Mr. Osborne
(played by Robert Benchley) (to Ginger Rogers, dripping wet from a
rainstorm): “Why don't you get out of that wet coat and into a dry
martini?”— The Major and the Minor
(1942), screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, directed by Billy
Wilder
For many years, I had been under the impression that
this famous witticism from humorist Robert Benchley had originated from
an incident when he was thrown into a pool fully dressed, only to emerge, with
admirable aplomb, with this uproarious response.
That would have been a spectacular example of having
presence of mind, particularly from the famously inebriated Benchley, but who
knows? Maybe he could have done it.
Only now, all this time, I may have been wrong.
At one point, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations misattributed the line to Alexander Woolcott, Benchley’s fellow Algonquin
Table wit. But over the years popular opinion swung toward Benchley, who in the
1930s largely turned away from the extended wry essays that had gained his
reputation to more remunerative appearances in Hollywood shorts or (as here, in
Wilder’s first directorial effort) featured roles in major films.
When I caught The Major and the Minor again,
after too many years to count, on Turner Classic Movies, I thought that Wilder
and collaborator Charles Brackett had fed Benchley’s words to him, knowing that
those familiar with the humorist would guffaw when they encountered the line
again in a different context.
“We gave the joke to Robert Benchley . . . under the
impression that he had originated it. When it came to the shooting, he modestly
disclaimed credit for this now classic line, informing me that it had actually,
indubitably and in fact been said by his friend [actor] Charles Butterworth.”
There’s more to the story than that. Maybe…
Butterworth did indeed say a slight variation
on the line, onscreen—like Benchley—while playing a kind of butler, to Charles
Winninger, his employer, in a comparatively little-remembered 1937 comedy
called Every Day’s a Holiday. And it likely would have been even less
remembered had its screenwriter not been Mae West.
The movie’s failure—and its subsequent lack of TV
viewings over the years—would account for why most film aficionados would
recall Benchley rather than Butterworth saying the line. But did West come
up with it on her own?
The jury’s still out. Ralph Keyes, for instance,
responding to that possibility raised by Barnaby Conrad, told the author of The
Martini: An Illustrated History of an American Classic that the saucy female
star was “a notorious credit hog who hated to share billing with anyone, no
matter how many of her lines they may have written.”
There you have it, for now. But whenever you hear
that line, just remember: what remains lost in the mists of memory remains
clear and bright on celluloid, where it exists to cheer future comedy fans just
as much as those who needed to hear the merry line so badly in wartime America.
Cuthbert
J. Twillie [played
by W.C. Fields]: “Tell me, prairie flower, can you give
me the inside info on yon damsel with the hothouse cognomen?”
Cuthbert
J. Twillie [played
by W.C. Fields]: “May I present my card?”
Lady Lou
(played by Mae West): “Listen, when
women go wrong, men go right after them.”-- She Done Him Wrong
(1933), directed by Lowell Sherman, screenplay by Harvey Thew and John Bright
based on a story by Mae West
Serge (played by Gilbert Roland), a male
admirer making the acquaintance of a New York singer-nightclub owner: "I
am delighted. I have heard so much about you."
