Just watched the original and the released versions of The Big Sleep. So I went back and watched To Have and Have Not.
So that is one of the most famous lines in movie history, and I’ve always heard it described as a double entendre. But I’ve never understood why. If it were a guy saying it to another guy, it would be obvious, blow job double entendre. But of course, you don’t actually blow giving a blow job (Chevy Chase one time on Weekend Update), so maybe it is a cunnilingus reference.
Now these double entendre’s I get
Vivian: Tell me: What do you usually do when you’re not working?
Marlowe: Oh, play the horses, fool around.
Vivian: No women?
Marlowe: I’m generally working on something most of the time.
Vivian: Could that be stretched to include me?
Marlowe: Well I like you. I’ve told you that before.
Vivian: I like hearing you say it. But you didn’t do much about it.
Marlowe: Well, neither did you.
Vivian: Well, speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them work out a little first, see if they’re front-runners or come from behind, find out what their hole-card is. What makes them run.
Marlowe: Find out mine?
Vivian: I think so.
Marlowe: Go ahead.
Vivian: I’d say you don’t like to be rated. You like to get out in front, open up a lead, take a little breather in the backstretch, and then come home free.
Marlowe: You don’t like to be rated yourself.
Vivian: I haven’t met anyone yet that can do it. Any suggestions?
Marlowe: Well, I can’t tell till I’ve seen you over a distance of ground. You’ve got a touch of class, but, uh…I don’t know how - how far you can go.
Vivian: A lot depends on who’s in the saddle. Go ahead Marlowe, I like the way you work. In case you don’t know it, you’re doing all right.
Marlowe: There’s one thing I can’t figure out.
Vivian: What makes me run?
Marlowe: Uh-huh.
Vivian: I’ll give you a little hint. Sugar won’t work. It’s been tried.
I think we get that, but I have always understood that there is a double entendre or some kind of meaning in what she said. I’ve never understood what it could be.
“Peel me a grape” = treat me like a queen, pamper me
I don’t know where I first saw it, but I’m picturing an ancient Roman scene where a slave is peeling a grape and feeding it to the Queen. Growing up in the 60’s, table grape skins were much tougher and bitter, and I’m not sure seedless grapes were even available. Selective breeding (is that the right term?) made the skins thinner and the seeds in seedless grapes smaller.
People (parents and those caring for the elderly, probably even now) would peel grapes and split them to remove the seeds to prevent choking on the skin and seeds.
The clip doesn’t really show the context. Mae West has just been confronted by the girlfriend of one of the men she was sleeping with, who basically calls West’s character a whore. She kicks the girlfriend out and then says the line, implying that a single grape would suffice to sooth her feelings.
And now, I’ve waited 40 years to tell this story, and finally have the chance:
I was reading a National Lampoon story and it had the joke that you could blow into the vagina and have the woman fly around the room like a balloon.
My wife and I were talking about that, and agreed that, NatLamp joke notwithstanding, it could be very dangerous to the woman if air got into her bloodstream that way.
She nodded and said, “That’s how my brother-in-law killed his dog.”
I figured her implication was that her feelings would be soothed by nothing less than him performing such a pointless PITA service just because she was struck by a whim to demand it.
