Profanity – davidbruceblog #2

David Bruce: Profanity Anecdotes

• Harry S. Truman occasionally used profanity, something that Richard “Expletive Deleted” Nixon tried to make a campaign issue when he ran for President against John F. Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy responded, “I would not want to give the impression that I am taking former President Truman’s use of language lightly. I have sent him the following wire: ‘Dear Mr. President: I have noted with interest your suggestion as to where my opponent should go. While I understand and sympathize with your deep motivation, I think it important that our side try to refrain from raising the religious issue.”

• President Abraham Lincoln once reviewed the first corps of the army. Being driven to the place of review by an ambulance composed of a wagon and a team of six mules, President Lincoln listened for a while as the driver cursed his six mules, then he asked the man, “Are you an Episcopalian?” Startled, the mule-driver replied, “No, Mr. President, I am a Methodist.” President Lincoln then said, “I thought you must be an Episcopalian, because you swear just like Governor Seward, who is a church warden.”

• Janette Porter was the daughter of a preacher. While in elementary school in the early part of the 20th century, a classmate whispered to her that she had just had an evil thought and asked what she should do. Janette whispered back, “Just think about flowers … and music … and JESUS.” Joy at finding exactly the right word to say made her say that word much too loudly, and her teacher and most of her classmates were shocked to hear the preacher’s daughter “curse.” As punishment, she had to stand in the corner of the classroom for an hour.

• As a young man, H. Allen Smith attempted to join a Greek letter fraternity that was not connected with a university or college. Unfortunately, he didn’t make the grade and was not accepted into the fraternity. To get revenge, he invented a new fraternity. The name consisted of three words denoting a vulgar expression, the first word of which was “Go.” A Greek friend translated the expression into Greek and Mr. Smith wrote several articles for his newspaper about the fictitious fraternity.

• The Reverend Joseph Twichell taught Mark Twain how to ride a bicycle. When they were taking a bicycle ride one day — Mr. Twain somewhat unsteadily — they came to a large stone in the middle of the road. Mr. Twain headed right toward the rock and didn’t know what to do to avoid hitting it and crashing. Reverend Twichell offered advice, but Mr. Twain replied, “Shut up, Joe. You ride ahead. I’m going to swear like hell in a minute.”

• Even preachers sometimes make mistakes. Church of Christ preacher W.A. Bradfield was closing a sermon with a call to the altar and was doing his best to call the unrepentant to come to the altar and repent: “Oh, why don’t you come? You daddies, for your children’s sake, why don’t you come? Oh, why don’t you come, you husbands, for your wives’ sake? Oh, for heaven’s sake, why don’t you come? Oh, why in the hell don’t you come?”

• Dave McKinley was a retired publisher who once saw his granddaughter deliberately step on an ant, so he lectured her on how wrong it was, because ants were defenseless, and lived in ant farms, and had electricity and running water, and taught us all a lesson about keeping busy, etc. At the end of his lecture, his granddaughter said, “Grandpa, you old son of a bitch, I love you.”

• Samuel Johnson went to a market to buy fish, but he discovered that the fish at a certain shop were not fresh. The woman selling the fish argued with him and insisted that the fish were fresh, so Dr. Johnson called her a noun, an adverb, and a verb. Because the woman didn’t know what those words meant, she thought that Dr. Johnson was insulting her.

• John Downes, in his 1708 book Roscius Anglicanus, Or an Historical Review of the Stage, tells of an early performance of Romeo and Juliet, in which a Mrs. Holden enters and says, “O my Dear Count.” Unfortunately — but to the amusement of the audience — Mrs. Holden left out the letter ‘o’ in the word ‘Count.”

• The language old-time muledrivers used was something awesome to behold. One muledriver stopped to invite his frontier preacher to climb aboard for a ride. Unfortunately, the muledriver was quickly forced to disinvite the preacher — as long as the preacher was around, the mules didn’t understand a word the muledriver said.

• The baseball captain of Hamilton College was hopping mad about an error by an umpire long ago, so he was spewing out a steady stream of four-letter profanity. Suddenly, he noticed that the President of Hamilton College was standing nearby, so he changed his swearing to “Good gracious!”

