"You know, I've been waiting for an orchid!" What does THAT mean?

[scotrace]

In the stage version of You Can't Take it WIth You, Penny, the mother of one of the main characters and rather a flake, utters this line as another character boorishly talks about his hobby of raising orchids: "You know, I've been waiting for an orchid!" which brings about blushing titters from the other members of her family before the show goes on. For modern audiences, it's a cricket chirp moment. For modern actors, it's one of those bits you come to dread because you don't know what to do with it.
I can't find any reference to this as Golden Era slang (the show is set in the thirties). Googling renders up a lot of high school guessing (always sexual).

Anyone have any idea?

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's a Walter Winchell reference. In his column, Winchell would "give orchids" to people or institutions he considered worthy of lavish praise and recognition. Penny is saying that she'd like to have someone praise her lavishly, but nobody ever does.

 

[Undertow]

Wow.

Seriously.

Lizzie, you regularly make my day. Just remember that there is some hick in Iowa who reads your posts, pulls off his cotton cap and says, "Well ain't that something?"

 

[LizzieMaine]

What's sad to me is that Walter Winchell references are now considered "obscure." In his day, he was perhaps the most famous newspaperman in the world, and had a greater influence on popular speech than any other man of his generation.

 

[scotrace]

I was sure you'd know. Thank you, Lizzie.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We did a production of YCTIWY in our own local theatre company some years ago -- the best moment in the show was when Penny was working away at her typewriter and Essie danced over to see what she was writing. The page said "HELP -- I CAN'T REMEMBER MY NEXT LINE."

If you want a show that needs to come with a glossary in the program explaining the references, do "The Man Who Came To Dinner."

 

[Wally_Hood]

Wow.

Seriously.

Lizzie, you regularly make my day. Just remember that there is some hick in Iowa who reads your posts, pulls off his cotton cap and says, "Well ain't that something?"

Or a some baby boomer in southern California who reads Lizzie's posts, pulls off his bifocals and says,"Well, ain't that something?"

 

[Tomasso]

Walter Winchell.....was perhaps the most famous newspaperman in the world, and had a greater influence on popular speech than any other man of his generation.

And he fathered the 'gossip' column

 

[Paul Roerich]

And in the '30s and '40s, he was accused of being "a Roosevelt Jew" by FDR's more rabid opponents.

 

[LizzieMaine]

He had some lovely epithets for enemies of the Administration. Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, the reigning prince of the appeasers/isolationists, was dismissed by Winchell as "The Lone Ostrich." And Gerald L. K. Smith, the anti-Semitic, anti-black pretender to the throne of Huey Long was "Gerald Lucifer KKKodfish Smith."

An interesting insight into how Winchell was viewed by many ordinary Americans in his time can be found in Philip Roth's alternative-history novel "The Plot Against America," in which the columnist emerges as the fearless leader of an anti-Nazi resistance movement after the election of Herr von Lindbergh as President, only to be assassinated by pro-Lindbergh storm troopers. Pretty heady stuff for a gossip columnist.

 

[Paul Roerich]

Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, the reigning prince of the appeasers/isolationists, was dismissed by Winchell as "The Lone Ostrich."

A long way down from Lindbergh's 1927 nickname, "The Lone Eagle."

 

[Tomasso]

Larry King, who replaced Winchell at the Miami Herald, observed,

"He was so sad. You know what Winchell was doing at the end? Typing out mimeographed sheets with his column, handing them out on the corner. That's how sad he got. When he died, only one person came to his funeral: his daughter."

 

[scotrace]

Presto.

 

[Worf]

Thanks for reviving this... very interesting. Wasn't Winchell the model for the antagonist in "The Sweet Smell of Success"? Curious.....

Worf

 

[LizzieMaine]

Thanks for reviving this... very interesting. Wasn't Winchell the model for the antagonist in "The Sweet Smell of Success"? Curious.....

Worf

He was. Winchell was one of the most fascinating characters of the Era -- in the thirties, he was as fierce a fighter for the New Deal and civil rights as existed in mainstream culture, but after FDR died he became a lost soul in search of a cause. Roy Cohn wormed his way into Winchell's circle, and it was downhill from there on.

Interesting fact: Winchell was the first major media personality to take on Big Tobacco in the early fifties, denouncing cigarettes as a likely cause of cancer on his TV program -- even though he had made his first big radio success twenty years earlier on the Lucky Strike Hour. His close friend Damon Runyon had died of lung cancer, and this turned Winchell into a militant enemy of smoking at a time when such a cause was hardly fashionable.