Walk this way (humor)

"Walk this way" is a recurrent pun in a number of comedy films and television shows. It may be derived from an old vaudeville joke. It refers to the double usage of "way" in English as both a direction and a manner.

One version of this old joke goes like this: A heavy-set woman goes into a drug store and asks for talcum powder. The bowlegged clerk says, "Walk this way," and the woman answers, "If I could walk that way I wouldn't need talcum powder!"[1]

As a popular visual gag, the joke has appeared in films, perhaps first in After the Thin Man (1936), with William Powell imitating the butler, and by director Mel Brooks,[2] including The Producers, Young Frankenstein[3] and Robin Hood: Men in Tights.[4] According to Gene Wilder, who co-wrote the script of Young Frankenstein and played the title character, Brooks added the joke while shooting the scene, inspired by the old "talcum powder" routine.[5] Marty Feldman, who played the hunchback Igor in Young Frankenstein, later said:

It's a terribly old music hall joke. I did that to make the crew laugh and Mel Brooks said, "Let's shoot it" ... [Gene Wilder and I] both said, "Mel, please take that out", and he left it in. He said, "I think it's funny". Audiences laugh at it. Gene and I were both wrong. Mel was right.[6]

The Aerosmith song Walk This Way was inspired after the band went to see Young Frankenstein in 1974.[7]

References

  1. The Bridgemen's Magazine, Volumes 45-46, 1945
  2. Mazur, Eric Michael (2011). Encyclopedia of Religion and Film. ABC-CLIO. p. 92. ISBN 9780313330728.
  3. Mendelsohn, Daniel (21 June 2001). "Double Take". The New York Review of Books.
  4. Sheriff of Rottingham asks his men to "walk this way", Robin Hood: Men in tights
  5. Wilder, Gene (2005). Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art. Macmillan. p. 151. ISBN 9780312337063.
  6. Marty Feldman: Walk This Way, The Bookseller, September 13, 2011
  7. Ibrahim, Nur. "Did the Movie 'Young Frankenstein' Inspire Title of Aerosmith's 'Walk This Way'?". Snopes.com. Snopes Media Group Inc. Retrieved 8 April 2022.

Further reading

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