Apropos Mr. Adams’s suggestion that people before the sexual revolution of the 1960’s did not make sexual references (except Mae West, of course):
According to my parents, who attended college immediately after World War II (when all the vets were attending on the GI Bill), their classmates put on a comic revue, in which a student ran across the stage with an enormous spiked staff and made a reference to “getting the shaft.” All the vets got it; none of the co-eds did; and, presumably, after the show all the vets privately explained to their girlfriends what “getting the shaft” meant. My sense is that members of the Greatest Generation were quite adept at saying everything they felt like saying; they simply did it without resorting to literal terms.
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Please include a link to Cecil’s column if it’s on the straight dope web site.
To include a link, it can be as simple as including the web page location in your post (make sure there is a space before and after the text of the URL).
Cecil’s column can be found on-line at the link provided by dantheman.
The column (including Slug Signorino’s illustration) can also be found on pages 156-158 of Cecil Adams? book «Triumph of the Straight Dope».
In Hollywood Babylon Kenneth Anger , in referring to Flynn’s trial on rape states “as the trial progressed the expresiion “In Like Flynn” became a GI codeword, which amused more than annoyed its namesake”.
Hollywood Babylon is not necessarily accurate but it is a good reflection of the Hollywood gossip of the time.
My aunt claims that the expression ‘in like Flynn’ came from Reverend John Flynn who started up the Royal Flying Doctors Service (http://www.rfds.org.au/ RFDS) in outback Australia in the 1930’s. It was because people would radio in to the RFDS and they would fly out to the property and treat the patient quicker than they thought possible, in all sorts of terrain. Thus to be ‘in like Flynn’ was to be able to get in anywhere at anytime.
Don’t know how accurate this is, but it is her story, and she would never say it if it was to do with sexual prowess. However the site makes no mention of it.