Slip Mahoney: The Recap.

Well, folks, that wraps another Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day. The second. In a row! So it's all very exciting. Or, as Slip might say, it's been absolutely dogmatic and innocuous.

Here are some inspiring and completely unconfirmed anecdotes connected with this year's event, reported to us at TLSMD HQ:

• An angry police captain in Houston was overheard telling a sergeant, "I oughta moidelize ya, ya bum."
• Nationwide, bow tie sales were up 38% on the day.
• A female pediatrician in Oshkosh told the mother of one of her patients, "She just needs ta get some good eats, some fresh air, and some ostracize."
• Seven palookas in Cleveland went to Walmart to buy hats so they could hit one another with them.
• A Baptist minister in Mobile told some congregants, "God sent his only kid to redeem our exegetical souls, and dat ain't hay, bruddah."
• An elderly woman in Saskatchewan, faced with a picky-eating grandson, promised that, "If yeh don't eat dat tuna sanwich I'm gonna feed ya a knuckle sanwich!"

So we're positively immobilized with glee at da toinout.

Why do we honor the great Slip Mahoney? Why do we chase these ghosts of celluloid past? I'd say, we may be ghost chasers, but we're in excellent company.

See you next year. Tomorrow, back to foods I shouldn't eat (but did), dog anecdotes, miscellaneous complaints, pedantry, and observational humor!

Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day: One last primer.

All right! The day is here! We're all going to honor the late Leo Gorcey and the Bowery Boys today by talking like Slip Mahoney, right?

If you need one more dose of encouragement, here is the mastah at woik:

And a couple of trailers:

And a dramatic toin:

You get the idear.

As I mentioned yesterday, the proper Slip attire helps sell the imitation. And Fred is always willing to provide a good example.

All right, you mugs! Get dressed up, get your accents and malapropisms in order, and go get 'em!

Hours away from Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day!

June 2 is the day that the great Leo Gorcey died in 1969, and we honor him tomorrow with the second annual Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day. So when you're out and about on Tuesday, make sure to use your broad Noo Yawk accent, act tough and mean when you're angry (and panicked when you're scared), and work in those malapropisms as often as you can.

The character Slip Mahoney from the Bowery Boys films was known for his colorful misuse of large words, and as I acknowledged last year, it can be hard to zing one out without proper preparation. Gorcey had screenwriters, and Mrs. Malaprop from The Rivals had Richard Brinsley Sheridan, but you'll have to make do on your own. Bear in mind that you can make near words---words that are not quite in the dictionary but A) sound like the word that is meant and B) have a comic effect.

Here's a few I've concocted to get you started, complete with accent:

• "We need ta use a block and cackle on dis job."
• "I owe some money ta de Infoirnal Revenue Soirvice."
• "I'm very intelligent. I'm known for my condensation."
• "No need to be so elephantic about it!"
• "Sure, I eat meat. I ain't no veterinarian."
• "It's like dat story, 'Da Pit an' da Pandemonium.'"
• "Of course I'm a patriot! I'm a absolute libertine!"
• "We nevah give up. We're known for our tendinitis."
• "I love your abalone hair, your porcine skin."

"Tanks to dis jack pot, we're positively effluent!"

Remember that Slip was often trying to sound smart and sophisticated, so you may want to pull the double trick of doing a froufrou accent as if your natural accent is New Yorkese. That's advanced Slip.

Will people look at you funny? Dat's the idear! As with dat pirate day in September, if you dress the part people will depreciate what you'se doin'. More on dat tomorrow.

Where in the world are the Bowery Boys?

As we get even closer to Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day on June 2, the tension mounts... the streets of New York are a-sizzle with excitement!

The Wikipedia entry on the Bowery Boys (of which Slip Mahoney was the one true king) noted that the BBs' many film plots followed those of Abbott and Costello---when Bud and Lou did a Western, the Boys did a Western; when A&C did a haunted house, the Boys did a haunted house, and so on. I enjoyed Abbott and Costello films, but hey---they made only 36 movies; the Bowery Boys made 48. How many easy comedy ideas were floating around in that era? B movies were not nor expected to be dynamos of originality.

Anyway, the Bowery Boys got around a lot in those pictures, although they always played the same characters---unlike Abbott and Costello, who played different characters (who were exactly like Bud and Lou). Sometimes it required taking storytelling liberties. For example, in Bowery Buckaroos, the characters were transported to the Old West by virtue of the story being a dream of Sach's. In a later film (Hold that Hypnotist), a hypnotist uses past-life regression hypnosis to send the Boys on an adventure in piracy. (Note that Slip was out of the series by then, so there's no crossover between Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day and International Talk Like a Pirate Day.)

