Terms Which Have Disappeared

[Fading Fast]

What most people don't remember is that the Fleischer brothers did a series of cartoon shorts in 1940 called "The Stone Age" which had a premise very, very similar to that of The Flintstones -- the idea that cave people lived a parallel to 20th Century life using materials available to them to duplicate modern technology. Just about every "cave technology" gag in "The Flintstones" can be found twenty years earlier in these Fleischer shorts.

The series was not popular, largely because the cartoons were basically just strings of weakly-plotted spot gags -- although they did do occasional "Stone Age celebrity" parodies just as the Flintstones did, along with a recurring family called "The Stonebrokes" -- and the formula wore thin after a year. But they offered a rich source of gag-mining, and at least one Flesicher animator who worked on the Stone Age series would work for Hanna-Barbera on The Flintstones.

As we've said many times before, everything is a variation on a former theme. Wow, I knew that "The Flintstones" had ripped off "The Honeymooners," but that they combined that with ripping off "The Stone Age" is news to me.

And kudos to the Fleischcher's (spellcheck is fighting me tooth and claw on their name) as they nailed - absolutely, positively nailed - the visual in their "Superman" shorts and, apparently, did "The Flintstones" twenty years before "The Flintstones." Clearly, there was a lot of creative brainpower in those two.

 

[tonyb]

The more common American synonym for "collywobbles" is "heebie jeebies," a phrase for which we know the exact origin: it was introduced by cartoonist Billy DeBeck in his "Barney Google" comic strip in the fall of 1923, and became a national catchphrase by the middle of the twenties.

Among the regular late-night card players at the Seattle Yellow Cab lot decades and decades ago was a quite obese fellow named Raymond and a Jewish man named Morrie. These two loved each other like brothers but those new to the scene wouldn't know that judging from the way they addressed each other. In Morrie's vocabulary, Raymond was always "the fat prick," and in Raymond's Morrie was "heebie jeebie."

Bigoted? Abusive? Sure. But if I could ever know another person's mind, I know that those guys didn't think themselves superior to each other or any other person.

Morrie died a long time ago. Cancer took him quick. Raymond is almost certainly gone by now.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And kudos to the Fleischcher's (spellcheck is fighting me tooth and claw on their name) as they nailed - absolutely, positively nailed - the visual in their "Superman" shorts and, apparently, did "The Flintstones" twenty years before "The Flintstones." Clearly, there was a lot of creative brainpower in those two.

That was a terrible time for the Fleischer studio -- Max and Dave couldn't stand the sight of each other by that point, and the staff were all very unhappy. Max had moved the studio from New York to Miami to get away from union organizers, and the workers, all of whom were New Yorkers in body and soul, were bitter about the forced relocation. And Paramount was getting tired of the studio dissension, the poor performance of the Fleischers' attempts at making features, and the constant budget overruns. That there was any sense of creativity at all left at the studio is remarkable considering the conditions under which their films were produced.

 

[GHT]

Does anyone ever use the term: "Struth?" As a small boy, I was severely reprimanded for saying it at school. It was explained to me, in no uncertain terms, that struth was an abbreviation for God's Truth, and an abhorrent one at that. To a small boy, it sounded so plausible, although had I been older I might have used another defunct expression: "What a load of codswallop!"

 

[Fading Fast]

That was a terrible time for the Fleischer studio -- Max and Dave couldn't stand the sight of each other by that point, and the staff were all very unhappy. Max had moved the studio from New York to Miami to get away from union organizers, and the workers, all of whom were New Yorkers in body and soul, were bitter about the forced relocation. And Paramount was getting tired of the studio dissension, the poor performance of the Fleischers' attempts at making features, and the constant budget overruns. That there was any sense of creativity at all left at the studio is remarkable considering the conditions under which their films were produced.

It's amazing how often incredible creativity comes out of chaos, anger and stress in the artists' personal and professional lives.