• Actor David Niven enjoyed using bad language — over 400 four-letter words had to be edited out of his first book. However, Mr. Niven so liked his friend Fred Astaire, who didn’t use bad language, that he refrained from using four-letter words in his presence.

• Donald Ogden Stewart frequently used bad language in mixed company. Once, he called a certain writer a horse’s ass, but when he saw that he had offended a lady, he immediately apologized: “I’m terribly sorry, Toots. I didn’t know you mind the word ‘horse.’”

• Hank Caplan was a TV director in Canada who constantly used a favorite expletive. After finishing work on a production, the actors working with him gave him a present — a box of toilet paper.

• Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was once thought to have mouthed the f-word in the House, but he claimed that the word he was mouthing was “Fuddle-duddle.”

• Governor Huey Long of Louisiana (1893-1967) once said about the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan: “… when I call him an s.o.b. I am not using profanity but am referring to the circumstances of his birth.”

• “All pro athletes are bilingual. They speak English and profanity.” — Gordie Howe.

• “When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.” — Mark Twain.

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David Bruce: Profanity Anecdotes

• William R. Braddock, Esq., of Medford, New Jersey, was a Quaker and he disliked swearing. While he was writing a deed for two men, they began to argue, and as they argued, they swore at each other. Mr. Braddock told the men that he did not permit swearing in his establishment, and for a while the two men stopped swearing. But again they began to argue, and again they began to swear. Mr. Braddock stopped writing the deed, told his daughter to open the door, then he grabbed each man by the back of the neck and hurled them both into the street. The two men had not had time to get their hats, so they hired a neighborhood boy to go back and pick up their hats for them.

• When comedian Kate Clinton was a teacher of “at-risk” children, a nun came in to observe her class. Ms. Clinton knew the nun was going to observe her, so she alerted all her students to come to class on time — especially one student who was notorious for his tardiness. The student stayed up late the night before to watch a baseball game, forgot about the nun, came to class tardy as usual, and said, “The f—ing Yankees suck.” Then he noticed the nun and looked at Ms. Clinton, who told him, “Steve, you need to apologize to the class for what you said.” Steve said, “I’m sorry I said ‘suck.’ Twice.”

• In the Old North cemetery in Portsmouth, New Hampshire is a headstone for “Benjamin M. Burnham, Originator of the Trite Swearing.” Before he died in 1855, Mr. Burnham was famous for his anti-swearing pledge and for advocating the substitution of innocuous words for swear words. For example, if you were to hit your thumb with a hammer, Mr. Burnham would want you to say something like, “Oh, peanut butter fudge” instead of what I would say.

• Lord Phillimore (1845-1929) once tried a man who was accused of murdering his wife. Lord Phillimore asked him, “Did you say to your wife, ‘If you bloody well don’t take care you will repent of it’?” The defendant replied that he couldn’t have said that because he didn’t use that particular word. Lord Phillimore asked, “I suppose it is the word beginning with ‘b’ that you do not use.” The man replied, “Oh, no! I do use that word. It’s the word ‘repent’ which I don’t use.”

• Radio commentator Al Johnson was broadcasting a description of several wrestling matches when one of the wrestlers was thrown out of the ring and landed in his lap. Mr. Johnson said, “Get the hell off me, you son-of-a-bitch!” Then he remembered he was broadcasting live on the radio, so he added, “Please watch your language here, sir. We’re doing a radio broadcast.”

• As a young man, Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) acted in England. He and the other actors tended to swear, and in an attempt to break the habit, they decided to fine themselves a penny for each swear word they uttered. Unfortunately, they were forced to stop the attempt against swearing — within two hours, Mr. Jerome and the other actors were broke.

• The parents of a student at Sidcot School became upset and complained, saying that a teacher had cursed at their son when he had lost a wallet. The Head of the school investigated the matter and discovered that lost property was turned over to a teacher named Helen Hunt. When the boy reported losing his wallet, he had been told, “Go to Helen Hunt for it.”

• Red Skelton may have used blue humor in his private life, but in vaudeville and on TV his comic material was kept scrupulously clean. When Mr. Skelton was in Nashville, he was asked why there were no four-letter words in his performances. Mr. Skelton replied, “Why should people pay me to say words they can read for free on the bathroom wall?”

