MovieChat Forums > Mother Riley Meets the Vampire Discussion > Did that mean the same thing then...?

Did that mean the same thing then...?

posted 10 years ago by bok602
4 replies | jump to latest

Just after Mother Riley sings her song during the opening scene, the rent collector calls her a "silly old *beep*

This seems a rather scandalous thing to call anyone even today, but I can't help but wonder if the script-writers were perhaps making an exceptionally clever play on the original meaning of the term; bundle of sticks.

In context, this seems plausible, because the rent collector has already made reference to the three of them as "a scraggy lot of boiling fowls," so it doesn't seem far off that he should liken the emaciated-looking Mother Riley to a bundle of twigs.

Of course the double-entendre to a modern audience is unmistakeable; but I'm wondering if the term *beep* meant the same thing to an audience of the 1950's.

"If you don't know the answer -change the question."

[–] mark.waltz 9 years ago

I just had to re-wind on the copy of the DVD I just purchased to confirm I heard the same thing. I indicated your reference to "bundle of sticks" in my review or cigarette (the same word without the "got" at the end). Sort of like the use of the word gay in "Bringing Up Baby" which has been said didn't exist in that meaning back in the late 1930's.

"Great theater makes you smile. Outstanding theater may make you weep."

[–] bok602 9 years ago

I don't know when the shift in meaning took place, but I can say that it was firmly established at least by 1948, when vaudeville/nightclub chanteuse Ruth Wallis had a hit with the song 'Queer Things,' which uses the term gay in the present sense:

"Oh No -Say it cannot be
Queer things are happening to me

He's never been to Gay Paris
But he's as gay as he can be
His friends are sweet, They're the queerest Band
They're turning my home into a fairy land..."

She also had another some of the same ilk titled "Gay Young Lad."

"If you don't know the answer -change the question."

[–] Abe_Raman 8 years ago

*beep* has never meant homosexual in the UK. Used as an insult as in this film it means 'horrible old woman' - witchlike, perhaps, since witches supposedly get burned.

In the UK today *beep* are delicious liver-based meatballs, much prized in the Midlands and Wales. Good butchers make their own, and sell them. Going back a few years, the primary meaning of *beep* would have been a bundle/ball of coal combined with a less combustible material, for economical burning on the home fire.

And of course, we call cigarettes 'fags' - here again we can see the link to burning.

That 'homosexual' has come to be the primary meaning of *beep* in the USA is truly shocking, when you consider the origins. *beep* ultimately means 'thing for burning' - whether that's a coal pellet or a bundle of sticks. So gay people must have been truly hated back in the day when the usage developed.

[–] Abe_Raman 8 years ago

And IMDB even beeps it out. What a mess.