If anything, that’s more risque than the original, which was sung by three men. Ann Miller is definitely an upgrade. (Also note when she throws that ribbon at the camera – the movie was originally shot in 3D).
There are editions of some Enid Blyton books where the character called Fanny (from the Faraway Tree books, not Aunt Fanny from the Famous Five) is changed to Franny. I think Dick was also changed to Rick. The racism in a couple of the Five and Adventure books was expunged, the Golliwogs were removed from Noddy, and there are even editions where they’ve updated the dated language to modern-day slang, which is a weird thing to do.
In the shortlived American TV show Greatest American Hero, the main character’s name was changed from Ralph Hinkley to Ralph Hanley after John Hinkley’s attempt to assassinate Ronald Reagan.
Han shot first!!
There, now that’s out of the way.
I read And Then There were None last year or so. I was surprised that although the title had been changed, the text hadn’t! It was still set on “Nigger Island”, and the statue/sculpture was an unbowdlerised n------.
It was a definite struggle getting through to the end of the book. Eurgh.
ETA:
This was a UK edition, by the way.
I dare say that it has been a while since anyone has performed or aired Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport with the verse about letting me abos run loose. Or sung Stephen Foster songs with unedited references to “darkies”.
Also, cartoon character Oswald the Rabbit mysteriously disappeared in November of 1963. (That other member of his species, Harvey, inexplicably remains popular…)
In the movie Dr. Strangelove, Slim Pickens reads off the items in the Nuclear Survival Kit, then says “A fella could have a pretty good time in Dallas with all that stuff!” They later dubbed it to Vegas due to the popularity of the TV Show, but you can still see him mouth Dallas.
[sub]Just seeing if you’re paying attention :)[/sub]
Likewise with “Eenie, meenie, minie, moe, catch a monkey by the toe.” (In Britain the PC version is or was “catch an Indian.”)
Lyrics from “Minnie the Moocher”:
She hung around with a bloke named Smokey
She loved him, though he was cokey
He took her down to Chinatown
And taught her how to kick that gong around
“Kicking the gong” or “kicking Old Buddha’s gong” means doing heroin or opium. Segues nicely into the next verse, where Minnie has a dream about the King of Sweden who gave her things that she was needin’.
But, whenever I sing it in karaoke, the displayed lyrics (which I ignore) are always “he was jokey” and “taught her how to something something messin’ around”.
“The sent a hundred thousand hoppies
Over to China, pickin’ poppies
They put 'em all in one bouquet
For Minnie the Moocher’s wedding day.”
‘One of These Things’ - Sesame Street
When I was a kid, it was-
One of these things is not like the other
One of these things just doesn’t belong
Now, it goes-
One of these things is not like the other
One of these things is not not the same
So the different child doesn’t think they don’t belong, you see?
I was only talking about words. I’m not knocking the dance. I saw her on Broadway 30 years after the movie and she was still intensely hot.
(Can’t watch Youtube at work, so I assume the link was to the dance.)
BTW, I never saw the Cole Porter bioflick (the first one) but I believe he was straight in it.
The old Quaker hymn “How Can I Keep from Singing” includes the following verse, perhaps dating from the wars of the Reformation:
When tyrants tremble, sick with fear
And hear their death-knell ringing
When friends rejoice, both far and near
How can I keep from singing
In prison cell and dungeon vile
Our thoughts to them go winging
When friends by shame are undefiled
How can I keep from singing
The Unitarian Universalist hymnal changes the first two lines to:
When tyrants tremble, when they hear
The bells of freedom ringing
Because we UUs are all a bunch of pussywimps. :o
At the end of the 1954 novel The Bad Seed, mother Christine Penmark is dead and daughter Rhoda is alive; Christine having succeeded in killing herself but failed to poison Rhoda, who the reader knows will kill again. And it was the same ending in the 1955 Broadway adaptation, I believe. The only reason why it’s the other way around in the 1956 movie – even though Rhoda’s death requires one utterly preposterous Deus ex machina (Rhoda, who has never up to now demonstrated any stupid carelessness about her own safety, goes fishing off a dock in a thunderstorm, for a swimming medal she killed a boy to get, and a stroke of lightning knocks a big tree bough down on top of her) – is because of the Hays Code.
Is that a verse of “Minnie the Moocher”? Never seen it before.
My Dad remembers on the old Green Hornet radio show, Kato was the Hornet’s faithful Japanese valet; and when WWII broke out, Kato suddenly became the Hornet’s faithful Filipino valet.
Are you quite sure about that? Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, originally a Disney property, was animated in the 1940s and possibly the early 1950s by Walter Lantz, but he’d diasappeared from cartoons before 1960. The only place Oswald still appeared was in Dell Four Color Comics, sporadically thrughout the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. I have a comic from the 1960s, but I’m not certain if it’s from before or after 1963, but it wasn’t a terifically popular line to begin with. If it disappeared after 1963 you needn’t ascribe dislike of Lee Harvey Oswald for its demise. and according to wikipedia, the comic continued to be produced (outside the US) after the 1960s.
The very early Hardy Boy books. Used common phrases like “nigger in the woodpile” for a suspicious event. I have a couple first edition Hardy Boys. Injuns, Japs were also used. Later editions sanitized the books.
The original version of “Good Night, Irene” by Lead Belly is not the same, and more explicit, than the version recorded by the Weavers. Specifically, the line “I’ll see you in my dreams” was originally “I’ll get you in my dreams” - and may have been more explicit yet in live performances that the singer wanted to f*** the brains out of the object of his desire.
Needless to say, there wasn’t a chance in hell the original would have had air time in the first half of the 20th Century.