Most of the Bowery Boys films were typical New York-based crime stories (although fantasy elements were featured in several of them), but the Bowery Boys often hit the road, especially in later films. If this should come up in conversation on the big day, you might mention that Slip and the gang had many adventures outside the confines of the city:

Let's Go Navy! -- the Boys enlist in the Navy to find thieves that rob a charity and spend a year at sea
Loose in London -- the Boys go to London when Sach gets an inheritance
Paris Playboys -- the Boys go to Paris to find a missing professor
Jungle Gents -- the Boys go to Africa to find diamonds
Bowery to Bagdad  -- a genie transports Slip and Sach to Baghdad
Dig That Uranium -- the Boys go to the western U.S. to find uranium
Crashing Las Vegas -- the Boys win a trip to Vegas

They go to the mountains in Spook Chasers, but by then Slip was gone, so for our purposes we're leaving it off the list. Talk to us if there's ever a Talk Like Duke Covelske Day.

The Boys wound up enlisting in the Navy, Marines, Army, and the Air Force in their adventures, which would make them unique in the armed forces history of the U.S. The Coast Guard is probably pretty sore about being left out again.

So as you can see, Slip Mahoney was not only a tough New York street kid, but he was also something of a world traveler. He could mangle words from several languages, too, which might make him describe himself as something of a polygoat.

Póg Mahoney.

The excitement mounts as we are a mere seven days from the second annual Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day!

"We've osculated by joy!"

To help buoy your enthusiasm for the king of the Bowery Boys during the seven-day countdown, here's seven things you may not know about the great Leo Gorcey, who portrayed Slip for more than a decade. Today we will take a look into the darker side of Leo, I'm afraid, but we shall want to know the whole man.

1. Gorcey's father, Bernard Gorcey, played shopkeeper Louie Dumbrowski in the Bowery Boys series, at whose sweet shop the boys frequently hung out. Bernard died in 1955 in a car accident, so Louie was not in any further films in the series. They couldn't CGI a guy into the film in those days.

2. Leo Gorcey, and consequently Slip Mahoney, did not appear in the last seven of the 48 films considered to be part of the Bowery Boys series. He got drunk and wrecked a movie set, then was incensed when the studio wouldn't give him a raise. ('Magin' dat.) He was replaced by Stanley Clements as Duke Coveleskie.

3. Gorcey's drinking was pretty horrid, especially after his father died, and ultimately killed him at the age of 51. Despite that, he managed to get married five times, which is pretty impressive. I mean, I know he was a movie star, but he was 5'6", kind of funny looking, and not always a cheerful drunk, and his movie career was pretty much washed up by 1956, when he still had two marriages to go.

4. Huntz Hall, who played Sach, is on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, but Gorcey is not. He was going to be in the blank spot to the left of Hall. Supposedly his agent demanded $400 from the Beatles, which even in 1968 would have been pocket lint to Paul McCartney, but they just took him out. I don't know if Fred Astaire got any money out of it.

5. Leo's kid brother David actually appeared in more of the Bowery Boys movies than Leo, playing Charles "Chuck" Anderson. Funny that his character should have such as WASPish name, since he was just as much of an authentic New York ethnic blend as anyone---born in Manhattan, half Jewish, half Irish. After his acting days David became a minister and founded a halfway house for recovering alcoholics.

6. Leo Gorcey wrote a book toward the end of his life, the hard-to-find An Original Dead End Kid Presents: Dead End Yells, Wedding Bells, Cockle Shells, and Dizzy Spells. Reviews are mixed; seems he wrote like, well, a rambling drunk. But Gorcey really did have a great sense of humor and was known as a practical joker, and it seems a lot of that comes through in the book. The title is horrible, though.

7. Leo Gorcey's son, Leo Jr., wrote a book about his father in 2003 that sounds like it should have been a Mommy Dearest type of Hollywood complainorama, and certainly Leo Sr. earned it, with his drunken, explosive temper. But the title (Me and the Dead End Kid: Leo Gorcey, the Hollywood Legend: His Happy Ending) tells you that this is going to be a more loving story of survival and grace. I haven't read it, but the Amazon reviews have been mostly full of praise.

