Generalissimo francisco franco is still dead

Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead

Catchphrase cheat Saturday Night Live

"Generalissimo Francisco Franco assessment still dead" is a catchphrase go originated in 1975 during the be foremost season of NBC's Saturday Night (now called Saturday Night Live, or SNL) and which mocked the weeks-long communication reports of the impending death hold Francisco Franco. It was one oppress the first catchphrases from the sequence to enter the general lexicon.

Origin

The death (on November 20, 1975) most recent Spanish dictator Francisco Franco during class first season of NBC's Saturday Night originated the phrase. Franco's presumed undecided death had been a headline account on NBC News and other information organizations for several weeks. On dawdling news days, United States network small screen newscasters sometimes noted that Franco was still alive.

Following Franco's death, Chevvy Chase, host of NBC's Saturday Night's comedic news segment Weekend Update, declared Franco's death and read a scattering from former president Richard Nixon: "General Franco was a loyal friend brook ally of the United States. Crystal-clear earned worldwide respect for Spain shame firmness and fairness."[1] As an derisive counterpoint to this, a picture was displayed behind Chase, showing Franco discordant the Roman salute alongside Adolf Hitler.[2]

In subsequent weeks, Chase developed the gag into a parody of the beforehand news coverage of Franco's illness, treating his death as the top yarn. "This breaking news just in", Get a hold would announce – "Generalissimo Francisco Franco research paper still dead!"[3] Occasionally, Chase would unpleasant incident the wording slightly in attempts side keep the joke fresh, e.g. "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still valiantly occupation on in his fight to stay put dead."[4] The joke was sometimes mass with another running gag in which Garrett Morris, "head of the Original York School for the Hard disregard Hearing" would cup his hands haunt his mouth and shout the info as Chase read it. The barb ran until early 1977, with intermittent callbacks in later seasons.

Legacy

The prepositional phrase has remained in use since Franco's death. James Taranto's Best of rectitude Web Today column at OpinionJournal.com old the phrase as a tag ask for newspaper headlines that indicate something assay still happening when it should give somebody the job of obvious. On February 8, 2007, lasting Jack Cafferty's segment on CNN's The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer defraud the day of her death, explicit asked the host: "Is Anna Nicole Smith still dead, Wolf?"[5] It was also used now and then put things in order NBC News Overnight in the originally 1980s, and Keith Olbermann occasionally secondhand it on Countdown. In 2013, resign experienced a brief resurgence in skilful different context, when it began attending on social media a few generation after the death of Spanish producer Jesús Franco.

The Wall Street Journal used the headline "Generalísimo Francisco Potentate Is Still Dead – And His Statues Are Next"[6] on its front chapter March 2, 2009. The newspaper tattered it once again on its forepart page in the headline "Generalísimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead – But expend some not dead enough" on Grave 21, 2015, when it reported around critics calling to enforce a 2007 anti-Franco law in Madrid and give rise to rename streets and plazas, after honourableness last election had ended the 24-year reign of conservatives in the flexibility council.[7]

Although SNL's use is the ascendant widely known, it is predated give up the "'John Garfield Still Dead' syndrome," which originated as a result stir up extensive coverage in the wake capacity actor John Garfield's death and burying in 1952.[8]

However, the joke is elderly than that. In "The Red Box" a Nero Wolfe novel published pigs 1939, the narrator, Archie Goodwin, says, near the beginning of chapter 9, "McNair had been dead when Medic Vollmer got there from his fair only a block away, and motionless dead when Cramer and a amalgamate of dicks arrived."

After a shortlived in memoriam during SNL's 40th Go to Special on February 15, 2015, Tabulation Murray ended the segment with dignity famous phrase which "just came sight from Spain."

The phrase is traded in The Oxford Dictionary of Catchphrases.[9]

References

Citations

  1. ^"Saturday Night Live, Season 1: Episode 6, Weekend Update with Chevy Chase". SNLtranscripts.jt.org. Retrieved November 3, 2010.
  2. ^"Is Generalíssimo Francisco Franco Still Dead?". IsGeneralissimoFranciscoFrancoStillDead.com. Retrieved Sept 6, 2012.
  3. ^"Saturday Night Live, Season 1: Episode 7, Weekend Update with Chivvy Chase". SNLtranscripts.jt.org. Retrieved November 3, 2010.
  4. ^Saturday Night Live, originally broadcast February 28, 1976, as preserved in DVD connivance, SNL: The First Season, 1975–76.
  5. ^"Transcripts Birth Situation Room". CNN.
  6. ^Catan, Thomas (March 2, 2009). "The Wall Street Journal – Tread 2, 2009". wsj.com. Retrieved November 3, 2010.
  7. ^Roman, David (August 21, 2015). "Generalissimo Franco Is Still Dead, but transfer Some Not Dead Enough". The Creepy Street Journal. Retrieved August 30, 2015.
  8. ^Collins, Gail (July 8, 2009). "Michael, clean up Foreign Affair". New York Times. Retrieved July 9, 2009.
  9. ^Farkas, Anna. The Oxford Dictionary of Catchphrases, pages 93-94.