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Go forward and name Richard Lewis the comic from hell. You’d be paying him a praise.
The humorist, who died on Tuesday, was recognized for his darkish garments, darkish humorousness and a recurring position as a, sure, even darker model himself on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” He was a fixture within the comedy world for over half a century. But his most indelible legacy could possibly be one easy phrase, spoken so usually that its origin may by no means be questioned.
“The (insert hated factor right here) from hell.”
It’s a phrase that seemingly has been round since time immemorial. The flight from hell, the day from hell, the lunch from hell. We’ve all been there, and everyone knows what it means, however the place did it come from?
According to Richard Lewis and the “Yale Book of Quotations,” it got here from him.
Posting on X, recognized then as Twitter, Mr. Lewis asked, “Where was my Nobel Peace prize?” and linked to a 2006 UPI article about his look within the “Yale Book of Quotations.”
In a 2008 interview with Interview Magazine, Mr. Lewis mentioned that “the reality of the matter is that no matter reward I’ve as a comic, most of it was within the phrase ‘from hell.’”
“I’m credited with popularizing that phrase as a result of I felt victimized by the whole lot,” he mentioned.
Mr. Lewis elaborated in a 2014 interview with the Nashville Scene.
“I completely popularized the phrase within the late ’70s,” he mentioned. “If you go on YouTube, you possibly can see on Letterman, David would reduce me off, and go, ‘You imply it was the bar mitzvah from hell?’ ‘That’s proper!’ And I ended saying it. I felt self-conscious. I used to be getting applause for it. I suppose subconsciously I assumed I used to be a sufferer of the whole lot.”
Bartlett’s “Familiar Quotations” didn’t give him credit score for the phrase, which turned a narrative line within the episode “The Nanny,” throughout season three of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
The episode, which aired in 2002, weaves in Lewis’s makes an attempt to get into Bartlett’s.
“It was an actual stable for Larry to try this for me,” he mentioned. “That actually immortalized it in some respects.”