Considering Gorcey's personal problems, he was a monster for work, cranking out movies day in and day out for years. He was one of the most popular film stars of the time. Although working in B movies was never a means to critical acclaim. He would have to settle for the abiding love of the moviegoing public.

Keep thinking those Slip thoughts, and we'll have more Mahoneyist information later in the week.

Time to constipate the wonder of Slip Mahoney again.

Time to start gettin' exacerbated, because we're coming up on the Second Annual Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day. Yes, Slip Mahoney Leo Gorcey's master of the malapropism, the Solon of the solecism, the only real chief of the Bowery Boys, with his Noo Yawk accent and his casual cartoon violence, is cerebrated on June 2, the day of Gorcey's death in 1969.

Mahoney was a well-meaning street punk, surrounded by dummies, who was willing to do anything to help those in need. He also spoke like he'd swallowed a dictionary, threw it up, and then memorized the remains. Malapropism is difficult to do well, but Gorcey carried it off for decades. Any fool can go "Arr Arr" "I be keelhaulin' ye" "Keep a weather eye on me doubloons" etc. on International Talk Like a Pirate Day, but Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day requires some thought.

You wouldn't wanna go off half-crocked.

We'll work on our malaprops as the big day draw closer. Right now, to get ready for June 2, you need to get yourself a Mahoney hat. Almost any brimmed hat will do, if you can fold up the front.

Just ask your local melonery for somethin' to cover your melon.

So let's all commiserate on this for a while, and see how we can inveigh the best ways to Slip Mahoneyize ourselves. Or else Slip'll slap us in the teeth.

Post-Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day: The Encapitation.

Yesterday was the first annual Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day, and I had big hopes of perannotatin' da streets of Noo Yawk, hearin' people droppin' malaprops and wise-guyisms with great acrumb. But sadly, da streets remained unpolluted wit' Slip Mahoney imitators.

Dis is depressatatin'.

Well, Leo, it was just the first annual. We'll start earlier next year. We'll move the decorations into the stores right after Easter. Peeps out, Slip in. We'll have a big Black Toisday sale or something. Get people fired up weeks beforehand. Sell malaprop dictionaries and English/Bowery Boy translator apps.

Maybe it slipped (har!) some minds. Mr. Philbin says he totally forgot for most of the day, until he slipped (hyuk!) some dese and dose into his dialogue after supper.

So assuming that mere forgetfulness was our downfall, I resist his suggestion that we were up against pushback from the Talk Like a Pirate guys. Sure, those guys are scurvied scalawags and all, but their day doesn't fall until September. I consider us cohorts, not competitors. Of course, in the Bowery Boys' film Hold That Hypnotist, it was suggested that in a past life Slip's sidekick Sach Jones snagged a map leading to Blackbeard's treasure, so there may be some bad feelings.

Anyway, enough of this stupidity! Back to our regular stupidity tomorrow!

Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day is here!

So da day is finally here, da day we rememberate our ol' pal Slip Mahoney, king of the Noo Yawk malapropism and central protractorist of most of da Bowery Boys movies. Slip was portrayed by dat esteemed thesaurus Leo Gorcey, who expiated on dis date in 1969.

Da Bowery Boys began as da Dead End Kids in da 1937 Cagney pitcher Dead End, den went on ta do movies and serials as da Little Tough Guys, den da East Side Kids, and finally da Bowery Boys. Da flicks stahted as crime adventures wit some comedy and eventually turned into comedy wit some crime adventures. Troughout most of da Bowery Boys era, Slip Mahoney was da king (and Leo Gorcey owned a hunk of the production company).

Da flicks had most of da ushal street types in movies---dummies, palookas, babyface lovers, dippers, gorillas, yeggs, you name it---but Slip was a classic of da type of fast-talkin' woik-aversive dropout whose tough exterior hid a knightly interior. He could crack wise with da best of 'em, but was expecially good at misusin' da language.

You can see Slip doin' his thing here, in the opener* of 1954's The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters:

Now dat you'ze seen da maestaro in action, I'm sure you can eviscerate his technique. Let us know how youze make out. (And remember to trow in some insults to yer idiot sidekicks. Dat's anuddah Slip trademark.)

*Something I didn't know when I was watching these things as a kid: Leo Gorcey's father, 4'10" Bernard, played Louie Dumbrowski, proprietor of the soda shop. The Bowery Boys were kind of a family business---Leo's brother David actually appeared in more of the Bowery Boys movies than Leo did.