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Post by sepiatone on Mar 22, 2023 22:00:12 GMT
You know......
One thing I've only heard in classic films is the drinking toast, "Here's mud in your eye!" Which really doesn't sound too friendly of a toast when you think about it. I've never personally heard anyone use it, and in looking it up the origins of it leads to several different versions.
Sepiatone
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Post by kims on Mar 28, 2023 0:05:01 GMT
This isn't an old one, but I just read this to describe a woman's feeling for a man: a petri dish of lust. It made me laugh and so wonderfully descriptive. I had to share it should you ever need it.
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Post by sepiatone on Mar 28, 2023 19:54:41 GMT
Just this morning, on MOVIES!, I heard William Bendix(in LIFEBOAT) use a phrase I mostly hear in classic and older movies and haven't heard anyone actually say it for many blue moons.
"I'll be a monkey's uncle!"
Well, Bendix actually paraphrased it when the survivors discovered one of them (Walter Slezak) is a Nazi; "I'm a monkey's uncle."
Sepiatone
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Post by kims on Mar 28, 2023 22:31:45 GMT
I adore Tallulah in LIFEBOAT. Reminds me to see if the hourlong LUCY/DESI show is showing anywhere. Tallulah guest starred in one.
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Post by Fading Fast on Apr 2, 2023 12:38:27 GMT
Wool-gather meaning to daydream as in, "I'm sorry, I didn't hear you, I was wool-gathering."
It pops up occasionally, especially in films from the 1930s.
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Post by sepiatone on Apr 4, 2023 15:32:51 GMT
Just yesterday, between TCM's broadcast of DAMES and the following GOLD DIGGERS OF 1937 was a short about a young lady who arrives in Hollywood as the winner of some cosmetics contest. While on a tour of the Warner's lot she gets a chance to see dancers rehearsing for a dance scene in the movie "Dames" and spots Ruby Keeler. Then she says to the man who was her tour guide..... "Isn't she keen?" When was the last time(if ever) you heard anyone say THAT?  Sepiatone |
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Post by Fading Fast on May 25, 2023 18:36:55 GMT
"Not for money, marbles or chalk." Meaning not for anything you could give me, no matter how valuable.
So it could be used like this: "I wouldn't go out with him, not for money, marbles or chalk."
I found this page that kinda explains it: link
I've heard it used several times in movies from the 1930s, but it's usually said so fast, you almost miss it.
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Post by sepiatone on May 26, 2023 15:54:46 GMT
Blues guitarist and singer JIMMY ROGERS wrote and recorded a song with that title in 1951.
Sepiatone
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Post by Fading Fast on Jul 31, 2023 12:29:11 GMT
It's not an idiom, but something you'll see come up in old movies is the superstition that it's bad luck to put a hat on a bed. I've only seen it used in reference to men's hats, so I don't know if it applies to women's hats as well. It's hardly in every old movie, but once you are aware of it, you will see it pop up from time to time.
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Post by topbilled on Aug 1, 2023 3:30:07 GMT
When watching films from the 1930s I am sometimes surprised how much of the English vernacular remains unchanged. I would think that 90 or 100 years later, more expressions would be obsolete. But some expressions (cliches) seem to have survived, even flourished, five generations later, and I find that kind of interesting.
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Post by gerald424 on Aug 8, 2023 23:14:50 GMT
I thought this might fit here.
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Post by Fading Fast on Oct 19, 2023 12:07:13 GMT
"Gives me the willies" to mean makes me nervous or frightened is one you hear frequently in movies from the '30s into the '40s, but not much after that.
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Post by intrepid37 on Oct 19, 2023 20:55:16 GMT
"Gives me the willies" to mean makes me nervous or frightened is one you hear frequently in movies from the '30s into the '40s, but not much after that. I definitely envision Bob Hope saying that. |
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Post by jamesjazzguitar on Oct 20, 2023 16:53:22 GMT
"Gives me the willies" to mean makes me nervous or frightened is one you hear frequently in movies from the '30s into the '40s, but not much after that. Did that expression derive from Willie Best? Best gave some of the best 'I got the willies' scenes in film history. |
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Post by topbilled on Oct 22, 2023 18:14:32 GMT
Watching the RKO programmer THE SPELLBINDER (1939) this morning and Lee Tracy plays a lawyer who is jailed for contempt of court. He says "a month in jail is nothing." To which an assistant says: "It ain't hay."
There's an Abbot & Costello film called IT AIN'T HAY (1943).
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