I was listening to an old “Burns And Allen” radio show. It was a crossover with the Dinah Shore shore and they had Bill Goodwin (annoucer for “Burns and Allen”) and Harry Von Zell (announcer for "Dinah Shore). (Yes that’s correct, Harry Von Zell became the announcer for “Burns and Allen” when the show went to TV and Bill Goodwin left to have his own TV show).
Anyway to understand this joke you have to know Von Zell was overweight and for laughs it was often portrayed he was very overweight like 400 pounds more, just for comic effect he wasn’t that overweight. And Goodwin was portrayed on radio as very handsome with curly hair - as was the style back then curly hair = good)
So OK finally…
The two announcers were trying to pick up Frances Langford (a singer from the 40s)
OK first of all the phrase “whale of an evening” Is it “WHALE” or “WAIL” Of an evening? I never heard the phrase before.
If it is “whale” what the heck does that have to do with anything. Is it like saying whales are large so instead of saying “Whale of an evening,” you’d be saying “A large evening with me.”
It’s “a whale”. Can’t find any etymology online, but presumably it’s something that is great as in good, represented by an entity that is great as in large. I usually hear it in the context of “a whale of a time”.
And yes, the “evening with a whale” indicates that the person being insulted is fat.
