I recognise that line!

[shewhomust]

The 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.

Comments

[teenybuffalo]

Captain Cully uses this line to Molly Grue in _The Last Unicorn_ which is where I encountered it first. I daresay that a lot of other bookish people learned it from there. Peter Beagle might have learned it from Cry Danger, of course -- I've found that a lot of the gags in that book are pop-culture references/vintage memes.

[shewhomust]

Publication date 1968, so that's later than either of my other cases - but evidence of wider usage, certainly! Thanks.

[sovay]

Peter Beagle might have learned it from Cry Danger, of course -- I've found that a lot of the gags in that book are pop-culture references/vintage memes.

I also encountered it first in The Last Unicorn.

I still haven't identified all the butterfly's literary mashups, many of which were my first introduction, out of context, to assorted famous writers. On the other hand, "Have a taco" has become a reference joke among many of my friends and family, and I think that's funny.

[sovay]

"Visitors! Put another pint of water in the stew!"

My family adopted "and we'll have a nice cup of boiling hot water" which I later discovered, of course, was from Beyond the Fringe.

[shewhomust]

No connection, but the cup of hot water (with a dash of milk) will always mean Asterix to me!