Believe it or not, I read the following fairly obscure and erudite joke in a science fiction story by Murray Leinster (nee William Fitzgerald Jenkins), "Sam, This is You," first published in the May, 1955, edition of Galaxy:
A telephone lineman's girlfriend, urging him to aspire to better things, asks him: "Do you want to spend your life with your arms wrapped around a pole?" And he replies, "Well, it was good enough for George Sand."
You don't get it? Well, see, the composer Frédéric Chopin was Polish and George Sand, who was a girl not a boy, was a 19th century French novelist with whom he had an intense affair. The artist Eugène Delacroix even painted a portrait of them together. Neither Leinster nor his editor, H.L. Gold, thought the joke would fly above the heads of the magazine's audience, primarily young men, including lots of high school and even junior high school students. Alas, could the same be said today?
The Great Guildersleeve, a family situation comedy spun off from Fibber McGee and Molly, was immediately popular when it premiered in 1941. It was sponsored by Kraft Foods, which used the show to promote Parkay margarine and its new product, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese -- "cooks in seven minutes!" The adventures of buffoonish Uncle Guildy and his starry-eyed niece Margery and school-hating nephew Leroy centered around life in the small town of Summerfield. In one episode, broadcast in 1942, Leroy is complaining because he has to memorize a chunk of Longfellow's narrative poem Hiawatha and recite it in front of the class. Guildersleeve chides him, reminding him that the other students in his class also have to memorize parts of the poem and recite it so that the whole poem will be recited by the class. Then he says that he had to memorize the poem when he was in school and can still remember it. He begins intoning "This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, bearded with moss, and in garments green...."
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| Guildy, Margery and Leroy. |
Margery interrupts him and sarcastically says, "That's Evangeline!" as the live audience laughs loudly. The audience got the joke and when the script was written everyone involved with the show knew the radio audience would get the joke, too, because everybody in those days had to read those poems in school and memorize parts of them. They had to learn other poems as well. It was part of being socialized as an American, so everyone could recite The Village Blacksmith, The Snow Storm and The Old Oaken Bucket, to name just a few.
But today? What kid is required to memorize any poem, let alone one as demanding as Evangeline or Hiawatha? What kid has even heard of them? What teacher, for that matter.
In a 1943 broadcast of the Jack Benny Show, a comedy-variety program sponsored by Post Grape Nuts Flakes cereal, one of the commercials for the cereal was made up of the names of four operas: Faust, Aida, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. The audience laughed at the cleverness of the bit. Again, neither the writer, sponsor or anyone else associated with the show thought such a commercial would fly over the heads of the audience because everybody knew those operas, familiar old standards that lots of people could pick out a tune from on the piano or sing.
But today? How many people have even heard of these operas -- or any opera -- and would "get" the commercial? It would make no sense to them. Certainly no ad agency would approve of such a commercial.
I could drag out a bunch more similar examples -- Leroy's grade school teacher referring to Guildersleeve and Judge Hooker's friendship as like that between Damon and Pythias; the 1949 Bugs Bunny cartoon "Long-haired Hare" in which Bugs' conductor character is reverently called Leopold and the audience knew and appreciated that the reference is to Leopold Stokowski -- but I think the point is made: People were smarter, better educated and more sophisticated in their tastes generations ago than they are today.
Why is that? What have we done to ourselves?
Here are two stanzas from Longfellow's The Village Blacksmith. Isn't this a poem every child would be better off learning by heart so that it could be recalled easily to mind throughout life?
Toiling,--rejoicing,--sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begun,
Each evening sees it close.
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose.
Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.
The Jack Benny program with the "opera" ad. It begins at 13:06 into the show.
