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Goldwynisms

Posted by ESC on April 04, 2009 at 18:16

Continuing a discussion from the previous forum about "not worth the paper it was written on." I was paging through a book from the library and found a section on Goldwynisms, "utterances" of American producer Samuel Goldwyn (en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Samuel_Goldwyn):

"And one, dating from the thirties, is incongruous only because the meaning of 'verbal' had already been corrupted: A verbal agreement is not worth the paper it's printed on." On a sad note, the author said "Goldwyn pretended to laugh along with those who quoted his malapropisms, many of which were no doubt concocted by writers who resented his sway over their work. But he chafed..." Biographer A. Scott Berg said Goldwyn spent time with a therapist "to whom he blurted teary-eyed, 'I hate my mouth!'" The therapist posed the question of whether Goldwyn should be a master or a slave to Goldwynisms. So Goldwyn "pretended to embrace -- if not exactly to enbosom -- his isms." "Alphabet Juice" by Roy Blount Jr., Sarah Crichton Books, New York, 2008. Page 114-115.

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