Actually, she was a talented operatic singer, known for many appearances on TV and a few movies.
Huh. I never knew she was an operatic singer (and I suspect the vast majority of Americans didn’t either).
Here is her page at IMDb. I think the only thing I might have recognized her from was Cinderfella, which I saw when I was five or six.
She’s apparently still alive and last worked in 2001.
I’m not sure what you mean there, she was well known as a singer, she appeared on television variety shows often and her background was often discussed. I think she was more well known as a singer than an actress.
Not so. There are many jokes (well, more often dramas) where the secretary is the woman who broke up the marriage.
“The business is the business that he gives his secretary/I hate men.” – Cole Porter
They may have known at the time the episode was first broadcast. She seems to have been a frequent guest on The Tonight Show, Merv Griffen, Ed Sullivan, and similar.
ETA , I never heard of her before today, but it looks like she was well known at the time, and for more than promoting salad dressing.
I did say, “in the cartoons.”
That was never spelled out: as Colibri says, in the joke format he never caught her. The implication was clearly sexual, though.
The secretary running around the desk to evade her boss clearly doesn’t want to have sex with him. It’s a different trope.
– although, come to think of it, I suppose part of what was going on in the never-spelled-out subtext was the theory that, if he did catch her, it could only be because she really wanted to be caught, and so it wouldn’t really be considered rape. (Not remotely my theory, just in case there’s any doubt.)
My Best Friend’s Wedding, 1997.
Originally said by Cameron Diaz to Julia Roberts
Now, I love this man, and there is no way that I’m going to give him up to some two-faced…big-haired…food critic!
I was born in 1955 and grew up in front of a television set. In 1975, I remembered occasionally hearing the name, but knew her only from the salad dressing commercials.
Regarding the Anna Maria Alberghetti pun: Ted’s Knock-knock joke was the secondary plot. Ted tried the joke several times without having thought of a punchline, and crashed and burned each time. He just really liked the setup. It wasn’t until the very end of the episode after the main plot had resolved that they did the pun.
So, the whole show was half-hour buildup to the resolution of the knock-knock joke. The entire cast sang the line, so it added a little spectacle to the reveal. Yes, the pun was lame, but the anticipation and suspense made it a real forehead slapper.
Mary certainly thought it was funny. She was the first one to laugh.
It was the first episode of the sixth season, the one where Edie Grant gets remarried. So the whole show was kind of a downer, and the silly joke at the end made it a little lighter.
I have trouble with this!
Sometimes when we are out, there is rice, and my brother-in-law is serving it out in the rice bowls.
Sometimes when we are out, there is no rice, and my wife tells me that I’m a barbarian for wanting rice with the meal, it’s not appropriate.
I’m a barbarian. Without being told, I don’t know the difference between rice meals and banquets.
So I just noticed my 2 year old’s animal book has a Beatles joke. The book asks a bunch of animals what they do, the cow says they give milk, the bee says they buzz, etc. The beetle says he rocks, then sings “doo-doo-dee-doop”.
I’m guess in joke doesn’t need explaining to most toddler’s parents, but I’m not sure the Beatles will be quite so ubiquitous in my two-year-old’s lifetime.
I got a joke book from Scholastic Press when I was in elementary school. There was a picture of a bee using a hoe. The caption was ‘The bee tills.’
I didn’t get it, because I lived in the city and had never heard of ‘tilling’. To me, the picture looked like the bee was poking a small suitcase with a stick. Nowadays I’d guess that kids would have to know what tilling soil is, what a hoe looks like, and who The Beatles were.
The Catholic Church canonized Karen Carpenter today.
She’s the patron saint of Ethiopia.
Would kids today be aware of Ms. Carpenter’s anorexia, or of the Ethiopian famine?
Why was it so hard to sell Karen Carpenter’s house?
It didn’t have a kitchen.
I used to know a Bobby Sands joke.
When I was a kid in the 70s, one of the school library’s newer joke books had a chapter of hippie jokes, most of which were just repurposed “Little Moron” jokes. A few were newer and specific to hippie slang.
Why couldn’t the lifeguard save the hippie?
He was too far out, man.
When I was in college the following Deadhead joke was popular:
What did the first Deadhead say to the second when the drugs wore off at the show?
“Dude, this music sucks!”
You might be surprised. I think there is a good chance the Beatles will remain ubiquitous for decades to come…or even longer.
This article is from 2014, but notes that the Beatles are still attracting fans 50 years after they first arrived in America. For example, the top-selling album in the U.S. for the entire decade from 2000 to 2009 was Beatles 1, a #1 hits compilation album that was released in 2000. My son, who was only three years old when that album was released, played that CD repeatedly throughout his early childhood (to the point that the CD insert was in shreds).
We saw a Beatles tribute band (Classical Mystery Tour) three years ago (celebrating the 50th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), and my son thought it was one of the best concerts he’d ever seen.
More broadly, there’s a long-running Broadway tribute show still playing (Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles) and a Cirque du Soleil show (Love). Not to mention a dedicated Sirius XM channel.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Beatles aren’t remembered centuries from now as emblematic of 20th century popular music like Mozart is emblematic of 18th century classical music.
Or my favorite: “I got a job at the bakery, I need the dough” (doesn’t work in text)
Why not?