A Yahoo! search on “Doris Day before she was a virgin” brought back hits attributing the comment to at least Milton Berle, Groucho Marx, and Oscar Levant.
Chances are this needs Earl Snake-Hips Tucker to locate the actual quote.
Jean Harlow: “Aren’t you Margot Asquith?”
Lady Asquith: “No, dear, the t is silent, as in Harlow”
Ernest Thesiger: “Hi! My name’s Ernest, I’m an actor!”
His interlocutor: “Hi! My name’s George, I’m a King!”
There’s a famous story about the Canadian born entertainer Beatrice Lilly. Like most actors she was not judgmental on people’s social class, but unlike most actresses and most North Americans she was also the widow of a British Lord (Robert, Lord Peel).
This story has different versions but the punchline is always the same. This is one version: Once she was seated in a ritzy restaurant when Mrs. Armour, the social climbing ultra-snobbish wife of the heir of the American meat-packing fortune, was told no tables were available. She was indignant: “And yet you have room for common… chorus girls!”
Lilly finished dining and on her way out the door told the maitre’d, while standing next to Mrs. Armour, “Please tell the butcher’s wife that Lady Peel is leaving and she may have my table”.
When Ray Walston (bka as My Favorite Martian and a notoriously difficult actor to work with) appeared on the London stage in South Pacific during the final year of George VI’s life, the monarch was so taken with the show he had a command performance given. Afterwards he visited the actors onstage and was very surprised to learn that the tattoo of a battleship on Walston’s bare torso was real.
George VI (joking): “Oh… but I see she’s flying the American flag. Pity.”
Walston: “If I’d known you were going to come up onstage, your majesty, I’d have hoisted the Union Jack.”
Interestingly, there was a thread in Cafe Society asking for a cite for this quote and it could not be found. A few of our own heavy-hitters tried to check their archives and could not find anything other than an apocryphal attribution to La Parker.
The one I recall by her is when an actress-acquaintance’s Broadway play was failing, Parker saw her, did and up-and-down look at her, and remarked “my dear, your show is slipping”…
When Dorothy Parker was told the stoic Calvin Coolidge was dead, she asked “How can they tell?”
When SNL writer Michael O’Donoghue heard Elvis was dead, he said “Good career move.” When Loren Michaels told him to come with a sketch for the Muppets, he replied “I don’t write for felt.”
Ah, I loves me some Dorothy Parker–Clare Booth Luce and Dorothy Parker walked up to a door at the same time. Luce stepped aside and motioned Dorothy to precede her, saying “Age before beauty!” and Parker swept past her replying “And pearls before swine.” Nice!
I always heard the Astor/Churchill exchange as:
Lady Astor: “Winston, you are drunk!” to which Churchill wittily replied “Blow it out your ass, you ugly cunt!”
Sooner or later, someone’s going to figure out where these amended Coolidge/Churchill quotes came from…
Oh, and for those questioning the provenance of the following quote, I found the following attribution in Wikiquote:
Ms. Parker had impeccable taste!
Not sure where this came from, but I stole it to use in a speech once:
I recently moved from New Jersey to Vermont, thereby lowering the average IQ of both states.
Hey - you found something! Your Google-fu is strong - thanks.
Many of my customers know I had a baby recently. Most know it was my first.
Customer: When are you going to get pregnant again?
Me: Are you offering?
I’ve always considered George Burns to be the very definition of a dry wit.
That man could tell you his social security number and have you rolling on the floor laughing.
All the more impressive because it was ‘1’
A society note about one of Edward the VII’s more notorious girlfriends:
“______has reported her parrot as missing. We didn’t know she owned a parrot, but we knew she’s had a cockatoo.”
Pff. A sad rip-off of the classic skewering of Winston Churchill, attributed to the National Lampoon, 1974. I think I also read something like it in one of Dave Barry’s books, but I’m not positive.
I don’t remember what year it was, but David Niven was hosting the Academy Awards.
I was watching as a guy streaked across the stage. Laughs, gasps, and hooting from the audience, but Niven never turned a hair. He just looked after the guy and said something like (I’m quoting a very old memory) “You know, it’s sad when someone has to get attention by baring their shortcomings that way.”
I read it in the Harvard Lampoon, in a short article called “The Churchill Wit.” Another example from the same piece: George Bernard Shaw, inviting Churchill to the opening of one of his plays, joked, “Bring a friend, if you have one.” Churchill replied, “You and your play can both go fuck themselves.”
I’d say Dorothy Parker had a sharp wit - but that it was only occationally a dry wit. That Niven quip is a dry wit.
Sharp wits are pointed, not subtle. Dry wits are more subtle.
This makes no sense to me. Care to explain?
Yeah, I had to look this one up. The Peasant’s Revolt was led by Wat Tyler.
I apologize for the long setup.
I once had to write an analysis of my client’s next attempt at a failed business venture. My contact decided it would be insightful for me to identify the executive who was in charge of the last failed attempt.
While the executive was still with the company, he wasn’t exactly the favorite of senior management anymore. Nevertheless, he was friendly and candid about what had happened, and shared his honest opinions about why the venture failed. Everything was fine until I asked my final question. “Summing it all up, what can we learn from Project X?”
His mood immediately changed and he launched into an obsecenity laden rant about senior management, ending up with “And that’s what we can fing learn about Project fing X!!!”
I put my pen down, looked him straight in the eye and asked “Do you want me to spell that with gg or ck?”