In October 1944, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote that he received a letter from “John Barrow 12 yrs. West town School, West town, Pa.” It included this: “Gee Whiz, I’m surprised that [The Hobbit]'s not more popular.”
It’s the ginchiest.
Yes. My parents grew up in an era when plumbing consisted of a cistern in the front yard and an outhouse in the back yard. Bathing was once a week–Saturday night, so you would be fresh when you went to church on Sunday morning. After WW2, when indoor plumbing became readily available, Mom became a neat freak. The postwar economic boom enabled them to move from poverty to middle class, and Mom spent the 50s and 60s trying to emulate June Lockhart and Harriet Nelson.
Also, I think she was subconsciously “in denial” about the possibility of injury and death. The threat of being ridiculed by the neighborhood gossips, however, was a threat she was willing to worry about.
The local morning commute DJ’s on 101.5FM have a running gag where they use the “Jimmy Cagney” voice-puppet.
“Yeah! That’s right… seee?”
(They call their short voice impersonations “puppets”. They have a “voice in the head” puppet, a “Hedgecock” puppet, and so on… http://www.dscshow.com/pages/puppetbracket08.html?_show : Is “puppets” an actual radio industry term?)
Me neither. But years later, I had a good laugh at Greg Brady’s sure-fire pickup line in The Brady Bunch Movie: “Hey there, groovy chick. You’re really happening in a far-out kind of way.” I also had a good laugh at the reactions it got from the young ladies of the 1990s whom Greg was trying to pick up.
Probably not as bad as you imagine. It’s exactly because a person puts on fresh underwear daily that they can wear clothes more than once. On the other hand, the (in)frequency of bathing could have been an issue, too.
I wear a pair of jeans two or three days running and I’m fine. Of course, I’m not doing strenuous work in them, and we don’t ever get the upper-Midwest summer hothouse humidity, either.
As for the snappy dialog, I imagine the film producers exaggerated it. It might have been true for a small percentage of actual people. It’s almost like the characters who talked that way were meant to be stock depictions of urban working class humanity, like the Three Stooges.
At the other end of the class spectrum, the heroine/female lead/good girl often spoke in that horrible “Locust Valley Lockjaw” that represented the way rich people were supposed to talk. For some reason I have this image of a pretty young woman frantically trying to get somebody back on the phone who’s just hung up on her. “Helleow!! Helleow!!” (repeatedly clicks the hook frantically) “Helleoww! Operator!!”. I’m sure I’ve seen that in more than one movie, since phone calls were such a useful plot pivot.
The same accent was heard from upper class older people of both genders.
Interestingly I noticed in Bringing Up Baby, Katharine Hepburn speaks a version of the Lockjaw dialect, yet her rich elderly aunt spoke a broad, flat Midwestern.
Just rent the movie The Front Page, mentally add a lot of cursing, and you’ve got it.
Radishes! Radishes, I say!
A bobbie soxer, eh? I’ll bet you’re the cat’s meow!
I’m 44 and I can easily see myself using phrases like that. The line between parodying old-school slang and normal speech patterns become quite blurry.
And I often refer to dames as broads, as in “Broad Judi Dench”. 
Groovy is Right Out, but Far Out is Right On. 
Now you’re on the trolley!
[OT]
Whoa, I grew up ~5 miles from there! Radical, dude!
(And it’s Westtown.)
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One of my favorite novels is The Caine Mutiny, but I only read it around 1990 or later. I do like to read novels multiple times, and in this case I knew how it turns out from the movie anyhow.
My parents are only week apart in age, and a couple of years younger than Willie Keith in the novel. But it was only after two or three reads that I remembered they used to use some of the expressions in the novel, like “Ye Gods!”. Another one I haven’t seen mentioned is the sarcastic
“Hooray for [insert name of person you want to disdain]”. Understandably, in my early teenage years our parents were terrified we’d get into drugs, so rock and roll icons were automatically suspect. Thankfully they got over that.
Me, early 1970s: I hear Mick Jagger runs a couple of miles a day.
Dad: Well hooray for Mick Jagger.
elmwood writes:
> 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.
Let me go through these phrases one by one:
“Wise guy”: Is this really old-fashioned? It sounds modern to me. I can easily imagine saying it and hearing it today.
“Make it snappy”: I don’t say it myself, but I’ve certainly heard it used. Perhaps it’s a little old-fashioned, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear somone use it today.
“Say there, sonny boy”: That’s mostly movie talk for me. I’ve rarely heard anyone use it in real life.
“I ought to pop you one”: That’s strictly movie talk for me. Perhaps it was once used in real life, but I’ve never heard it myself.
“Broads”: This is typical of just how sexist those times were. A guy could say this and not be perceived as a sexist pig but as a hip guy with wide sexual experience. This term was how a man referred to a woman who he was willing to sleep with but wouldn’t marry. This is how a man showed that he despised the women he slept with while insisting that he didn’t actually dislike all women.
“Dames”: Not quite as insulting. Sometimes used like “broads” but sometimes just referring to women in general.
One thing you ought to understand is that there was always a certain amount of artificiality in movie and TV conversation. Yes, some of the strangeness you find in movie talk is old-fashioned slang, but some of it arises from the fact that screenwriters make characters talk in ways that real people never speak. Movies and TV (especially American movies and TV) are not real life. A lot of odd movie conversations have always slipped past viewers because they were willing to accept them as movie and TV conventions.
Whenever I hear about “broads” or “dames,” I immediately think of Frank Sinatra. It was considered “hip” to use those terms, and I don’t think they always had the same negative connotation they have today. How about “chick” or “gal”? The fact is, we really don’t have a word for the female equivalent of “guy.” It’s hard to come up with a term that isn’t sexist, or at least condescending.
Hot diggity dog, we have some cool cats in this thread! Straight dope thread, that is!
Look you swells, this is one swanky joint, very hotsy-totsy. I may not be hard-boiled but I anin’t no pushover, see? So don’t crowd me and I don’t have to drill ya’.Who’s the big cheese around here? Some kinda bluenose?
You play you cards right sister, and I’ll be your swooner-dreamboat-loverboy.
That’s some smooth talkin’ jive you cats got there yourselves! Real swell I tell ya! You know, regularly telling squares to “hurry your shit up!”, addressing someone by saying “yo brah!”, calling dames “bitches” and “hos” to their face, telling people “don’t be such a punk!” and “I’m gonna pop a cap in yo ass!”, and so on."