“I want to make a picture about the Russian secret police: the GOP.”—Hollywood producer Samuel Goldwyn (1879-1974), quoted in Peter Hay, Movie Anecdotes (1990)
I can just hear James Carville now: “See, I was right all along!”
Like the “Yogisms” named for the great Yankee catcher, it’s almost impossible at this point to determine how many of the hilarious malapropisms attributed to Samuel Goldwyn genuinely came from the man’s mouth. But Hay’s book insists that the above really was authentic.
I can just hear James Carville now: “See, I was right all along!”
Like the “Yogisms” named for the great Yankee catcher, it’s almost impossible at this point to determine how many of the hilarious malapropisms attributed to Samuel Goldwyn genuinely came from the man’s mouth. But Hay’s book insists that the above really was authentic.
Depending on when the statement was made, it's entirely possible that Goldwyn meant to refer to the "OGPU" ("Objedinönnoje Gosudarstvennoje Političeskoje Upravlenije, Joint State Political Directorate"), the Soviet secret police (which went through a bewildering variety of name changes) from 1923 to 1934 and still commonly referred to by that name at least as late as the '50s. "GOP" would still be wrong, of course, but more easily confusable with "OGPU" than it would be with "KGB."
ReplyDelete