The Pittsburgh Press (September 12, 1946)
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – Well, the OPA has made a statement that will find its place in the immortal annals of American history. To the brave slogans of the past, such as “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” and “Don’t Give Up the Ship” has been added the OPA’s thrilling new battle cry, “The Nickel Cup of Coffee Must Stay.”
How smart they were to take that attitude! They can fool around with the price of anything else and we’ll only grumble, but if they ever did away with the nickel cup of coffee we’d rise up in our wrath and spray the OPA with DDT.
After all, the nickel cup of coffee is part of our national tradition. Lincoln probably had one before Gettysburg. Dewey probably had one before Manila and I know that George had several just before our marriage ceremony, getting up enough courage to borrow some money from me for the license.
The Pittsburgh Press (September 13, 1946)
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – The supposedly conservative Englishmen have beaten their American cousins all to pieces in that popular domestic game in which the husband explains to his wife why he won’t be home until very late. Our men fall back on such threadbare favorites as the sick friend or the customer from out of town, but a group of Englishmen have formed a snail-watching society and blandly tell their better halves that they have to go out and watch snails all night.
It certainly would be awful if anything like that caught on over here. I can just hear George saying, “Don’t wait up for me, dear. Tonight is the big meeting of the Potato-Bug Peekers” or “I’d better hurry; the boys are initiating me into the Grasshopper Gazers.”
If that should happen, the best counteraction for American wives is to form a society of worm-watchers – and you know the worms I mean.