• Asa Branson, who originally hailed from Salem, New Jersey, but then moved to Flushing, Ohio, was an elderly Quaker who was hard of hearing and who therefore carried an ear trumpet. Some young men once tried to shock him by shouting profanity into his ear trumpet, but Mr. Branson responded by going to the nearby village pump and washing his ear trumpet.

• The American baritone Lawrence Tibbett once played the title role in the opera Don Juan de Mañara, with British baritone Dennis Noble playing Don Juan’s illegitimate son, Don José. Mr. Tibbett saw Mr. Noble in a cafe and called out to him, “This is a damn fine opera, Denny — I call you a bastard three times in the first act!”

• Theater director Tyrone Guthrie could be outspoken. Once, several VIPs tried to attend a first rehearsal in America, arriving at the theater and taking seats. Mr. Guthrie walked over to them and said, “Distinguished guests, we are now going to get to work, so will you kindly f**k off.”

• Irish playwright Brendan Behan often used the word “bejaysus” in conversation, causing many people to think he was being blasphemous. A man once asked Mr. Behan’s friend Liam Dwyer about this practice, and Mr. Dwyer replied, “It’s His friends who know Him by His first name.”

• Andrew “Andra’” Kirkaldy, a caddy at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club at St. Andrews in Scotland, was known for his swearing. Once, a local reporter asked him about a proposal to ban swearing on the golf course, and Andra’ replied, “Quite right, the damned thing should be stamped out.”

• Boxer Sonny Tufts once complained about the newspaper media on a live radio program. He said, “I don’t give a godd*mn what newspaper people write about me. … I’m awfully sorry about my language. … Really, I’m godd*mned sorry.”

• Thomas Beecham once conducted in a building in Lancaster, England, in which this sign was hung: “It is strictly forbidden to use in this building the words Hell, Damn, and other Biblical Expressions.”

• Black comedian Richard Pryor had a unique way of handling hecklers during his performances. He simply looked at them and said, “F**k you.”

• “Keep using my name in vain, I’ll make rush hour longer.” — God.

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***

David Bruce: Profanity Anecdotes

• When she was a child, Tanaquil Le Clercq used to look at the painting Sacred and Profane Loveand wonder which figure represented Sacred Love: the fully clothed figure, or the nude figure? She was told that the nude figure symbolized virtue. Therefore, she was looking forward to dancing the role of Sacred Love in Sir Frederick Ashton’s ballet Illuminations—to be relatively unclothed is a blessing to a dancer, as too much costuming interferes with the ability to dance. Unfortunately, Sacred Love wore a lot of costuming in the ballet, whereas Profane Love wore much less costuming. In fact, the ballerina dancing the role of Profane Love wore one ballet slipper instead of two. However, this turned out not to be a blessing, as the ballerina frequently forgot which foot was shod and in going up on pointe with the unshod foot, she bruised all five toenails, resulting in some unballerina-like cursing in the wings.

• Opera singer Nellie Melba lived in the infancy of recording. She once tried recording, but as she listened to the screeching, scratchy result, she said to herself, “Never again. Don’t tell me I sing like that, or I shall go away and live on a desert island, out of sheer pity for the unfortunate people who have to listen to me.” That recording was destroyed. Of course, the process of recording improved, and she later made some recordings with the Victor Talking Machine Company. Also of course, a mishap occasionally occurred. For example, she had just about finished making an excellent recording when she tripped backwards over a chair and said, “D*mn!” Ms. Melba wrote in her autobiography, Melodies and Memories, “That ‘d*mn,’ when the record was played over, came out with a terrible clarity, making me feel much as a sinner must on the Day of Judgment.”

• Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller fame uses profanity a lot, but he did not use profanity around his mother and father because it would have made them uncomfortable. His mother read the Playboyand Rolling Stoneinterviews with him and said, “It’s amazing how they have to add all that swearing to how you talk to make it fit in their magazine.” He explained to her that he really does talk that way, but that he did not use profanity around her and around his father. She shrugged, and Penn is not sure that she believed him.

