776 Stupidest Things Ever Said (10 page)

The directors’ fees have been hardly earned.

I’d find the fellow who lost it, and if he was poor, I’d return it.

I’ll fight him for nothing if the price is right.

That’s what [golf] really needs—some striking female to take over and become the next superstar. It would have been Nancy Lopez, but Nancy turned to motherhood and so has her body.

Bite the wax tadpole.

He [Steve McQueen] must have made that before he died.

Novelty is always welcome, but talking pictures are just a fad.

Among the interrelated matters of a time and place, Muzak is a thing that fits in.

Muzak promotes the sharing of meaning because it massifles symbolism in which not few, but all, can participate.

[The U. S. Navy urgently] needs modern musicians.

Samuel Goldwyn probably would have preferred to be remembered only as one of the founders of the Hollywood film industry. But Goldwyn’s mangled syntax has entered our language and culture, and along with
The Best Years of Our Lives
, for which he won an Oscar, Sam Goldwyn is remembered for such convolutions as his immortal:

Any man who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.

Goldwyn was born in Poland but came to the United States early in his life, in time to help found the Hollywood film industry. Along with Jesse Lasky and Cecil B. De Mille, he organized the Jesse Lasky film company in 1916. Later he struck off on his own with the Goldwyn Production Company,
which was then merged with Louis B. Mayer’s company to form Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, probably the most powerful Hollywood studio. Describing his own career, Goldwyn supposedly said:

I was always an independent, even when I had partners.

And so he went on to produce independently such classics as
Wuthering Heights
and
Guys and Dolls
.

Along the way, he became famous for his “Goldwynisms,” which delighted the Hollywood community and, as with anything else in Hollywood that becomes successful, spawned hundreds of imitations. The question with a Goldwynism, then, is did he actually say it or was it coined by some Hollywood flack or gossip columnist? Goldwyn himself toward the end of his life ended up denying he ever said many of his best—but by this time he was sick and tired of them.

Some are clearly false. “I can answer you in two words—im possible” is an old joke and was (probably) not said by Goldwyn at all. On the other hand, the famous “Gentlemen, include me out,” is most likely bona fide, and not apocryphal as long believed. But as with Yogi Berra and Sir Boyle Roche, it really doesn’t matter whether he said it or not. Like Boyle Roche and Yogi Berra, Goldwyn deserves much credit for exploring new linguistic territory. As he (supposedly) said:

I’ve gone where the hand of man has never set foot.

• Give me a smart idiot over a stupid genius any day.
  

• Why call him Joe? Every Tom, Dick, and Harry is called Joe.
  

• I want you to cohabit with me.
  

  (asking a female writer to collaborate on a story with him)
  

• You’ve got to take the bull by the teeth.
  

• I read part of it all the way through.
  

• I love the ground I walk on.
  

• I want to make a picture about the Russian secret police: the GOP.
  

• You write with great warmth and charmth.
  

  (apocryphal)
  

• A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
  

• I ran into George Kaufman last night. He was at my house for dinner.
  

• I can’t make it, but I hope you’ll give me a raincoat.
  

  (when asked to dinner)
  

• I’m going out for some tea and trumpets.
  

• When asked by his secretary if she could destroy some old files:
  

  Go ahead. But make copies of them first.
  

• When told a director was “too caustic”:
  

  To hell with cost, pay him what he wants.
  

Well, it seems pretty ridiculous to me that people can be so emotional about how you kill people. What’s so bad about nape anyway?

It should have a big exciting finish—like an earthquake, a catechism of nature.

I happen to be one of those people who thinks the aesthetics of a place are improved by putting a nice transmission line through it.

The wild animals love to traverse over packed-down snowmobile tracks, for these machines do just that, pack the snow and do no harm to the growth underneath. Snowmobiles actually make it possible for the animals to move through their habitat just a bit easier.

It’s unfair that it remain empty and unspoiled.

I have a great feeling for the soil. My brother is the leading conservational-ist in the world, and I just love sitting on my bulldozer and experiencing nature.

Thorough mastication avoids needless waste and payment of unnecessary expenses to foreign countries.

There are guys that can talk like Nixon and sound like him, and I don’t even believe the tapes are authentic.

Look, I want to give the high five symbol to high tech…. The truth is, it reminds a lot of people of the way I pitch horseshoes. Would you believe some of the people? Would you believe our dog?

The writer’s verbal medium obtains a function that constitutes the work’s literariness, and in this event a “world-semantic component” serves to establish coherence in the correspondence between text-structure and world structure. In poetic discourse, the utterance is a textual resultant between
the “self” existing in society and its new articulation in the represented world.

It would be a good thing to take your bankbook to the fallout shelter with you.

During state of national emergency resulting from enemy attack, the essential functions of the Service will be as follows: (1) assessing, collecting, and recording taxes….

Actual meltdown takes three to five days, and that’s certainly enough time to evacuate Long Island.

Nuclear power is the cleanest, the most efficient, and the most economical energy source, with no environmental problems.

The defense board standard for immediate postattack food consumption calls for an average daily caloric intake of 2,200 calories…. A daily intake of 2,200 calories would probably be adequate for a month or more, or perhaps even beneficial in view of the estimate that 20 per cent of all adults and 20 per cent of all children are obese.

Question:

President Reagan:

Some programs have been theatrical masterpieces, but all we’re seeing is the negative side of nuclear war.

In fact, living standards within the first year following either attack (UNCLX or CIVLOG) could compare favorably with those enjoyed in this country in the late 1950s.

The net effect of the attack indicates a reduction in per capita value-added of approximately $660.

It is also quite likely that the general public finds the thought of nuclear attack so horrible that the additional horror of a postattack policy for wealth distribution would be considered of marginal importance.

This kind of weapon can’t help but have an effect on the population as a whole.

Atomic energy might be as good as our present-day explosives, but it is unlikely to produce anything very much more dangerous.

The odds that we won’t win a game this season are 999 out of a hundred.

Every person now living in the United States has one chance out of fourteen of dying of tuberculosis and one chance in fifty of becoming affected with this disease.

The caribou love it. They rub against it and they have babies. There are more caribou in Alaska than you can shake a stick at.

It isn’t as if you were looking at the ocean through a little frame and now somebody put something in the way.

I’m one of those who sort of vacillates as we can afford to vacillate. My bend toward conservatism is purely and simply based on … economic circumstances…. It may be that, by the next campaign, circumstances would be somewhat better and it may be that I would be somewhat more liberal.

He had the love and respect of everyone who worked for or with him. He knew what he wanted and how to get it. He possessed great charm and wit and was, it is said, the first man to bring real humor and fun to the White House since Kennedy.

It will be noticed that some omissions will also appear in this edition.