You know, regularly telling people to “make it snappy!”, addressing someone by saying “Say there sonny boy”, calling women “broads” and “dames” to their face, telling people “don’t be such a wise guy!” and “why, I oughtta’ pop you one!”, and so on.
Heck, I still talk like that when I can get away with it. Then again, I’d have David Mamet and Tom Stoppard write the dialogue for my life if I could. There’s nothing better than talking like you just stepped out of a James M. Cain novel.
Stranger
Hell, my 60-something neighbors in the 1980s talked to me that way.
I grew up in the 1950s. My grandparents and older teachers used to say things like “make it snappy,” “don’t be such a wise guy,” and “Say, sonny boy.”
A question that has long puzzled me!
Another variant - there is a particular style of laboured humour one sees only in movies of a certain age. For want of a better expression, I’ll call it the “that is” joke.
Example: You take the cake…the fruit cake, that is! (Cue laugh track).
The formula is that the comment before the ellipsis is generally some sort of apparent compliment, which (after the ellipsis) is inverted by the insertion of a modifier which turns the previous apparent meaning of the expression through 180 degrees into an insult. This inversion is followed by the phrase “that is” as a ham-fisted emphasiser of what has occurred.
Did anyone ever really talk like this? Wildean wit it ain’t. I have never heard a variant of it that wasn’t utterly lame. I associate it with cringe comedies like Lucy.
A further variant - the “Yeah. That’s right!” self-interjection. Comes in two flavours.
The first is a heavy-handed cue to the fact that the speaker is making up a comically bad excuse on the spot, thus:-
(Questioner walks in on someone in comic situation suspiciously going through contents of closet).
Q:What are you doing in my closet?
A: Uhh…I’m … uh … just doing a mothball inspection! Yeah! That’s right! Mothballs!
I am confident no-one ever said this in real life. This is just a comic trope.
But the second flavour occurs in tough guy movies. I’m thinking Jimmy Cagney. In the course of some tough monologue, and in the absence of any interruption that would seemingly justify it, you might hear:
Cagney: I said I was gonna kill ya and I meant it! Yeah, that’s right! Kill ya! And all your no-good buddies, too!"
So - did anyone ever use the “Yeah! That’s right!” in real life?
There was an SNL skit that made fun of that, something about a newsroom in the 1930s that specialized only in minor, back-page stories. “Shaddup!” “Why, I oughtta pound you!”
I’m reminded that there was also an SNL skit with Jon Lovitz doing something similar to the “Uhh…I’m … uh … just doing a mothball inspection! Yeah! That’s right! Mothballs!”
In Lovitz’s case he was a pathological liar though. “… yeah, that’s the ticket, I was… walk… RUNNING to the busss stooo… TAXI STAND” etc.
I think people ought not to mistake 1930s and 1940s Hollywood scripts with real life.
Certainly people talked differently. Language and slang changes, and each era gets its own flavor. And, without a doubt, people are influenced by the entertainment the watch and see tregularly, so that Three Stooges style (“Why you rotten…” “I oughtta pound you!”) makes its way into everyday speech.
But the truth is that real everyday speech is random and filled with ellipses, and has a lot more profanity than radio and the movies would have allowed. I’ve long suspected that the characteristic “old movie” lingo was a way to portray “ordinary people talk” with all the dirty parts taken out and smoothed over.
As for Noel’s delayed “…that is” joke, it hasn’t left. It’s just gotten a fresh coat of paint to emerge as the “…Not!” joke.
Old: “You take the cake… Fruit Cake, that is!”
New: “You take the cake…Not!”
Or, since people don’t really say “you take the cake” anymore
New: “That is so slick…NOT!”
In the latter part of the twentieth century, did people ever really say Not after a sentence to reverse the meaning? Seems very heavy-handed to me. And did they really say “Dude” and “Like” all the time? Who would talk like that!
This is a good post… for me to poop on.
Yes, yes we did. At least in the late 80’s and the early to mid-90’s.
“NOT!” was popularized by Wayne’s World, which was HUGE with teenagers.
And Dude and Like are still around. I hate them, even though I still catch myself saying “Dude, check this out!”, especially when drunk.
Like dude, I think I like totally wooshed you. Epic!
Wow. groovy.
How about this:
If I found myself transported back in time to 1955, into a part of the United States where the Mormon population was negligible, got into a conversation with someone, and told them some good news, would they really respond with “[Gee|Golly|Gosh|Gee whiz], that’s [keen|swell]!”?
Actually, elmwood,my friends and I were more likely to say keen-o than keen, but that’s just being nitpicky. The short answer is ‘yes’.
The one that always surprised me was “Make sure you wear clean underwear in case you get into an accident.”
I have pondered this statement way too much and the implications are enormous. Here are just a few points.
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The mother is implying that her son regularly shits himself.
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This is not a problem in and of itself as long as medical personnel don’t see it.
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Reminding the child that he might get into an accident so bad that he will have to be completely stripped when he leaves the house is a distinct possibility.
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This statement should be followed by a laugh track.
Some of that is movie speak, but my father told me to “make it snappy” more times than I can count.
And in the late 60s early 70s I heard lots of people say things like “far out” and other stuff I’m embarrassed to recall. But never me. 
My mother used to tell me that one. I came away with the impression that I could be maimed, mangled, and mutilated, but as long as my underwear was clean, mom could continue to show her face in public.
I also get the general impression that changing one’s underwear on a regular, if not to say daily, basis, was considered prissy until the second part of the 20th Century. I can remember people wearing outer clothing two or three days in a row, in warm weather, like it wasn’t anything special–I can only imagine their standards for underwear.
(These are people I liked, growing up.)
This sure is a swell thread, it’s the cat’s meow!
73!