If anyone has access to the publication’s digital archives, I would be interested to know whether there are any earlier “biopic”s.

Here’s a link to my piece (which has a link to the Mental Floss piece): https://open.substack.com/pub/benyagoda/p/how-do-you-pronounce-biopic?r=3s77z&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

 Ben
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