• Is it possible to know the exact time that you grew up? Yes, and a friend of book reviewer Matt Rudd knows exactly that. He was in a bar in Casablanca, and he started talking to a pretty woman, hoping to captivate her with his long hair, salty language, and fascinating—at least to him—life. The pretty woman was not captivated. She listened to him for a while, and then she told him, “Why are you swearing so much? Is it because you think it makes you sound grown up?” She left, and Mr. Rudd’s friend grew up.

• In his stand-up act, comedian Drew Carey uses a lot of profanity, but of course on his TV sitcom The Drew Carey Showhe could not use nearly as much profanity as he does in his stand-up comedy. In fact, he remembers his first memo from the network censor, who wrote about the script for an episode, “Please note the excessive use of ‘hell’ and ‘d*mn’ found on pages 4, 20, 21, 22, 28, 38, 40, and 52, and reduce this number by half.”

• Mark Twain was a true original. He lived for years in Hartford, Connecticut, whose most learned citizen was J. Hammond Trumbull. Mr. Twain was very impressed by him — because he knew how to use profanity in 27 languages. While Mr. Twain was living in Hartford, he attended a baseball game at which a boy stole his umbrella. Mr. Twain offered two rewards: $5 for the umbrella, and $200 for the boy’s corpse.

• Max Gaines, the father of William M. Gaines of MAD magazine fame, used to produce comic books on religious and educational themes; however, the creative process of turning a Biblical story into a comic story with only a limited number of picture panels sometimes tempted him to be profane. For example, he once screamed, “I don’t give a d*mn how long it took Moses — I want it in two panels!”

• Lessons can be learned in strange ways. John Wesley and Samuel Bradburn once witnessed an angry quarrel between two women who used bad language but who used it passionately and well and with their whole being. Mr. Bradburn was disgusted by the language and wanted to leave, but Mr. Wesley told him, “Stay — and learn how to preach.”

• One of George Balanchine’s dancers was known as “Evil Annie” because she was gifted at swearing. The dancers with whom Ann Crowell Inglish shared a dressing room used to tape holy pictures to her mirror — but they didn’t cure her habit of swearing.

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David Bruce: Profanity Anecdotes

Chris Crutcher used profanity while he was growing up in Idaho, and profanity peppers some of his books for teenagers, such as Stotan! When his first book, Running Loose, was still in the editing stage, his agent suggested that a certain two-word phrase that was used frequently in the book might negatively affect sales, considering the audience for which the book was written. Mr. Crutcher agreed to remove the two-word phrase, and he jokes that by deleting the two-word phrase he turned a 300-page novel into a 200-page novel. During the time he spent editing the book, someone asked his mother where he was. She replied that she had not seen him for two weeks because he was busy “unf*cking” his book.

When they were children, young people’s author William Sleator and his sister, Vicky, taught their younger siblings, Danny and Tycho, cuss words. However, after Danny repeated the cuss words to their grandmother, they decided that they should try to get Danny and Tycho not to say the cuss words again. Therefore, they invented a word—drang—and told Danny and Tycho never to say it, as it was the worst of all cuss words. For a few hours, Danny and Tycho said the word drang every chance they got, but since no one was shocked when they said drang, they went back to saying the other cuss words—the ones that made adults look shocked.

Some members of Charlie Barnet’s jazz music decided to go swimming in San Francisco on a very hot day, so they plugged the cracks under the doors of their hotel room, turned on the water full force in the bathtub and let the water overflow. Eventually, they had a foot and a half or two feet on water on the floor, and they had a grand time “swimming” until the water leaked through the floor into the hotel room below. The hotel management, of course, was upset and brought in Mr. Barnet to see the damage. Mr. Barnet was also upset, and after calling his band members a few unprintable names, said, “The least you could have done was invite me.”

Ky Laffoon was known to get very angry occasionally on the golf course, and when he got angry, he was known to engage in profanity that profoundly embarrassed his wife, who left whenever she heard him using such language. Once, after promising his wife that he would not cuss because of his golf game, Mr. Laffoon made a mighty effort, but under great duress due to hitting his ball into a bed of honeysuckle, he let fly with some awful language. As usual, his wife started to walk away, but Mr. Laffoon ran after her and explained, “It wasn’t anything to do with the golf—I just don’t like honeysuckle.”

