I grew up watching Westerns, and a lot of parodies of Westerns. Once in a while, there’d be a scene where some grizzled old cowpoke sidles up to the bar and orders a shot of whiskey, ‘in a dirty glass’.
Anyone know where this trope came from?
Earliest I saw it was a Hope Crosby movie where Bob orders a lemonade in a tough guy bar, Bing elbows him and he adds “in a dirty glass” so he doesn’t look like a sissy ordering lemonade.
It was already enough of a cliche by 1961 to put in an episode of The Flintstones.
“Bartender… rocks over rocks. And bartender… put that in a dirty glass.”
I’m pretty sure it was already a well-established trope when Bob Hope did it. That’s how we immediately GET that he’s countering the sissy image of ordering the lemonade* when he adds “…but in a dirty glass”.
- and wasn’t it a sarsaparilla, not a lemonade?
In the Kung-Fu TV series, the bartender would usually ask “Dirty[ or cloudy] or clear” when Cain ordered water.
I always wondered why, given the choice, anyone would want dirty water - did the cleaning process they used leave a taste or was it just more expensive?
I don’t know, it seems pretty “gettable” even without prior art. Dirt is tough.
For that matter, I’m not sure I ever have seen it with something like whiskey: It’s always lemonade, or milk, or some other such “unmanly” drink.