Movie Quote of the Day (‘Young Frankenstein,’ On the Correct Pronunciation of Names)

Igor [played by Marty Feldman, pictured]: “Dr. Frankenstein...”

Dr. Frederick Frankenstein [played by Gene Wilder] [correcting him]: " ‘Fronkensteen.’"

Igor: “You're putting me on.”

Frederick: “No, it's pronounced ‘Fronkensteen.’"

Igor: “Do you also say ‘Froaderick’"?

Frederick: “No... ‘Frederick.’"

Igor: "Well, why isn't it ‘Froaderick Fronkensteen’?”

Frederick: “It isn't; it's ‘Frederick Fronkensteen.’"

Igor: “I see.”

Frederick: “You must be Igor.”

[He pronounces it ee-gor]

Igor: “No, it's pronounced ‘eye-gor.’"

Frederick: “But they told me it was ‘ee-gor.’"

Igor: “Well, they were wrong then, weren't they?”— Young Frankenstein (1974), screenplay by Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks, based very, very loosely on the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, directed by Mel Brooks

Fifty years ago this week, Young Frankenstein was released in the U.S. Following on the heels of Blazing Saddles, it solidified Mel Brooks’ mid-Seventies status as Hollywood’s parody master par excellence.

TV Quote of the Day (‘The Carol Burnett Show,’ In Which a Certain Classic Movie Is Sent Up)

“I saw it in the window and I just couldn't resist it!" —“Starlet O'Hara” (played by Carol Burnett), wearing a “dress” she created from pulling down a drape, in “Went With the Wind” (a Gone With the Wind parody), in The Carol Burnett Show, Season 10, Episode 8, original air date November 13, 1976, written by Rick Hawkins and Liz Sage, directed by Dave Powers

Song Lyric of the Day (Adam Sandler’s ‘Opera Man,’ on Joe Biden’s Presidential Chances)

“Gropa gropa,

Sniffa sniffa,

Young or old-a

Make no diff-a

Joe, for this you

Won’t go far-o

To win White House

You need to

Bang porn star-o.”—Adam Sandler’s “Opera Man” skit (set to the tune of Amilcare Ponchielli's Dance of the Hours) on “Weekend Update,” Saturday Night Live, Season 44, Episode 19, May 4, 2019

Quote of the Day (Joe Queenan, Imagining Ernest Hemingway as an Intern Broker)

“Europe’s fiscal woes worry the Canadian investors. It is not fine to worry the Canadian investors, because if the Canadian investors worry about the leveraged-debt problems of Southern Europe, then the Americans will worry next, and after them the toreadors. This is not fine. It is fine to worry the toreadors a little, but it is not fine to worry them a lot. ‘Que tal?’ ask the worried picadors. ‘Que tal?’ ask the bartenders. The camerieri and the garcons and the chanteuses all worry about international sales exposure within the Dow. All of them say: ‘If the report on consumer durables is not fine today, will the report on cyclical goods and copper be fine tomorrow?’” —Joe Queenan, imagining Ernest Hemingway as a 22-year-old intern at a Toronto brokerage house, in “The Hunger Artists,” The Weekly Standard, Sept. 1, 2014

Quote of the Day (P. G. Wodehouse, Parodying T.S. Eliot)

“I am a bat that wheels through the air of Fate;

I am a worm that wriggles in a swamp of Disillusionment;

I am a despairing toad;

I have got dyspepsia.”— English humorist P. G. Wodehouse (1881–1975), “Darkling: A Threnody,” in Meet Mr. Mulliner (1928)

The image of Wodehouse that accompanies this post was taken around 1904.

Song Lyric of the Day (Elaine May, With an Improvised Tune About ‘The Brothers Karamazov’)

“There was dashing Dmitri, elusive Ivan

And Alyosha with the laughing eyes.

Then came the dawn,

The brothers were gone

I just can't forget those wonderful guys.”—Movie starlet Barbara Musk (played by Elaine May), to disc jockey Jack Ego (played by Mike Nichols), singing lyrics from her new musical adaptation of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, performed during their 1960 improv show An Evening With Mike Nichols and Elaine May, quoted in Sam Wasson, Improv Nation: How We Made a Great American Art (2017)

(Press photo of Elaine May during a stage comedy performance with improv partner Mike Nichols, December 1958.)