notbobsmith wrote: ↑Tue Aug 01, 2023 12:38 am
Once Hollywood noticed that they could use it as another place to advertise, of course it got bigger.
0:40 "Hear the talk of 1946" I have to wonder if people really talked like this. I mean part of it has to be censorship of language when even something like "Oh my God!" would have been unacceptable. But "Great Scott!" "Great Ceasar's Ghost!" Did anyone actually say these things?
If you're truly curious, here's a good resource:
The Cheaper the Crook, the Gaudier the Patter: Forgotten Hipster Lines, Tough Guy Talk, and Jive Gems by Alan Axelrod. I own a couple of Axelrod's books, and this one is a good primer to slang from the 1910s to the 1950s. (This was slang used by cops, gangsters, and just ordinary people).
"The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter" is a line used by Sam Spade in Dashiell Hammett's
The Maltese Falcon (published 1930), so it's authentic 1930s language.
I've read this book cover to cover several times, and I'm pretty sure that "Jeepers", "Great Scott", and "Great Caesar's ghost" don't appear there. Having said that, here's what dictionary.com has to say:
1. Jeepers. Used as a mild exclamation of surprise or emotion.
Origin: 1925–30, Americanism; euphemistic alteration of
Jesus.
2. Great Scott.A euphemistic interjection or oath, usually expressing surprise, amazement, or the like.
Origin: 1880–85; Scott, euphemism for God.
3. Great Caesar's ghost. (often humorous) An exclamation of astonishment. Allusion to the play
The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar by William Shakespeare, in which Julius Caesar’s ghost appears to Brutus.
Origin: Hard to pin down, but the earliest appearance of this phrase was in Mark Twain's
Life on the Mississippi (1883), in the chapter “A Cub-pilot's Experience”:
"By the great Caesar's ghost, I believe you! You're the stupidest dunderhead I ever saw or ever heard of, so help me Moses! The idea of you being a pilot--you! Why, you don't know enough to pilot a cow down a lane."
In short, these three would've been well-known Americanisms by 1946.
I don't think people would've spoken like that in every-day life, but their appearance in comic books probably has more to do with censorship than anything else.