As well as working at a Renaissance Faire. 
My mother said “Gadzooks” and probably still does. I’ll have to ask her. She also said “Heavens to Murgatroyd” and “Heavens to Betsy” and “What in the Sam Hill…?” Language was fun around our house.
I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard anyone actually say “Zounds,” though I’ve read it in comic strips.
Odd’s blood!
“Balllllzac!!!”
Hermione Gingold in The Music Man. I forgot the character’s name.
I don’t think it was a commonly used expression, however. Maybe just in that film.
One of my favorite musicals, btw!
Q
PS: “Zounds” sounds like it may have also been used in a commercial. Not the Mounds candybar, though. 3 Musketeers, maybe.
Khaaaan!
In the 50’s, I think they survived in comic books. As a child, never remember a real life example.
I think they were all put in mothballs when the Batman TV series ended. Along with Biff, Boffo, and Zonk!
I think around the time “Scooby Doo” went off the air led to their quick disappearance in the mainstream lexicon.
Action Man: The old fake coffin trick. Gadzooks, you think I would have remembered that one from “The Case of the Old Fake Coffin”.
Thank you for properly introducing me to “Ods Bodikins”. I’d heard it before, but now that I know its meaning, it will certainly make an appearance this family Christmas dinner.
It wasn’t so much an exclamation, as it was the ultimate pejorative of a list of authors of “dirty books” (Chaucer! Rabelais! Ballllzac!) which Marian Paroo (Shirley Jones) the librarian was recommending to the youngsters in town.
The character was the wife of the Mayor of River City (Paul Ford), Eulalie Mackechnie Shinn.
Crikey Dickens!
Whillikers!
Well, I’ll go to the foot of my stairs!
By The Power of Greyskull!
Well, I’ll be hornswoggled!
“By Gradthar’s hammer…”
Oh, wait.
I was walking through the local college recently and got to wondering what young girls say these days in place of the 1960s’ most frequently uttered “minced oath,” which I have no idea how to spell convincingly (and, I think, why it’s so seldom seen in print). It was the word “God,” drawn out to about three or four syllables, with the final “d” missing. Anyone else know about that one?
I remember that from the 1970’s in Ohio.
There is a quote by Wile E. Coyote when one of his schemes went awry. “Zounds, gadzooks, egad, and other expressions of profound dismay”
My favorite is “Sweet Evil Jesus!”. Oh, wait…
“Gah!” was a minced oath? I thought it was just exasperation, with the G replacing the glottal stop over time.
When I was in fifth grade or so, the expletive for elementary school age was “guy darn!”
And IIRC, there was an OLD Three Musketeers candy bar commercial that started out, “Gadzooks! It’s the Three Musketeers!”
~VOW
My Forgotten English page-a-day calendar entry for today reads:
Odds fish: A corruption of “God’s flesh,” or body of Christ. A favorite expression of Charles II.