Papa spank!

[Sweetspot]

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With the passing away of Adam West, '60s television's great Batman "lite", last week at the age of 88 I thought it would be a good time to offer a topic that has at its center one of the most iconic of Batman images and dialogue. The above panel can be found elsewhere at CSR and on many other sites both spanking related and even more so Batman related. The characters are Batman and "The Cat" soon to become Catwoman. It is originally found in Batman #1 published in 1940 and it shows the first words that Batman ever speaks to Catwoman. Evidently these words spoken by Batman have become more controversial over the years among the Batman fan base. Many have embraced the admittedly odd little phrase and they have launched a little cottage industry of "Quiet or papa spank! merchandise like T-shirts and mugs. In addition, some Batman fan sites are named after the famous, some would say, infamous words while many Batman Forums and Boards have, at one time or another, entered into lively and heated debate over what these words imply. Some say that they are shockingly out-of-place for the story, chauvinistic, implies that this woman needs to be treated like a child and doesn't suit Batman's character. I'm not going to support or argue against any of those points - that's not the focus of this article. I will note though that Batman spanks spoiled playgirl Marcia in The Brave and the Bold #64 in March 1966 and that Batman #20 in 1944 has Alfred the butler,[surgeon, mechanic, jack-of-all-trades really] spanking Catwoman while dressed as Batman. See the CSR main site for more on both those spankings. We start our look at the phrase "Papa spank" by noting that this threat doesn't lead to a spanking for the Cat and that obviously Batman is not her papa. That being the case why did Batman creator/writer Bob Kane inject those particular words into his story? It can only be that Kane understood that his 1940 audience would understand the broader meaning behind the phrase, his readers would know that Batman, though I think it was a genuine threat, didn't intend to spank The Cat and wasn't implying paternity over the pretty thief.

A catchphrase is an expression that catches on with the general populace after having first been presented through a public performance, in politics or in literature. Today most of our catchphrases come from TV, movies or even tweets! An example of a political catchphrase would be Richard Nixon saying, "I'm not a crook". TV has given us many catchphrases including "Sock it to me", "Dy-no-mite" and "The tribe has spoken". Sayings from the movies that have entered into the popular lexicon include "To hell I won't" from McClintock!, "I'll be back", "Go ahead make my day", "It's a trap" and "May the force be with you". "Elementary my dear Watson" is a catchphrase that comes not from the Doyle stories but from the original and popular Sherlock Holmes play and remains popular over a hundred years later. Most catchphrase however end up in a sort of cliché graveyard with their original meanings often forgotten. This seems to be the case with papa spanks. The original meaning and even the circumstances of the original uttering in public, the uttering that made it famous in the first-place long-since forgotten. In my next post I'll start to trace the origins, as best I can, of the expression "Papa spank".

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No it's not, Admiral Akbar sir, it's just for fun.

[Sweetspot]

With the resources I have available to me I have been able to trace the expression papa spank [sometimes written as pappa spank and papa spanks] as far back as 1911 Boston. But even at that time we can tell that the phrase is already a well-known blurb, a saying that had it remained relevant into the 1970s would have been on bumper-stickers nation wide. Newton Newkirk writes a humor column for the Boston Post in 1911. He receives a whimsical question from reader Claribel and jokingly rebukes her as a mischief maker going so far as to threaten her with the words, "if you don't be good papa spank". Mr. Newkirk has no intention of actually spanking Claribel and he is not her "papa" but he knows there is humor in using that phrase that will immediately be understood by his readers.

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We're trying to determine the origin of the catchphrase papa spank made iconic in Batman #1. From where did Mr. Newkirk grab this phrase? Social media and in fact mass media was quite different in 1911 than what we are familiar with today. Popular entertainments of the pre-WW1 years included magazines, books, wild-west shows, minstrel shows, plays, stage musicals, lecture tours, early silent movies, burlesque and vaudeville. I can't argue against any of these media as being the source of the papa spank slogan but if I had to make an "educated" guess I would point us towards vaudeville as being the probable place of origin. Vaudeville was the name for a popular form of entertainment that offered a live, staged variety show that toured city to city over the course of a season. Vaudeville originated in the 19th century and an evening of vaudeville could include sketch comedy, singing, dancing, juggling [that's how W.C. Fields started] and numerous novelty acts. Vaudeville was known to be very popular in Boston in 1911. Over the course of the first decades of the 20th century we have ample evidence that the term papa spank was a popular vaudeville expression.
For example in June 1921 a vaudeville show came to Bedford, Indiana...

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A vaudeville advertisement from Christmas Eve 1920

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Now for sure the two words papa and spank could be found sequentially in a sentence long before they became a meme predecessor.
For example we might have this - "Susan did papa spank you for taking the buggy out without permission?" "Of course sis, you know papa spanks hard with his razor strap when we misbehavior even though we're out of school." But at some point the small phrase was grabbed by presumably a late nineteenth, early 20th century performer or performers and made famous for decades to come.

If you know anything specific about the origin of the catchphrase papa spank please let me know. Let's see how popular that phrase was by 1940 and why it wasn't at all an out of the ordinary turn of phrase as used by Bob Kane in Batman #1.

[Sweetspot]

Papa spank catchphrase examples from the 1920s.

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In the theatre, at the movies and even an inanimate object like a golf ball could be threatened with Papa Spank!

[Sweetspot]

We continue to explore the usage of the expression Papa Spank during the first half of the 20th century.

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Looks like Susan Hayward came to this photo shoot equipped for her spanking with an obvious piece of some kind of padding or am I seeing things?

[Sweetspot]

Going on the assumption that anything worth doing is worth overdoing one last post for Papa Spank for now.

An interesting bit of literature explained by Web-ed on the main site.

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That's not really a youngster in Superman's arm. That's Lois lane reduced by a machine she tampered with to the appearance of an infant.

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I hope that I've helped you achieve a deeper understanding of and better appreciation for the expression Papa Spank!

[web-ed]

That's an amazing amount of research, Phil - thanks for doing it. I think the reason I didn't respond before was that I was interrupted after clicking on this topic, which then went from red to blue, no longer marked as "unread" and I forgot where it was!

My guess even if I hadn't seen your research would have been the theater. Cole Porter threatens "...or Papa spank-a" in the song "Bianca" from Kiss Me Kate (stage version; it's not in the movie), and Porter, apart from being a Yale man, was a theater man. Anyway, however silly it may sound today, "Papa spank!" was indeed a popular catchphrase, like "Come to papa!", so it's not surprising it turned up in comic books.

[Sweetspot]

Seeking out the origin of the catchphrase Papa Spank I would be remiss if I didn't add the possibility that the phrase became household famous because it is a song title or a song lyric. I have researched that possibility at several sites that offer a virtual plethora of song lyrics. None of the similar lyrics I have read originate far enough in the past to be considered a possibility. Frank Sinatra had a novelty song that said, Mama will bark, Papa will spank. In the stage play Kiss, Me Kate we all know that Katherine/Lilly gets spanked but also her sister Bianca is threatened by Bill in a Cole Porter song not always found in restaging's, or in the movie, based on the play - [as Web-Ed mentions above] -
Bianca, Bianca,
Oh, baby, will you be mine?
Bianca, Bianca,
You'd better answer yes or Poppa spanka.
Not long ago Harry over at Mainstream Spanking discussed a song called Mama Spank. That's a song in the Greek language that comes down to us from the 1950s

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All of this is to say that we have to remain open to the notion that the phrase made famous in 1940 in Batman #1 began life as part of a song - perhaps introduced in a musical or vaudeville and brought into homes as sheet music sung around the family piano many, many years ago.