Looking for a quote from an old movie or play which goes, roughly:
"I have survived the [comically big word (henceforth, “cbw”)] [cbw] [cbw] [cbw] or our [cbw] [cbw] enemies; in short, I have arrived."
It seems to me that it came out of the mouth of W. C. Fields, but I probably have it all wrong. Does this ring a bell with anyone out there in computer monitor land? This has been bugging me all day, and google and bartleby’s are no help.
It sounds kind of like a line from The Man Who Came to Dinner which is both a play and a film. There is a character named Beverly Carlton (Beverly being a man’s name way back then) that was sort of loosely based on Noel Coward. He had lines that were very much like that.
eg/ “So tell me, without going into mountainous waves of self-pity, how are you?”
However, I could be wrong – it’s been a very long time since I’ve read or seen the play.
W.C. Fields is partly on the right track. It’s a line uttered by him in his character of Mr Micawber in the 1948 film ‘David Copperfield’.
The novel. by Charles Dickens has the original lines, but I don’t have the book to hand. Basically, Micawber is giving a long rigmarole about his journey through London, saying something like…’ my perilous perambulations have reached their destination…in short, I have arrived."
Hope this helps.
Please allow me to introduce you to this cool new thing called the Internet.
Alas, my search of the full text of the book from Project Gutenberg turns up no use of the phrase “I have arrived.” I also searched for “perilous” (no matches), “perambulations” (one match, not the given quote), and “destination” (several matches, none the given quote). I don’t dispute that this quote may well be in the movie (IMDb has no quotes for this film), but I see no evidence that Dickens wrote it.
Also, the version of David Copperfield which starred W. C. Fields as Mr. Micawber came out in 1935, not 1948.
Mr. Micawber: So relentlessly pursued over aerie and housetop, and vice versa, I have thwarted the malevolent machinations of our scurrilous enemies; in short, I have arrived.
Aaaand … 14 years, 6 weeks and 3 hours later we have the correct answer.
Bravo gsteven. No question is too obsure for us to let it die unanswered.
Welcome. You may enjoy hanging out here. Some of the folks in this thread way back then are still here. Others have wandered off probably never to return.
Spectacular way to join, a pyrotechnic revival of a zombie that had stumped the wisdom of the collective for 14 years.
In short, gsteven, you have arrived.