Yehudi Did It

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Kathleen. I’m calling from Coronado, California.

Hi, Kathleen. Welcome.

Hey, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much.

What can we help with?

Well, I have a story about when I was a little girl. I was kind of a curious kid.

And I asked my parents when I would open the refrigerator, the light would come on.

And I asked them how that happened.

And my mom told me that Yehudi lived in the refrigerator and he was the one who turned on the light.

And I used to go and open that door and try and catch Yehudi turning on that light, but I was never able to.

Oh, cute.

He’s scurried for the butter dish, huh?

Yeah.

He was hiding in there somewhere, and I’m not sure where.

Had on a little parka.

So Yehudi did it.

Yehudi is the one who turns the light on in the refrigerator.

I love this.

And what do you know about the origins of that?

You know, I don’t know anything.

And I was thinking about this the other day, and I was thinking, you know, all the stories that you wish you’d asked your parents, while they were still here.

Mm—

Sure do.

And this is one I didn’t ask, and so now I don’t have a way of knowing because they’re the only ones I’ve ever known who heard of this story.

How interesting.

When were they born?

About what era are we talking about when they would have come into it?

They were born in the 20s, 1920, and they’re both from Colorado, one from Pueblo and one from Colorado Springs, so small towns in Colorado.

Right.

Well, that certainly fits, and they sure weren’t the only people who used it.

No, let’s paint a picture here of the 1930s, pretty much the main entertainment.

It wasn’t television, it was radio.

And radio was gigantic then.

I mean, there was a film business, but radio was the thing that people did in the evening.

Radio was the thing that kind of bound us culturally together in a way that we hadn’t been bound together before, right?

Right.

Bob Hope had this radio show, and it was your typical variety show, a little comedy, some skits, a lot of goofing off, a commentary on the news of the day in a kind of inoffensive way.

Pretty much what you still see on the Jay Leno show or the Conan O’Brien show, right?

Right.

And there was a guy there, one of the featured players, his name was Jerry Colana.

Funny man, very funny.

Well, they were going to have a guest on the show.

And his name was Yehudi Menuhin, right?

Yeah, he’s the musician, right?

The violinist.

And he was a child prodigy.

He came up.

He was quite a phenomenon.

He was brilliant.

He was great.

And, of course, his talent lended itself very well to radio, so he was always on these shows.

He was just kind of a featured player, featured guest.

He’d show up in New York in the studios and L.A. in the studios and play for these shows.

In any case, Jerry Kalana thought his name was funny, and he started saying on this show, who’s Yehudi? Who’s Yehudi?

Yeah, again and again.

It became a running gag, right?

It became a catchphrase.

And even when Yehudi Menuhin wasn’t on the show, he would still say it.

And we’re talking about a time when pretty much everyone listened to the same set shows.

I mean, there were different networks, but we’re still talking two, three, maybe four big networks.

Pretty much you could count on everyone having heard this a couple of times, either directly or indirectly.

And it became a catchphrase.

Songs were written that had this in it.

It showed up in movies.

It showed up all over the place.

I mean, there are these letters to the editor in Life magazine from 1940, which is a couple years after Jerry Kalana kind of got this catchphrase going, where people are trying to explain to others who Yehudi is.

It took on a life of its own beyond the violinist.

And so, as you found with your parents, and here’s the connection for you, people started coming up with these things that Yehudi did.

So Yehudi is the guy who holds up strapless gowns.

I like that.

So Yehudi is the guy who turns off the radio when you go under a bridge or an overpass.

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So he’s the man who wasn’t there.

He’s the man who wasn’t there.

Kathleen, did your parents ever say any of that stuff, or did they just refer to the refrigerator?

No, I only remember it being used for the refrigerator.

Okay. That’s fantastic.

Yeah, and there’s actually, somebody mentions that in Life magazine.

So there’s all these letters to the editor in September of 1940 where people just keep coming up with these little jokey things.

And it became so popular to have Yehudi be the guy who was the cause of unexplained phenomena that the military, when they started secret projects, they named them Project Yehudi.

Oh, I’ll be darned.

Yeah.

Isn’t that crazy?

So my dad was in the military.

I’m wondering his name.

Oh, interesting.

Which branch of the service?

He was in the Navy.

Hi.

It was a Navy project, right, Grant?

Yeah, it sure was.

Yep.

Hey, hey.

He was a Navy pilot.

So, you know, he could have gotten that information from a couple of different avenues, I guess.

How interesting.

So this thing really took on a life of its own from the name of one violinist.

Yeah, it was big for at least a decade.

I mean, it was a catchphrase that everyone knew in the 1940s.

That’s fascinating, and I’m glad to know where it came from, because I’ve never talked to anybody else who had ever heard of it.

Well, that’s the story, Kathleen. What do you think?

Great. Thanks so much. I really appreciate it.

All right. Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

So, Grant, we know that the word Yehudi in Hebrew means Jew.

Do we have any evidence at all that maybe there were anti-Semitic undertones to this expression?

No, I’ve looked high and low for it and found no evidence that it was overtly or even covertly used that way.

Even the slang dictionaries, which usually don’t shy away from this sort of thing, they’ll just point blank say that it’s a prejudicial or discriminatory or so forth kind of vulgar word.

There’s no mention of it there, so I don’t think so, no.

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