On tonight’s syndicated Simpsons, Homer was railing about Ned in front of a crowd at church when he said, “Now, I’m not a big city lawyer, but…” I am pretty sure that I have heard a character in the Simpsons use this phrase before, but for the life of me I can’t find where it comes from. Can anybody place this phrase or is it something the writers made up.
I’m almost positive that Lionel Hutz says it at some point, but as for when and where, I couldn’t tell you.
Don’t think the phrase was made up the writers, I’ve heard it used many other places, at least back into the early 70’s (no cite, only personal remembrance). Don’t recall having it heard on the Simpsons before, either. But I’ll have to consult both my daughter and her boyfriend, whose combined encyclopedic knowledge of 1st decade Simpson quotes would be frightening, if their combined ACT scores didn’t add up to 70.
They both had composites of 35. Just to clarify.
Well I just posted this on the Irish Potato Famine thread, but here it is again:
“I’m not a big city lawyer” has to be from the 60’s movie Inherit the Wind - Spencer Tracy was the small-time lawyer assigned to defend Bertram Cates against famous politician/lawyer Matthew Harrison Brady. (It was really a veiled reference to the Scopes Monkey Trial). In the movie, Spencer Tracy was always grabbing his suspenders and acting like he was the people’s lawyer, and was always pigeonholing the blowhard, stuffed-shirt arguments from his blue-blood, politician opponent.
BUt, in Anatomy of a Murder, Jimmy Stewart has a line about the Prosecution having two “big city” lawyers against just lil’ ol’ him. I’ll run a search quick.