I know you are not a fan of classic rock, but the Rolling Stones put out the album "Beggars Banquet" with many classic songs, including "Sympathy for the Devil," amidst incredible internal stress as their bassist, Brain Jones, was all but in a drug comma and about to be fired and their later album - what some consider their finest - "Exiled on Main Street" was done with several of the members recording their tracks at different times as they didn't want to be in this studio with each other. I believe the Beatles had a similar dynamic toward the end.

And how Fitzgerald wrote anything with Zelda wigging out and the bill collectors hounding is beyond me.

Separately, where do you fall on the Fleischers (man, spell check really hates their name) as they were at odds with the studio, but also, based on your post, were not friends of unions?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Max was sort of like a plantation owner in the way he viewed the staff at the studio -- he "took care" of his favorites, his pets in the animation department, and tried to come across like the studio was one big happy family, as long as everybody knew their place and stayed in it. But the low-ranking employees, the in-betweeners, the ink-and-paint women, the cel-washers, and the people like that, were not among those who were "taken care" of, and there was a lot of resentment built around that favoritism.

There was a bitter, bitter strike at the studio in 1937 after Max fired fifteen people who were in the forefront of the effort to organize the shop. Fleischer ignored an NLRB order to recognize the union vote, and the dismissals were clearly illegal, and that was the last straw even for some of Max's "pets." This shut down production for five months and resulted in Fleischer cartoons being booed off the screen in working-class neighborhoods all over the country. The studio never really recovered from the strike, which prefigured an even more bitter strike at Disney in 1941 over the same sort of issues.

Paramount got involved as well when the strikers threw up a picket line in front of the Paramount Theatre in Times Square -- they were bankrolling the Fleischer Studio, and they didn't want or need this kind of publicity, especially when they already had a reputation as anti-labor for Paramount News' suppression of footage of the Memorial Day Massacre in Chicago. They leaned hard on Max to settle the strike, but this just made him dig in deeper, and it poisoned the relationship between Max and Paramount at a time when he was trying to get them to put up money to match Disney's efforts in features. Instead of settling, Max moved the whole operation to Florida in early 1938, and managed in doing so to upset and alienate those studio workers who hadn't supported the strik, and run up a debt load that he'd never be able to pay off.

Dave Fleischer, meanwhile, tried to stay aloof from all this -- he was a "creative guy," not a business guy, and he just wanted to be left alone. And that contributed to the tension between him and Max, making it even more stressful all around. Two other brothers were also caught in the whirlpool of events -- Lou Fleischer ran the music department, and Joe Fleischer was in charge of the physical plant, and among the four of them the slow and steady collapse of the studio managed to poison their relationships for the rest of their lives. When Paramount foreclosed and shut down the studio in 1942, Max and Dave never spoke again as long as they lived.

Max was basically a nineteenth-century man who never came to terms with the twentieth. Dave was a twentieth century man who had little patience with the nineteenth.

 

[Harp]

It's amazing how often incredible creativity comes out of chaos, anger and stress in the artists' personal and professional lives.
And how Fitzgerald wrote anything with Zelda winging out and the bill collectors hounding is beyond me.

Fitzgerald possessed a remarkable resiliency for all that, but it eventually tapered, a tragedy in several acts. And he still wrote to the end. Amazing man.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Seattle is thick with possums and raccoons (I've spotted 'em smack in the middle of downtown) and, alas, rats. Urban gardeners and chicken raisers and the like often discover they are inadvertently creating splendid conditions for vermin. I once lived with people who kept rabbits. I had to bring to their attention the rats that fattened up at the rabbit feeders at night.
I've yet to see a rat in almost two years in greater Denver. Mice, but no rats. Hope it stays that way.

I raised rabbits as a kid. Didn't notice any rats around, but I'm sure there were. I had a rabbit a time or two as an adult, but kept them in the house. They can be litter box trained, so it's not a big deal.

 

[Stearmen]

Land O Goshen, this sure is a long thread!

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Would you recognize the word Murgatroyd? - Heavens to Murgatroyd!
Lost Words from our childhood...



The other day, a not so elderly (65) lady said something to her son about
driving a Jalopy and he looked at her quizzically and said what the heck is
a Jalopy? OMG (new phrase!) - he had never heard of the word jalopy!!
She knew she was old but not that old.

