As a teenager in the late-'70s, a friend would occasionally exclaim, 'Oh, Emma! – usually when seeing an attractive girl (or ‘fox’, in the contemporary vernacular). I assume he got the phrase from his father, and that it was probably from his father’s era. Near the end of the Hollywood movie Memphis Belle (to differentiate it from the real film), one of the crew says ‘Oh, Emma!’ as he hefts a machinegun.
Where does the exclamation ‘Oh, Emma!’ come from?
Apparently from a Victorian-era song (or more than one) featuring that phrase:
Found a reference in an 1879 Cambridge Review:
And more than a hundred and thirty years later, we’re still fighting the perplexity! Hope that helps.
In a more recent song, after the gentleman was in his teens in the 70s, Frank Zappa sang “I got a big dilemma about my Big Leg Emma.”
Certainly, the Victorian song started it, but men still sing about Emma.
Wow. “Emma” was it? I thought we were all just muttering “Oh, momma” from the 17970’s onwards, from the earliest days of Funk to Bender’s orgiastic galactic electrocution when he was addicted to jacking on. Who knew. Emma. I just may have to start using it, just to be correct. Wouldn’t want people to think I wasn’t hep. To the jive. That is.
Emma Peel brought the name into common use amongst some 60’s teens.
There was also a well-known song “Whoa, Emma!” from the 1951 musical Texas Carnival, which doubtless helped keep the meme alive.