It’s a well worn cliche in movies and television to show somebody playing a sad tune on a harmonica when characters end up in jail. Usually the image is played for laughs now, but where did it start. Is it a reference to some prison scene of yore/ I’m assuming this was once intended as a serious bit of melodrama in something or other sometime. Does anybody know what?
WAG: Harmonicas are small, easy to carry, easy to learn, easy to play, and relatively cheap. Thus a real life convict is far more likely to have and play a harmonica rather than, say, a piano.
I’ve never seen or heard of this scene before, BTW, but I don’t watch much TV.
When I say that I haven’t seen or heard of this scene, I do not mean to imply that I think that the OP is lying or confabulating. I am simply confessing my ignorance of the scene.
Norman Rockwell did a SEP cover showing a guy in a jail cell playing on a mouth harp. Outside the barred window sat a grizzled old deputy, with a handlebar moustache, leaning back in his chair, with a shotgun across his knees, and a hanky in his hand, as he wiped away a tear.
Can’t find an image online, but they have reproductions in all the Hometown Buffets that I’ve been in.
Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) uses it memorably. A Death Row convict spends his last few days trying to learn to play. When they come for him, he starts begging for a few more days so he can get the tune perfect. They take him away anyway.
Any earlier cite? What date would the Rockwell cover be?
Actually, I think I’ve got the wrong film there.
In Blazing Saddles a prisoner is playing a harmonica, mournfully. Sheriff asks him what he’s in for. “Atmosphere,” he says.
I guess that doesn’t help you, but I always liked that gag.
I have found an article in the Chicago Tribune from 1886 about a man sentenced to hanged playing for other prisoners and visitors, the same story in several papers in December 1926 about a harmonica concert being used (unsuccessfully) to cover up a breakout, a New York Times piece in 1931 about a Georgia county barring harmonicas, and passing references in New York Times articles from 1906 and 1910, a 1935 Chicago Tribune article and a 1936 Los Angles Times article about prisoners spending their time playing the harmonica.
The first of these is closest to the stereotype (the article in question being rather sentimental in tone), but all of these references have something of the myth to them.
Soldiers during the Civil War carried harmonicas, and according to the ever-reliable Wikipedia, Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid could play.
My guess is its use in old Westerns predates similar usage in prison pictures as a shorthand for isolation and loneliness.
My wife tells me that if I take up the harmonica that I’ll be isolated and lonely for sure. 
hm… methinks you should tell her how its played… she might encourage ya after that.
It seems I was thinking of 20,000 years in Sing-Sing (1932)
The harmonica player was called Hype, played by Warren Hymer.
IMDB entry : 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932) - IMDb
There are only two prisoners in Blazing Saddles, and one isn’t nearly intelligent enough to utter a response like that…perhaps you’re thinking of a different film? Or I’m forgetting a major element of the movie.
You’re forgetting a minor element of the movie. The harmonica player isn’t one of the main characters - he’s just in one scene, for atmosphere. It may have been one of the other prisoners who asks him what he’s in for, though.
There is the rockridge jail they just had Mongo and the Kid. Then there is the building where Headly is. I think the harmonica player is in Headly’s jail.
Well, drat. Guess that’s an excuse for me to watch the movie again. 
There was a Twilight Zone episode about a guy who has this recurring dream every night that he’s on trial for murder. He knows it’s a dream. When he’s in jail awaiting trial, he’s explaining the dream to someone else. He explains that it’s always a little different, and it’s not always realistic–he doesn’t really know what it’s like to be in jail, so everything is based on cliches and stereotypes, and then he points to a guy in another cell playing the harmonica, and says something like, “Like him. He’s just somebody I saw in a movie once.”
I seem to recall a prisoner playing the harmonica in I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), but I can’t quite put my finger on it. I may well be misremembering.
I did find this, though, with the following:
my bold
Anyone else think the Mod in Posts 2 and 3 was whooshing us?
I rather doubt the OP needed those inputs. Could the Mod have dropped in just for atmosphere? Or comic relief? If it’s the latter: mission accomplished. I’m still chuckling.
I love that there’s harmonica music when you get thrown in the brig in America’s Army for shooting your drill instructor in the head. Way to be realistic, guys :rolleyes: