I first heard it on the Odd Couple, along with the joke in the ghost episode about the ritual phrase “Owah Tagoo Siam.”
It was funny at the time and slightly shocking since I hadn’t heard words like Ass too often on network tv in the early '70s.
I’ve heard it often.I just say,“you make an ass out of u,not me.Just you.”
Now that one I recognized as a variation on a gag I’d heard before. They did it on Dick Van Dyke as “Igottano slikaban ana.”
Yep. I was 11 or 12 when that episode first aired, and I remember my parents laughing so loud that I poked my head in from the next room to ask what was so funny. They gave no indication they had heard it before.
One question, though–was it “you make an ass out of you and me” in the show? Either because my parents read it back to me wrong, or because my memory is faulty, I remember it as being “you make an ass out of me”, with the longer version coming later as the joke got recycled and re-told.
Using Google Books, you can find a cite from a 1966 issue of PMI, Photo Methods for Industry. PMI Photo Methods for Industry - Google Books
You have to learn how to search inside the issue, then you have to make sure to make sure that the issue isn’t more recent. VERY many false Google Book hits. I did the work. It’s there.
So, it predates The Odd Couple.
Thanks, sam!
I wish I knew what I meant when I said it “feels older”. It just struck me as an uncensored Marx Brothers. I also wish I knew why an photo industry mag would want to publish it. I guess they use some harsh language when discussing pictures.
And yes, they not only said the word “ass”, Felix actually circuled the word rather heatedly. It was seriously funny the first time.
It was definitely you make an “ass out of you and me”. Felix had a blackboard in the courtroom and as he said “when you assume” with a heavy emphasis on the first syllable, he wrote out the letters A S S, which he circled, then the U, which I think he circled, then the M E, which I think he also circled. And IIRC, the court case was not about a traffic ticket, but allegedly scalping tickets to some event (that I don’t remember.)
There was some underlining going on there too. And I believe you are correct about the ticket scalping. I think I mixed up episodes in my mind.
Looking at the years it ran, I now remember I didn’t see it in it’s original run but on reruns on a local NY channel. And now my kids can see it-- 'cause we have cable.
Yes, Oscar and Felix were arrested for scalping a ticket to a Broadway play, since Oscar couldn’t get a date. It was the episode called “My Strife in Court,” first aired on February 16, 1973.
Thanks to Youtube, here’s the famous courtroom “assume” scene, complete with uproarious applause.
I must be the oldest person on the Internet because no one else has posted that this was a bit that was done by Abbott and Costello back in the fifties, and they may have used it in their vaudeville routine prior to that. Lou Costello even used the blackboard to show Bud Abbott ass + u + me = assume. The writers from the odd couple stole that bit.
Nice work, Lex! (Pending verification, but I have no reason to deny* your clear memory of this). Most zombie thread revivals are useless, but this one is spot-on.
*It ain’t just a river in Egypt! Who said that first, I wonder? Ah, a topic for another thread…
Good job, Lex. I knew it was old when it showed up on the Odd Couple - I remember :rolleyes:ing at the applause.
Definitely quite common among my teachers (well, coaches) in the 1960s. I’m surprised that so many didn’t hear it until TOC in 1973.
Has ass always meant arse in the US?
Because “ass” (in the sense of “donkey”) is a very mild, childish, maiden-aunt-ish, insult in the rest of the English speaking world. “Silly ass!” - very different from “arse” which is very much a four-letter-word in un-American English.
Ass (donkey) would be acceptable TV language in the rest of the English speaking world even back in the 1950s. Arse is a definite swear whereas ass isn’t.
Ass has always been acceptable when referring to a donkey or a fool, but not as a reference to an* arse*. In recent years even that meaning has become fairly acceptable, not considered by most to be more lewd than* butt *or fanny (the US fanny).
Oh English! You are such a fun language.
A cite would be nice before we hand out any praise.
I just did a simple Google search and found out that the guy who actually wrote the script for that episode first heard it years earlier from one of his teachers.
I first heard it when I watched one of the Bad News Bears movies. I was about 9 or 10, and I thought it was the funniest joke I ever heard. I’ve since matured. 
As long as we’ve revived the subject. I asked this once before and couldn’t get a definitive answer.
On an episode of MASH there was a scene where Col Flagg (the military intelligence agent) used the line “I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you”. Was this the original use of that line or did it predate MASH?
“Ass” meaning “buttocks” in addition to “donkey” or “foolish person” dates back at least to Shakespeare.
Yeah, that was the first (pretty awful) sequel and it was Jack Warden who made the joke at the very beginning. He was only in the film for this first scene (though confusingly he played the Walter Matthau part in the short lived TV series based on the original movie!) I remember seeing it on HBO and immediately remembering The Odd Couple a few years earlier.
First place I ever heard this was Al Franken’s great Stuart Smalley SNL character. It was the one where he was talking to Michael Jordan (the host) so we’re talking early 90s. I had never heard it before that so I found it really funny (still do). By the way, full joke is, “Remember, denial ain’t just a river in Egypt!”
Reminds me of another really funny joke Fred Willard told on Letterman a few years back that just has to be an old, bawdy vaudeville routine: “You know what they say about a blind hooker don’t ya? You really have to hand it to them!”