After lunching at the Algonquin Hotel one day, the American humorist Robert Benchley and his companions walked through the lobby and out the front door. Still engaged in conversation with his friends, Benchley offhandedly said to the uniformed man standing by the front door, "My good man, would you please get me a taxi?" The man immediately took offense and replied indignantly, "I'm not a doorman. I happen to be a rear admiral in the United States Navy." Benchley instantly quipped:
 | "All right then,
get me a battleship." |
After receiving the Nobel Prize in 1922, the Danish
physicist Niels Bohr invited friends and associates to a celebration
party at his country cottage North of Copenhagen. The event was also
well-attended by members of the press. One reporter, noticing a
horseshoe hanging on a wall, teasingly asked the famous physicist, "Can
it be that you, of all people, believe a horseshoe will bring you good
luck?" Bohr replied:
|
"Of course not,
but I understand it brings you luck
whether you believe it or not." |
Nancy Astor was an American socialite who married into
an English branch of the wealthy Astor family (she holds the
distinction of being the first woman to be seated in Parliament). At a
1912 dinner party in Blenheim Palace—the Churchill family estate—Lady
Astor became annoyed at an inebriated Winston Churchill, who was
pontificating on some topic. Unable to take any more, she finally
blurted out, "Winston, if you were my husband, I'd put poison in your
coffee." Without missing a beat, Churchill replied:
|
"Nancy, if you were my wife, I'd drink it."
|
Another famous Churchill reply also involves a London
party and a female Member of Parliament, and once again a slightly
inebriated Churchill. This time, it was Bessie Braddock, a socialist
Member of Parliament from Liverpool, who finally had enough. She
reproached Churchill by charging, "Winston, you're drunk!" The Grand
Old Man may have had one too many drinks, but he still had his wits
about him, replying:
|
"You're right, Bessie. And you're ugly.
But tomorrow morning, I'll be sober.
And you'll still be ugly." |
Edna Ferber worked for a number of years as a news
reporter in the Midwest before moving to New York City in 1912. After
her novel "So Big" won the Pulitzer Prize in 1926, she quickly followed
up with the hit play "Show Boat" (so successful and financially
remunerative, she called it her "oil well"). Ferber was fond of wearing
tailored suits well before they became fashionable. One day, she
arrived at the Algonquin Hotel wearing a suit that was very similar to
one that the English actor Noël Coward was wearing. Ferber and Coward
were friends (she once described him as her favorite theater companion)
and Coward saw an opportunity to engage in a bit of playful badinage
with one of his favorite people. Carefully looking her over, he
observed, "Edna, you look almost like a man." Ferber looked Coward over
in a similar manner and came back with a classic riposte:
|
"So do you." |
W. C. Fields died at age sixty-seven on December 25,
1946, his life cut short by his notorious alcohol consumption (by some
accounts, he drank as much as two quarts of gin a day). Some wags
thought it was a fitting irony that Fields died on Christmas, the one
holiday he despised the most. As he lay in his hospital bed shortly
before his death, Fields was visited by the actor Thomas Mitchell, a
good friend. When Mitchell entered Fields' room, he was shocked to find
the irreligious Fields paging through a Bible. Fields was a lifelong
agnostic, and fervently anti-religious (he once said that he had
skimmed the Bible while looking for movie plots, but found only "a pack
of wild lies"). "What are you doing reading a Bible?" asked the
astonished Mitchell. A wiseacre to the end, Fields replied:
|
"I'm looking for loopholes." |
Some of history's greatest replies come from people we don't usually associate with great wit. In the decades prior to World War II, Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi led a massive campaign of civil disobedience designed to help colonial India win its independence from the British Empire. In 1931, shortly after being named Time magazine's "Man of the Year," Gandhi traveled to London to meet with British authorities. The entire nation was curious to learn more about this little brown man, as many called him. Constantly swarmed by press and photographers, Gandhi was peppered with questions wherever he went. One day a reporter yelled out, "What do you think of Western civilization?" It was a defining moment, and Gandhi's reply instantly transformed him from an object of curiosity into a celebrity. In his heavy Indian accent, he answered:
 | "I think it would be a good idea." |
Courtesy: http://www.drmardy.com/repartee/historygreatreplies.shtml
