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I recognise that line!
Oct. 25th, 2020 11:39 amThe Guardian's obituary of Rhonda Fleming is sufficiently taken with a line from one of her films to use it as a pull quote in the print edition: "When told to expect an extra guest for dinner, she replies: 'OK, I’ll put more water in the soup.'" (from Cry Danger, scripted - according to IMDB - by William Bowers).
This caught my attention not because it's a particularly snappy line, but because it's such a familiar one. I grew up with the cry "Visitors! Put another pint of water in the stew!" and I think of it as one of those family jokes which has been used so often that it has lost whatever humour it once had, and become just a thing you say. Does it originate with Cry Danger? One or other of my parents could have seen it, but equally, it's a ;ine they could have come up with independently. We shall never know, but I greeted it as an old friend, nevertheless.
It's a fine illustration of the way names do in and out of fashion, that Rhonda Fleming should be the name chosen by - or for - a woman born Marilyn Louis, which now strikes me as a much more glamourous name.
This caught my attention not because it's a particularly snappy line, but because it's such a familiar one. I grew up with the cry "Visitors! Put another pint of water in the stew!" and I think of it as one of those family jokes which has been used so often that it has lost whatever humour it once had, and become just a thing you say. Does it originate with Cry Danger? One or other of my parents could have seen it, but equally, it's a ;ine they could have come up with independently. We shall never know, but I greeted it as an old friend, nevertheless.
It's a fine illustration of the way names do in and out of fashion, that Rhonda Fleming should be the name chosen by - or for - a woman born Marilyn Louis, which now strikes me as a much more glamourous name.
