Help me with this joke. From the “Burns and Allen”
radio show
Gracie: Boy I bet Hitler is sorry he is a paper hanger
George: Why
Gracie: Well with the way Berlin looks now he’d have made a lot more money as a bricklayer.
Audience laughs and laughs
I’m assuming the bricklayer reference is due to the Allied bombings reducing Berlin to a pile of bricks.
But what’s a paper hanger?
Being a failed artist, he was often “downgraded” to painter and decorator in order to make him a figure of fun. Paper hanger = one who hangs wallpaper.
From popular Irish folk sone The Liar
“It was during World War II, I met them all
There was Roosevelt and Churchill and de Gualle.
Then one day I nearly fainted
I was having my house painted
There was Hitler hanging paper in the hall.”
Argh. Here’s the word I was looking for, days after making the post: he was *lampooned * as a painter and decorator…