After You, My Dear Alphonse
I love it when a unique item on eBay makes me do a search and I discover pieces of a puzzle...
This old German porcelain (or ceramic) piece features three figures: a woman in bed, and two men who, as the seller says, appear to be "in the process of deciding who will be the first to "visit" the young lady in her bed for whatever pleasure may result from such visit."
The seller also says, "I dont ever remember having a similar piece in all the years I have spent in the Antique business." While one can be skeptical with seller statements -- they are at least relative to their own experience -- I'd have to agree. (Hence my researching.)
A quick search for "After you my dear Alphonse" one gets quite a number of clues, including old vaudeville skits by the Marx Brothers, but what one finally gets is Frederick Burr Opper and his comic strip, "Alphonse and Gaston".
Introduced in 1901, they remained part of the Sunday comics for years. In this strip, two French characters are so polite they are stymied when they reach a door, each offering the other entry first with what would become, at the time, quite famous lines:
"After you, my dear Alphonse."
"No, after you, my dear Gaston."
The strip pretty much vanished after 1910, but the characters continued to live on in Happy Hooligan, where they ran their bit best as a sideline rather than the lead through the 40's.
You can find remnants of Alphonse and Gaston in theChip and Dale Mack and Tosh*, aka the Goofy Gophers, politeness, as well as other standards bits, like like two baseball outfielders each deferring to the other and letting the ball fall between them. Which brings us back to our German figurine.
Two men who likely will be so polite to defer to one another, while the lady falls asleep. *wink*
The seller says this is an "OLD VICTORIAN era GERMAN group figurine," which is rather close to the time frame -- give or take a handful of years.
Find more on Frederick Burr Opper and Alphonse and Gaston here. See Alphonse and Gaston pinbacks here. See/download a film from 1903, and see a photo from 1912-1931 from the Whitman Theatre.
* Note -- UPDATE -- Peter corrected me on the Chip & Dale thing. See comments!
This old German porcelain (or ceramic) piece features three figures: a woman in bed, and two men who, as the seller says, appear to be "in the process of deciding who will be the first to "visit" the young lady in her bed for whatever pleasure may result from such visit."
The seller also says, "I dont ever remember having a similar piece in all the years I have spent in the Antique business." While one can be skeptical with seller statements -- they are at least relative to their own experience -- I'd have to agree. (Hence my researching.)
A quick search for "After you my dear Alphonse" one gets quite a number of clues, including old vaudeville skits by the Marx Brothers, but what one finally gets is Frederick Burr Opper and his comic strip, "Alphonse and Gaston".
Introduced in 1901, they remained part of the Sunday comics for years. In this strip, two French characters are so polite they are stymied when they reach a door, each offering the other entry first with what would become, at the time, quite famous lines:
"After you, my dear Alphonse."
"No, after you, my dear Gaston."
The strip pretty much vanished after 1910, but the characters continued to live on in Happy Hooligan, where they ran their bit best as a sideline rather than the lead through the 40's.
You can find remnants of Alphonse and Gaston in the
Two men who likely will be so polite to defer to one another, while the lady falls asleep. *wink*
The seller says this is an "OLD VICTORIAN era GERMAN group figurine," which is rather close to the time frame -- give or take a handful of years.
Find more on Frederick Burr Opper and Alphonse and Gaston here. See Alphonse and Gaston pinbacks here. See/download a film from 1903, and see a photo from 1912-1931 from the Whitman Theatre.
* Note -- UPDATE -- Peter corrected me on the Chip & Dale thing. See comments!
Labels: Collecting, Comics, Euphemisms, Films, Images, Magazines, Other Objects
posted by Silent-Porn-Star at
12:19 PM
2 Comments:
Actually, the exceedingly polite Warner Bros. characters Mack and Tosh, aka the Goofy Gophers, were based on Gaston and Alphonse, not Chip and Dale.
This might be an example of x-rated jokes based on popular characters, like the Tijuana bible comics or the "Disney memorial orgy"
Thanks, Peter, I did have that wrong (and I've corrected it!)
Yes, it's clearly a sex joke on the 'hot' joke of the moment; but unlike Tijuana Bibles, they didn't try to use the characters' likenesses.
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