[PW] Double Dubuque

[Fuller, Thomas (US - Washington D.C.)]

For what it's worth, this passage appeared in "JACK SMITH:  OUR
ETYMOLOGICAL SLEUTH IS TRACKING THE ORIGIN OF THE TERM LA-LA LAND FOR
L.A.; ALL LEADS POINT TO SNOBS UP NORTH", Los Angeles Times, March 10,
1987:


<Maybe someone will come to my assistance as Max Hodge of Sherman Oaks
did when I said that I had looked in H. Allen Smith's "Lost in the Horse
Latitudes" for his reference to the invention of "Double Dubuque" (as an
epithet for Los Angeles) by Rufus Blair, but couldn't find it.

"You print things like that," Hodge wrote, "to get letters, knowing full
well 'the reference' is smack dab on the very first page of Chapter 1."

Hodge obligingly quotes the reference as follows:

"I spent six months in the town Rufus Blair calls Double Dubuque and
came pretty close to catching a disease known as the Beverly Hills
botts. . . . "

And Marjorie Mundy quotes a paragraph from another Smith book,
"Two-Thirds of a Coconut Tree," which also documents Blair as the author
of that etymologically obscure but enduring term.

"Rufus has always had a towering dislike for Los Angeles, which he calls
Double Dubuque, whereas San Francisco has long been his favorite town in
all the world. . . . "

That proves that Double Dubuque was coined by a San Francisco snob, and
I have little doubt that La-la Land was too.

While we have Rufus Blair in the spotlight, it might be interesting to
know something more about him.

Jack Hirshberg, an old-time Hollywood press agent, writes that Blair was
also one of that glib breed -- a San Francisco newspaperman who was
lured south in the 1930s to do national publicity for Paramount.

"Rufus was never taken in by Hollywood," Hirshberg says. "His
irreverence for the sham he, himself, helped create in order to build
audences for the studio's films and stars was one of his many endearing
points.

"Rufus was first of all a newspaperman. . . . His wit was sharp, his
typewriter articulate. Rufus was a lovely man. He died two or three
years ago in San Francisco."

Well, at least he got out of Double Dubuque.>

-- Tom 

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