MovieChat Forums > Extras (2005) Discussion > The 'Oscar-polishing' provenance

The 'Oscar-polishing' provenance

posted 15 years ago by djrosenblatt
5 replies | jump to latest

Just watched the Kate Winslett episode last night, featuring a couple of conversations relating to the act of "Oscar-polishing". One such example:

Maggie's Boyfriend: So all that stuff about your husband "polishing his Oscar" -- was that supposed to mean wanking?
Kate Winslet: Yep.

Well, that term seems to have a slightly obscure cultural reference, dating back half a century. By sheer coincidence, today I viewed the film "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" (1957), starring Tony Randall, Jane Mansfield, and Joan Blondell.

In it, Blondell admonishes a young starlet (Mansfield) to restrain herself from falling in love so easily: "You've got to stop going overboard for every man who makes you tingle. First there was the English actor who wore the sunglass monocle. And then the Academy award winner who had you polishing his Oscar."

Gotta wonder if there was anybody back in 1957 who caught the sexual allusion.

Then again, perhaps I'm mistaken in assuming a suggestive context for the 1957 line. After all, wasn't it Freud who said, "Sometimes an Oscar-polishing is just an Oscar-polishing"?

[–] 15 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Caribbean_Smurf 13 years ago

Yeah, I think it's more likely Gervais came up with this and didn't realize someone already used it before.

It's not like ''polishing your Oscar'' is a far-fetched joke. The statues are fairly phallic.

[–] djrosenblatt 13 years ago

OK, but just to keep the thread on track (not that there's much of a track, given only 2 replies in the past 12 months), the question isn't whether Gervais got the line from a 1957 movie. The question is whether the original line was intended as an oblique sexual reference.

Badgers? We don't need no stinkin' badgers! But if you could show us something in a nice possum...

[–] Rommeltop 13 years ago

"...And then the Academy award winner who had you polishing his Oscar."

Hmmmm.... On the one hand it sounds like could be sexual, because it seems like she is referring to the Academy award and oscar as if they are two different things; kind of like she was saying "That winner of the Academy award who had you polishing his Oscar..."

"First there was the English actor who wore the sunglass monocle."

But then on the other hand this sentence sounds too innocent- does she jump from harmless crush to jacking a guy off!?

It would seem a lot funnier if the line wasn't intended to be dirty - just because today it certainly would sound dirty. It's like this woman at my work who was telling me about the "facial" she was going to get after work, but was oblivious to the fact I couldn't stop laughing about it.

[–] Helena727 9 years ago

Gotta wonder if there was anybody back in 1957 who caught the sexual allusion.

I suspect that a fair number of people caught it. Despite the highly sanitized surface of the idyllic 50s, keep in mind that
-- the 1st issue of Playboy was published in 1953;
-- Sex and the Single Girl was published in 1962;
-- by the late 1950s, beatnik culture had taken hold in pockets of major cities; and
-- the woman who delivered the line had been a fixture in risque pre-Code movies.

Thanks very much, btw, for sharing that info; I've seen WSSRH? but didn't remember the line.

"All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people."