I’ll Butter Your Necktie!

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name is Clay. I’m calling from Dallas, Texas.

Hello, Clay. You sound like you’re standing next to me.

Wow, yeah, amazing line quality.

Thank you.

What’s going on?

A little back story. I am a theater teacher at a private high school or private school here in Dallas for kids with learning differences.

We were reading a script of the play Harvey, and kind of to get him in the mood for that lesson, we watched the old 1950 movie with Jimmy Stewart and ran across an interesting line from the movie.

It wasn’t in the script.

At one point in the movie, there’s a tussle in a bar. Bartender helps break it up, and he says, one more word out of you, Weisenheimer, and I’ll butter your necktie.

I went, all right, butter your necktie.

I got really into finding out where that came from, and I looked on the Internet some and just couldn’t find anything other than references to the movie.

And so I was curious as to, you know, where it came from.

Did the screenwriter, you know, just make it up or does it have any kind of regional origins or something like that?

Interesting. And did it sound threatening or not?

Yeah. Did you feel like he was going to kill the guy?

It was comically threatening.

Comically threatening.

Did you feel like he was going to kill the guy or just hurt him?

I’m thinking rough him up.

Okay. Okay. This is important.

I think. And now the line is in the movie, but is it in the play?

No, it’s not in the play.

It’s not in the play.

Are you sure?

I’m pretty sure because they never go to a bar.

Okay. I think you’re right. I think we’ve got a great screenwriter here who just knows language and loves to spin a phrase.

So whoever it was, congratulations, because that’s a great line.

And if you Google it, it turns out it’s on like a million best insults ever or best threats ever lists.

If it didn’t look like he was going to kill him, I think he may have actually meant that he was going to take a butter knife and butter the guy’s necktie and shove it down his throat.

And that’s his threat.

That’s what he’s saying by butter your necktie, that he would actually do it and just shove the thing right down with his fist.

You just kind of reminded me of just a flash in my brain of either an old Three Stooges or an old cartoon I remember seeing as a kid where that actually was depicted.

Oh, really?

I think you’re right.

Was it the necktie ended up in the sandwich and they ate the sandwich?

Oh, I think I saw that one.

Oh, hey.

Three people with a vague memory of something that may or may not have happened.

That’s our show.

That’s our show.

Well, I wasn’t even thinking of that.

I mean, I haven’t seen the movie, but it sounds like this sort of comically pathetic threat.

You know, I’m going to butter your necktie.

Like, so what?

How threatening is that?

You know, that’s the most milk toasty threat I’ve ever heard.

I’m going to blunt every pencil in the house.

Ha!

Take that.

Exactly.

That’s what I’m thinking.

So I guess the point is that we don’t see it much of anyplace else besides that movie or references to that movie.

And it has been borrowed by novelists, usually of no great reputation, but it has been borrowed by novelists in a variety of different contexts.

If you go to Google Books, you’ll find it.

But most of them are like last 10 or 15 years or so.

Well, Clay, good luck with the production.

Oh, thank you so much.

And good luck with the kids.

And I want to say you’ve got a lot of fans here.

Yay!

Oh, yay!

But you’re doing the real work, buddy.

You’re doing the hard work there.

It sounds like you’re working with kids who need a lot of extra help, and you may just be the guy to do it.

Best of luck to you.

Take care.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

I’ve said it before.

I’ll say it again.

If you’re teaching kids, that’s hard work.

You’re doing work that I don’t know that I’d be capable of doing.

I stand in front of a microphone and spout off my mouth for an hour, but that guy in the classroom, he’s doing it.

Teachers are our heroes.

Teachers, librarians, and leaders.

We know we have a lot of teachers and librarians listening to the show.

There’s something that’s come up in your work, maybe a question your students had or a customer wanted to know something, give us a call. Tell us about it, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.