[rul=“http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=264039”]This thread remind me of gags I’ve seen in movies dating from the late 1940s/early1950s, where some reference is made to someone finding a slip of paper which reads, “Help, I’m being held prisoner in a Chinese laundry/fortune cookie factory.” There’s even a Daffy Duck cartoon which ends with him being trapped in a Chinese laundry. Given the number of references made to it, it must have been something fairly well known at the time, but I’ve certainly missed what the inspiration for it must have been. So, what was it?
The original joke is that someone opens a fortune cookie to find the paper inside that says “Help, I’m being held prisoner in a Chinese fortune cookie factory.” Don’t know where it originated, but I heard it when I was a kid back in the 50’s.
In the late 19th-Early 20th Century, there was a sense of paranoia about China.
Many Europeans & Americans feared the potential for military power in their huge population.
There was more than a little racism in this, and (spurious) tales were told of young Caucasian women abducted into slavery by Chinese.
Everybodys’ gardeners, servants, & laundrymen were stared at with suspicion. All of them were suspected of plotting against the West. :smack:
This was called the “Yellow Peril” Conspiracy, & it was pure tinfoil hat stuff. The Illuminati/Trilateral Commission fear of that period. The Fu Manchu novels tapped into these fears.
I suspect that the “Help, I’m being held prisoner in a Chinese Laundry” line began as a satire of this paranoia. Given the sassy ridicule of tradition/establishment beliefs among the Smart Set of the Roaring 20’s, I suspect it started then.
With all of the digitized and searchable databases we have today, it has only been found as far back as 1955 in print. I personally think it was invented by a comedian sometime in the years prior to that.
The finder of that 1955 cite was noneother than Barry Popik, who is the subject of today’s classic column(s) by Cecil. Barry also found about a gazillion other words and phrases. He’s kinda compulsive. But nobody respects him. He’s the Rodney Dangerfield of the etymology world. I’m not making this up.
Why “no respect” if he nails down so many popular phrases? Is there something else? I mean, I can see the obsessive traits in his frequent updates to Cecil on the Big Apple, but I would think that such tenacity would be celebrated in that community.
The etymology community respects Barry. But institutions are slow to incorporate what he’s found. Official websites for cities, for instance, continue to carry mis-information for years after they’ve been shown the proof. Perhaps Barry’s personality and compulsiveness puts them off. But many times it’s just bureaucrats not caring.
Ah, I see. Thanks.
There was a book entitled “Help I Am Being Held in a Chinese Fortune Cookie Factory” that was on my parents bookshelves back in the early 70s that I can remember…never read it, not sure if it survived the house fire…
i heard “help im being held hostage in a chinese cookie factory” when a guy opened a fortune cookie on this show i watch, victorious (on nickelodeon). my brother and i thought it was funny 
The late comedian Alan King came out with a book called Help! I’m A Prisoner In A Chinese Bakery in 1964, so the joke must be older than that. But I’ll bet that’s the one.
I recognize this cover from a 1968 reprint. Read that when I was young and about wet myself laughing. I wonder if it would still be that funny today.
You reopened this thread from 2004 just to say that? Really? It’s clearly not the origin, as that show wasn’t even created until 5 or so years after this thread was started.
The concept was clearly fully created when Cyril M. Kornbluth wrote “Ms. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie” in 1957.
Don’t be a wet blanket, Dan Norder. Somebody who just discovered the Dope sees this thread, doesn’t realize how old it is and wants to participate, and you shout her down. Lame.
She obviously didn’t mean to suggest that Victorious was the origin of the saying, anymore than Siam Sam or aruvqan did. Obviously, the true origin was the episode of iCarly where Sam re-purposes a Super Soaker to shoot meatballs at Freddie. (Just kidding, of course – Sam would never waste the meatballs.)
–Cliffy
Alternatively, she didn’t bother to read the responses to the thread which indicated that it was in print by 1955.
Generally, if a zombie activates a thread, we need new information. Just saying “me too” doesn’t cut it.
Closed. Will reopen if someone can provide earlier information.
samclem, Moderator
The book is Help! I’m a Prisoner in a Chinese Bakery … which is a better joke because you have to think about it for a second to get it.
Ahem. See post #11.
Yes, please continue to fight for the right to add content-free posts to a long dead questions thread. Would hate for the squares to get in the way of talking about kids shows in general questions threads.
Welcome to the Straight Dope, rosettalee. If you don’t like snarky responses then you are in the wrong place.
The joke, maybe. The meme itself is older.
Scientific American December 23 1848
Singular Affair
*Some two weeks since a merchant in Bangor, Me , in emptying a tea chest, found is the bottom a snuff box containing a five dollar bill an the Dover, N. H. Bank, and attached to it, the following epistle written on a piece of paper of the quality generally used by the Chinese in putting upteain pound packages.
Pkkin, Dec. 1846. Dear Mother—I am a prisoner in a Tea House, and have been for six years. I wish you would go to Washingten and get our government to interfere and obtain my release. 1 enclose you a five dollor note ; it was presented to me by an American gentleman ; it is of no use to me, but it may be to you.
Edward Lovzxl. Directed to Mrs. Nancy Lovell, Boston, Mass.
Miss Marietta Smith, the young lady who caused so many stories to be circulated about abduction and so on, has at last been found.— She ran away from this city and went to Boston to learn the trade of a milliner. She has displayed but little sense or affection, or she would have in some manner let her parents know that she wis free, and well.*
My parents had a book of that title.
<google>
My google fu fails me because of all the drivel books written to take advantage of the meme phrase. I have no idea if the book survived the house fire, some stuff survived. I have no idea where it might be.
The book would have been written between 1950 and about 1965 or so. I have the vague memory it is similar to Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, being about someone essentially being stuck in a job situation. It has been about 25 years since i last read it.