tom, harry, or dick


Is it just my dirty mind, or was Ann Miller deliberately directed to pronounce "harry" as "hairy". And what about that "any dick" conclusion? How did the song get by the censors at the time?

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Another Cole Porter specialty.

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My god, I thought I was the only one! I thought I seriously had a dirty mind. I kept on reminding myself that it was the 50's and the code wouldn't allow it. I guess I'm not crazy!

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It was a game writers and actors played seeing what they could get past Will Hays.
I think it was William Powell who said in one film "I'm not a pheasant plucker either." A nice spoonerism.

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It is kind of amazing that this song got by the production code of the 50's.

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Well folks, they also had to "cool down" the lyrics of "Too Darn Hot" (which was turned into a specialty number for Ann Miller) - the "heat" in the song had less to do with the weather than with the lust factor.

"I don't use a pen: I write with a goose quill dipped in venom!"---W. Lydecker

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"Well folks, they also had to "cool down" the lyrics of "Too Darn Hot" (which was turned into a specialty number for Ann Miller) - the "heat" in the song had less to do with the weather than with the lust factor. "



I think you miss the point. The main change to the lyric was to change "according to the Kinsey report" to "according to the latest reports". This was not done to tone it down, but was done because no one outside America at the time would have known who Kinsey was.

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Well, but then why do they actually sing "So steht es schon im Kinsey-Report..." in the dubbed German version of the movie?

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Und longsom werma, wiama san...

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"Well, but then why do they actually sing "So steht es schon im Kinsey-Report..." in the dubbed German version of the movie?"


I have no clue.

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I don't understand their toning down the Too Darn Hot number because of the Kinsey Report phrase- four years earlier Betty Garrett delivers a joke about it in On the Town.



"Men like him should be shot down like dogs! Shot down like dogs! Shot down like dogs!"

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You have to understand the complexities of movie censorship in the 1950s. Betty Garret, talented as she might be, was rather sexless and "safe." Ann Miller waving her hips in skin-tight spangles was way more dangerous. There are other changes in the lyrics from the Broadway production. Howard Keel's "Where Is the Life That Late I Led?" lyrics are considerably "cleaned up." Even the dialogue was fraught with sexual perils for 1953 Hollywood. A joke about "Fairies" is quickly cut away from as if in hopes no one woud notice it. I think the reasons Ann Miller in "Tom, Dick, and Harry" and Kathryn Grayson in "I Hate Men" get away with some pretty "blue" jokes for 1953 are (1) the men who put movies together just couldn't believe they were actually hearing women say such things, and (2) the jokes that were left in "Brush up Your shakespeare" were so "advanced" for Hollywood, they made the women's words seem mild in comparison.

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Maybe Ann couldn't remember the name and ad libbed "latest" and they left it in.

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I'll always remember working in the backstage crew of a community theater production of Kiss Me Kate. Two young men were handling the ropes. Whenever the song Tom, Harry, or Dick came to the line "a Dick, a Dick", repeated several times, they would have a good laugh.

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I don't think it means you have a dirty mind...it was pretty clear. Then again, that could just be me covering for my own...I was watching it with my two older sisters and whenever she started saying "I'll take a dick, a dick, a dick..." my jaw dropped and I nearly didn't believe my ears. There was a really long silence between my sisters and I, and then we just started laughing.

Personally, I think I have too much bloom. Maybe that's the trouble with me.

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That song is rife with innuendo. Love it. And the 4 of them are so talented it makes for one of my favourite numbers from the movie.

"Do you really think *I* could play the shrew?"
"You'd make a perfect shrew!"



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It is amazing how the censors let the song remain as filmed --

in addition to the repetition of " a Dick - a Dick .." line - earlier she sings, " Im a maid who would marry and will take with no qualm -- any Tom, Dick or Harry , any Harry Dick or Tom" --- talk about double ententes!!!

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Thank God, I couldn't stop laughing because it was the last thing I expected to hear (with the American 50's puritan mentality)... I thought my mind was really screwed up... I'm glad that I'm not the only one... Or perhaps all of our heads are screwed up? :-)

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The myth of the "American 50's puritan mentality" is a silly exaggeration to anybody who was actually alive and aware at that time.

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Cole Porter was the master of the double entendre. If you ever come across the lyrics to "But In The Morning, No" from "DuBarry Was A Lady", that's a very good example. I've wondered too how this got past the Breen Office, it's seems so obvious. But we're all looking at it from a 21st century point of view. I don't think it's really very probable, but it's just possible that those in the Breen Office didn't know the alternate meaning for the word "Dick". That seems a bit far-fetched, I admit, but this was 1953, and there were a lot of people at the time not "up" on that kind of slang.

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