Language?,,

It was about the railroad co. not letting Frank and Jesse 'bollocks things up'.

Check out the word "bollix" in the Merriam Webster online dictionary.

My guess is we Americans took the British word and changed it into our own new word. I've heard it in a lot of old Hollywood movies...

I live in the Missouri Ozarks, near where these events took place, and I was surprised by the use of the word. In 50 years I have never heard anyone from Missouri use that word. Of course the movie and the time in which it was based are different eras from mine. Still, not something you hear in these parts.

Nobody gets to be a cowboy forever.

I believe I recall hearing Henry Fonda's mother here, Jane Darwell, use the term "all bollixed-up" in "The Grapes of Wrath" (1940), in which she again played Fonda's mother.

I've often wondered if it was an instance of a writer / filmmaker using unfamiliar (to Americans at the time) swearing to get around the production codes.

Some films with Spanish themes / stories have the characters constantly blaspheming (Madre de Dios). It's all over the place in Zorro, for example. You'd never have the Catholic run code office allowing them to say 'Mother of God' in the same context in English.

It would effectively be what Rebecca Sinclair / Joss Whedon did in Buffy, decades later when they had Spike say 'Sodding, blimey, shagging, knickers, bollocks' (in the episode Tabula Rasa). Knickers aside, if I'd said any of those as a kid I'd have had a clip round the ear - but swearing in English (as in British English) got past the US TV censors (who are far more draconian than British ones, ironically).


I quite like watching films from the late 30s and 40s, looking out for places where the filmmakers might have been snubbing their noses at the censors.