In The Exorcist, 13-year-old Linda Blair plays a character who uses horribly bad language referring to sexual acts. Many newspapers editorials were written against allowing a 13-year-old actress to use such language; however, Ms. Blair did not recite the lines. The really bad language was spoken by actress Mercedes McCambridge, whom Orson Welles had called “the world’s greatest radio actress.” She was also an excellent film actress, appearing in Giant and Touch of Evil.

Father Hennessy attended many practices of the Notre Dame football team, which was coached by his friend Knute Rockne. At some of these practices, Mr. Rockne exercised a remarkable talent for profanity, and at one point he let loose an oath that was so profane that everyone near the good priest looked at him to see what he would do. Father Hennessy merely raised his eyes heavenward and said “Glory be to God! There goes Rockne saying his prayers again!”

When he was 22 years old, actor Russell Crowe worked as a waiter in Sydney, Australia. A woman once ordered a cup of decaffeinated coffee and was surprised by what he brought her. She told him, “This is not decaffeinated coffee—this is just boiling water.” Mr. Crowe replied, “Lady, when we decaffeinate something in Australia, we don’t f— around!” (He was fired.)

Mark Twain enjoying swearing, a habit his wife deplored. One day, Mr. Twain cut himself shaving, and he unleased a steady stream of swear words. His wife, hoping to cure him of his bad habit, in a calm voice repeated every swear word he had shouted. Mr. Twain was unrepentant, merely remarking, “You have the words, my dear, but you don’t know the tune.”

Eugene Ormandy was once so displeased that he was ready to quit the Minneapolis Orchestra. He explained why to his manager, Arthur Judson—he had heard some of the musicians call him “a little son-of-a-bitch.” Hearing this, Mr. Judson simply laughed and told Mr. Ormandy, “Congratulations, you’re a real conductor now.”

Babe Ruth got into trouble when he was a boy, and so he had to go to St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys. When he grew up, he wanted other kids to avoid the mistakes he had made, so if he ever heard any children using profanity, he would yell at them, “Goddamn it, stop that goddamn swearing over there.”

As a child growing up in Edwight, West Virginia, Mary Carter Smith used to compete in cussing contests. Because she was so good with language, he always won. As an adult, she put her love of language to a much more socially acceptable use as an African-American griot (storyteller).

At an Army camp dinner, a soldier doing Kitchen Patrol duty spilled hot soup in a chaplain’s lap. The chaplain kept cool and didn’t curse, as so many other Army officers would have done, but he did ask the people he was eating with, “Will one of you laymen say something appropriate?”

Samuel Johnson was the author of an important English dictionary. To a woman who complained to him about the “dirty” words he had defined in the dictionary, he replied that she must have looked especially for those words.

Lillian Hellman was bored attending Wadleigh High School in Manhattan and claimed later that she had spent much of her time there using a dictionary to look up “naughty words.”

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David Bruce: Profanity Anecdotes

A woman used to say “God!” whenever she was annoyed, which was several times a day, so her son — a regular attendant at Sunday school — decided to teach her a lesson. He called out, “Mommy!” She responded, but then he did not say anything. He did this five times in one day, and finally his mother said, “You don’t have anything to say, so why do you call me all the time?” Her son replied, “Mom, I called you five times, and already you have lost your patience. Each day, you call ‘God!’ more than five times. I wonder whether God has lost His patience with you.”

Barry Took, the man who first proposed the teaming up of six British comedians into the comedy troupe Monty Python’s Flying Circus, took their side in the battle against censorship. After Monty Python started working on their TV series, the head of BBC Light Entertainment, Tom Sloane, said to Mr. Took, “Excuse me, Barry, I’ve just been looking at a playback of Python. Does John Cleese have to say ‘bastard’ twice?” Mr. Took replied, “Yeah, if he wants to.” There was no more discussion, and the word appeared twice in the sketch.

