wc fields quote: what does it mean?

Factual Questions
1

Watched a movie last night. Mae West basically locks him out of the hotel room, to which he exclaims.

“It appears an Ethiopian has raided the fuel supply!”

This makes no sense to me. Any help at all in explaining the comment?

Of course, I’m doing nothing but reciting quotes from the movie all day today, much to the annoyance of the wife

“During one of my treks through Afghanistan, we lost our corkscrew. Compelled to live on food and water… for several days.”

snerk
“I understand the countryside abounds with wild game: flamingoes… wine wombats… Indian civets.”

giggle

2

Mean? It has to mean something and not just be Fields doing one of his masterful riffs on the language?

“Godfrey Daniels!” doesn’t mean anything, but it is such a joy to say.

(He says “velocipede” is several films, but not the one where his character is seen riding one.)

3

Years back, there was a popular but extremely racist expression (I used to see it in Agatha Christie’s novels) that people used when they sensed that something suspicious was happening: “There’s a nigger in the woodpile.”

In different movies, W.C. Fields would “clean up” this expression by saying, “I sense a Dubangi in the fuel supply” or something along those lines.

4

He’s probably using “Ethiopian” as a euphemism for “negro”, if that helps any.

5

Hurm.

I had heard that expression referring to a person’s pedigree, especially someone who has airs about their heritage.

The Family Tree may be impeccable, but there’s (etc.)

It may also refer to a woman having had illicit sexual relations with someone below her social class.

Damn, that makes sense in context. I apologize for my earlier outburst.

6

This is correct. Fields used the expression a lot, in various forms that would pass the censors.

Just as Godfrey Daniels is an acceptable euphemism for god damn rather than some meaningless phrase.

7

And the Black Pussy was just the name of a bar. :slight_smile:

8

The part I don’t understand is Mae West locking a man out of her hotel room.

9

Perhaps she was locking someone else in.

10

Man? It wasn’t a man. It was Fields. :slight_smile:

11

Well, it was W.C. Fields: she probably preferred younger and sexier than him. (She was 13 years younger than him, and pretty enough to be choosy about who she locked inside her bedroom).

12

Many years ago a much older co-worker used the expression “There’s an Ethiopian in the Lumber Yard,” which took me a second to translate. I recognizede the Fields quote as the same class of genteel-ly re-worded expression as soon as I read the OP. I suspect that the OP’s inability to do the same is mainly due to the original phrase’s falling out of favor, being greatly un-PC.
Yay!

13

BTW, “Godfrey Daniels” means “god damn” :wink:

14

No, really?

15

Nigger in the woodpile or Nigger in the fence starts appearing in print around the 1840’s. It probably was a not uncommon expression even before that time. It meant, to most at that time, something that was out of place, unexpected, a trick, something to be considered a drawback.

The use of the phrase to indicate a potential black forebearer of a white person doesn’t appear until the mid 1900’s.