Deborah in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, remembers a phrase from her grandfather: Desperate Ambrose. He’s so desperate he would steal a hot stove. The first part is a reference to Desperate Ambrose, a character in the comic strip “S’Matter Pop?,” by cartoonist Charles Payne, which ran from about 1910 to 1940. The Lambiek Comiclopedia is a good resource for information about comic strips. The description of someone who would steal a hot stove goes back to the 1860s, and emphasizes the idea of someone being a thieving rascal. Playwright Wilson Mizner is credited with elaborating on that phrase, describing someone so desperate that they would steal a hot stove and come back for the smoke. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Desperate Ambrose”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, this is Debra from Lawrenceburg, Indiana.
Hey, Debra, welcome to the show.
What’s up? How can we help?
My grandfather had a lot of funny expressions, mostly one-liners.
But my favorite one, and one that I’m finding very applicable today, is when he would call someone Desperate Ambrose, and then followed by, he’s so desperate he’d steal a hot stove.
That’s pretty desperate.
The imagery of that always tickles me.
You know, you think of somebody trying to get out of a house with a hot stove. Pretty desperate.
Yeah, that’d be tricky.
So that’s Ambrose, A-M-B-R-O-S-E, the name Ambrose.
Right, right.
So I didn’t know, you know, where that might have come from.
My grandpa was a young man during the Depression, and I wondered if that was maybe a Depression term.
Oh, yeah, that’s a good connection.
He’s got two different terms here that he’s kind of brought together.
Desperate Ambrose is one thing, and then the saying about stealing a hot stove is another.
So let’s take these separately.
There was a comic strip drawn by an artist by the name of Charles Payne, P-A-Y-N-E, ran from about 1910 to 1940, had a couple different names, but the main one was Samatterpop, basically an abbreviation of What’s the Matter Pop.
And it included a character called Desperate Ambrose.
And this was this odd little boy who was the neighbor to these other children.
The only way I can describe him for modern audiences, he was kind of like a Charlie Brown character, kind of morose in a way and introspective and thoughtful, but at the same time a little like Lucy from Peanuts as well.
In terms of always just kind of doing things to other people, you know, to kind of get what he wanted.
And Charles Schultz, the creator of the Peanuts comic strip, has actually said that this character of Desperate Ambrose was an influence on his strip.
So that’s where Desperate Ambrose comes from.
And as a matter of fact, by the time World War I rolled around, the character was popular enough that you can find mentions of people being compared to Desperate Ambrose in military newsletters and newspapers columns and different places.
So it quickly became like people were known as a Desperate Ambrose or it was a nickname in college and high school yearbooks.
That is so interesting. Charles Payne, did you say?
Yeah, Charles Payne.
There’s a real nice entry about him.
And you can find this online.
It’s the Lambiek, L-A-M-B-I-E-K, Comicalopedia online.
You can just find more information about him.
L-A-M-B-I-E-K, Comicalopedia, Lambiek Comicalopedia.
And then the other one is being somebody who would steal a hot stove.
Well, this old expression goes back to the 1860s.
And it’s about somebody just being such a thieving rascal that even if a stove were red hot, think about the old stove, not the modern ones.
Think about the ones that are all metal.
And so they’re so full of heat and fire that the thing is glowing red that they’d steal it.
That’s how much of a low down dirty dog that they were.
That’s what we’re talking about.
There was actually a Chicago politician in the early 20th century who was called Hot Stove Jimmy Quinn because he was so crooked.
Oh, is that right?
Yeah.
Oh, that’s great.
I love it.
And there’s an even longer version of that phrase that goes, so desperate he would steal a hot stove and come back for the smoke.
Yeah, that was usually credited to the playwright Wilson Misner, who had a lot of funny one-liners.
And come back for the smoke.
Yeah.
Oh, I’m going to add that now when I say it.
That’s perfect.
Yeah, that’s a good one, right?
That’s just about the thievinest person you ever wanted to meet, right?
Oh, that’s funny.
Isn’t that fun?
Yeah, it is fun. It’s lovely to remember those old sayings from the grandparents and just fondly remember their cleverness and the way they can take something and turn a phrase and make you giggle. I just love it.
I still think about him in giggle when I think of that one. You know, when my husband said it the other day.
Treasure that.
Oh, that’s right.
Something to hang on to.
It’s a treasure.
Those linguistic heirlooms, Debra.
Debra, thanks for calling.
Love your show. Thank you so much.
Be well. Take care.
Thanks for calling, Debra. Bye-bye.