Fred Terry, the husband of Ellen Terry, enjoyed swearing in the company of men, but he did not swear while in the company of ladies. Once he felt it was his duty to speak to a young actor who had been swearing in the Green Room Club and urge him to use a better kind of language. The young actor was unconvinced and said, “I seem to remember, sir, that I have sometimes heard you use fairly strong language in the Club yourself.” Mr. Terry responded, “God all bloody mighty! I’m the f***ing President!”

The men soccer referees in Derby, England decided that they didn’t want to officiate the games of the women soccer players, so in 1973 they start teaching women to be referees. Why? Because the language of the women soccer players was too strong for the male referees; as an official explained, “Although the ladies’ keenness is commendable, [male] referees who officiate at their matches rarely want to do so again. … The language can be quite startling.”

Some controversies involve words. At a Mississippi high school, parents of the players on the football team were upset because they said the coach had called the players “chicken****,” so they held a meeting in an attempt to get the coach fired. Country comedian Jerry Clower’s wife, Homerline, stood up at the meeting and said, “I was trying to think of what word would describe the way they played the other night, and that’s the word.”

On a very dark, very rainy night, actress Coral Browne and a man were on opposite sides of a street signaling for a taxi. A taxi stopped, both dashed toward it, and Ms. Browne got it in first. The taxi driver told the man, “Sorry, but I saw the lady first.” The man hadn’t even seen Ms. Browne in the dark, so he looked around and said, “What lady?” From inside the taxi, Ms. Browne replied, “This f***ing lady!”

Lesbian author Valerie Taylor was on Studs Terkel’s radio program one day and she said the word “screw.” One of the radio personnel said, “We’ll have to blip out ‘screw.’” Ms. Taylor responded, “I thought I was being nice. What I really meant was ‘f***.’” Afterwards, Studs sometimes asked Ms. Taylor as a private joke, “When are you gonna come on my show and say ‘f***’?”

Umpire Eric Gregg was bilingual, and sometimes he tried to help Spanish-speaking baseball players with their English. Once, catcher Tony Peña asked him, “Where the hell was that pitch at?” Mr. Gregg replied, “Tony, you can’t end a sentence with a preposition. You can’t end a sentence with ‘at.’” Mr. Peña was a quick learner. He said, “OK, where the hell was that pitch at, a**hole?”

Sir Ralph Richardson acted in the play No Man’s Land by Harold Pinter. The play contained some swear words, and Mr. Pinter said that he would not change the language, even for television. Sir Ralph, however, wondered if that was wise, saying, “What about the American sales? Is it worth losing all that lovely money for the sake of saying f***?”

Barbara Bush could speak her mind. Once, a heckler asked her husband, President Bush, a question about abortion. Ms. Bush whispered to a friend, “Now there’s a b.s. question.” Then, after listening to her husband stumble around for a while trying to answer the question (or possibly to avoid answering the question), Ms. Bush whispered, “And there’s a b.s. answer.”

Irish playwright Brendan Behan was sitting in a London pub and speaking Gaelic with a lot of his friends when the porter said to him, “Speak English and stop making a show of yourself.” Mr. Behan said later, “You can judge for yourself the reply he got from me in the mellifluous tongue of Shakespeare, Milton, and Johnson.”

Joel Perry went through puberty at the same time his mother was going through menopause, which meant that they had some interesting arguments. Once, he got his mother so angry that she shouted at him, “You son of a bitch!” He laughed and pointed at her, and then she started laughing, too.

As a young recruit for the British armed forces during World War II, Spike Milligan was occasionally assigned to guard duty before going overseas to fight. However, he was not an intimidating guard. He used to say, “Halt! Who goes there?” But the other soldiers answered him by saying, “P*ss off.”

In one game, the Seattle Supersonics were trailing Vancouver by nine points at halftime. Later, Supersonic player Vin Baker was asked what coach George Karl had told the team in his halftime talk. Mr. Baker replied, “I’m a minister’s son. I don’t repeat those kinds of things.”

What counts as profanity changes over time. In the days of vaudeville, this sign used to be posted in Keith Circuit vaudeville houses: “Don’t say slob or son of a gun or Holy gee on stage unless you want to be cancelled peremptorily.”

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