Not once in my life have I spoken the anachronistic term “broad”. It’s been out of circulation for decades, and yet in 2005 Urban Dictionary posted the following definition: “Word for a woman. Less respectable than lady but much more respectable than bitch. As in ‘Man, look at those two broads…they are smokin’!”
Bitches and ho’s used to be (and perhaps still are) common terms within urban hip-hop culture, okay, but broads? Not in this century or even the second half of the 20th. It was used by coarse types (gangsters, gamblers, saloon singers) during the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s, okay, but started to fade in the ’50s.
Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart used “broads” in “The Lady Is A Tramp,” a 1937 tune they wrote for “Babes in Arms“. It’s also in the 1957 film version of Rodgers and Hart’s Pal Joey when Rita Hayworth sings “I’m a broad with a broad, broad mind.” Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack crowd almost certainly used the term from time to time. It’s impossible to imagine Ronald Colman, Cary Grant or Gary Cooper saying it, but I’ll bet it was part of Bob Hope‘s vocabulary — ditto Desi Arnaz‘s.
In Some Like It Hot a Spats Columbo henchman (Harry Wilson) flirts in an elevator with “Josephine” and “Daphne” (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon) by asking, “Pardon me for askin’ but haven’t we had the pleasure of meetin’ you two broads before?” (In response to which Lemmon says, “You must be thinking of two other broads.”)
All that said, I laughed when I saw this ancient ad for Mervyn LeRoy‘s Broad Minded, a 1931 Joe E. Brown comedy.
Now that it’s on the table, HE hereby proposes that Browne, LeRoy, Broad Minded screenwriters Bert Kalmer and Harry Ruby, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, Frank Sinatra and Rita Hayworth be posthumously cancelled. At the very least, The Academy Museum (i.e., “Woke House”) should post an apology for Hollywood culture having encouraged sexist attitudes by using this deplorable term in certain films. The museum should also sign a pledge to never install exhibits that include the above.