Well, I hope you are Hunky Dory after you read this and chuckle -

About a month ago, I illuminated some old expressions that have become
obsolete because of the inexorable march of technology. These phrases
included "Don't touch that dial," "Carbon copy," "You sound like a
broken record" and "Hung out to dry."

Back in the olden days we had a lot of moxie. We'd put on our best bib
and tucker to straighten up and fly right - Heavens to Betsy!
Gee whillikers! Jumping Jehoshaphat! Holy moley! We were in like
Flynn and living the life of Riley and even a regular guy couldn't
accuse us of being a knucklehead, a nincompoop or a pill.
Not for all the tea in China!

Back in the olden days, life used to be swell but when's the last time
anything was swell? Swell has gone the way of beehives, pageboys and
the D.A, of spats, knickers, fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes and
pedal pushers. Oh, my aching back. Kilroy was here but he isn't anymore.

We wake up from what surely has been just a short nap and before we
can say, well I'll be a monkey's uncle! This is a fine kettle of fish! -
we discover that the words we grew up with, the words that seemed
omnipresent as oxygen, have vanished with scarcely a notice from
our tongues and our pens and our keyboards.

Poof, go the words of our youth, the words we've left behind. We blink
and they're gone. Where have all those phrases gone?

Long gone: Pshaw, The milkman did it, Hey! It's your nickel. Don't
forget to pull the chain, Knee high to a grasshopper. Well, Fiddlesticks!
Going like sixty. I'll see you in the funny papers. Don't take any
wooden nickels, Heavens to Murgatroyd!

It turns out there are more of these lost words and expressions than
Carter has liver pills. This can be disturbing stuff! We of a certain
age have been blessed to live in changeful times. For a child each new
word is like a shiny toy, a toy that has no age. We at the other end of
the chronological arc have the advantage of remembering there are
words that once did not exist and there were words that once strutted
their hour upon the earthly stage and now are heard no more, except in
our collective memory. It's one of the greatest advantages of aging.

See ya later, alligator!

 

[Stearmen]

Thanks HD! You reminded me of one of my favorite songs.

 

[Stearmen]

Would you recognize the word Murgatroyd? - Heavens to Murgatroyd!
Lost Words from our childhood...



The other day, a not so elderly (65) lady said something to her son about
driving a Jalopy and he looked at her quizzically and said what the heck is
a Jalopy? OMG (new phrase!) - he had never heard of the word jalopy!!
She knew she was old but not that old.

A while back, a young guy was telling me about the new thing, Rat Rods. I told him, we had those, we called them Jalopy's!

 

[Zombie_61]

...Well, I hope you are Hunky Dory after you read this and chuckle...

I'll take a small measure of pride in the fact that I didn't have to look up any of those words or phrases to find out what they mean.

 

[HudsonHawk]

When was the last time someone was called a "bird dog" or accused of "bird-dogging"?

 

[Fading Fast]

The other day I watched "Only Angels Have Wings," a 1939 movie, and the expression "she gave him the air" was used to mean she blew him off / rebuffed his advances.

I have only heard this expression in old books and movies, I don't recall anyone, even my older father and his even older friends ever using it, so, I'm just guessing, it must have gone out of vogue well before the '60s.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Gave him the gate," "gave him the brush," and "handed him the mitten" were contemporaneous phrases which meant the same thing.

 

[MisterCairo]

Gave him the bum's rush.

Holy mackerel!

... film at 11.

At this time, we end our broadcast day...

 

[tonyb]

"Gave him the gate," "gave him the brush," and "handed him the mitten" were contemporaneous phrases which meant the same thing.

Have we mentioned "handed him his walking papers" yet? Probably have.

 

[BobHufford]

Does anyone still say "A feather in your cap" to denote success? I was reading a circa 1940 Life magazine and there was an article on pheasant hunting in South Dakota that mentioned the tradition of the shooter taking the first game bird getting that honor.

 

[Stanley Doble]

When was the last time you heard the word "luncheon'?