In the scene in which W.C. Fields and Alison Skipworth go after road hogs they keep saying something I can't quite discern. It sounds like "Veevo".
Anyone know?
When there are two, one betrays-Jean-Pierre Melville
They clearly said "Beaver!"
Which I can't understand at all, since there are only two usages of that term that I know of which means "attention!" or "there's one now!", and neither are associated with cars.
Hap--pppppppppppppppy New Year!
A third old-fashioned meaning of "beaver" is a man with a beard. I learned this from a 1942 movie, "Talk of the Town".
If I had choice of weapons with you, sir, I'd choose grammar.
Oh, the beard thing was one of the ones I meant. I've seen that movie too. (Ronald Colman junkie that I am)
Hap--pppppppppppppppy New Year!
There's an MGM film entitled TODAY WE LIVE, released in April 1933 (probably shot within a few weeks of IF I HAD A MILLION), that features this expression in a similar context. A couple of British sailors on a torpedo boat have some kind of game going where they look for a certain kind of ship, and the first one who sights it yells "Beaver!" I never quite understood the game in the film, but perhaps "Beaver!" was just a slangy term, perhaps developed during World War One, meaning "I see it!" or "Got it!" or something like that. I can't find any internet references other to the standard definitions and the sexual slang. TODAY WE LIVE shows up on TCM from time to time -- not a bad war film for its era.
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