MOGO ON THE GO-GO

I recall hearing the phrase "mogo on the go-go" used in the 1960s, but I haven't heard it since. My understanding of the meaning was: "a fictitious disease, ailment, or infatuation". See the Grammarphobia article which gives several interpretations of the phrase. Of course, I heard the word used in Spellbound and W.C. Fields movies.

Thinking of little-used phrases, just yesterday I used the quote "Put my Pucci in my Gucci and go!" When I see women like Paris Hilton and others, I think of "Baby" Jane Holzer who was the "It" girl of the 1960s, except that, unlike Hilton and other current celebrities, Holzer was elegant, intelligent, and had a career. She was a wealthy socialite who became a member of Andy Warhol's circle and she starred in some of his movies and that chronicler of pop culture Tom Wolfe, referred to Holzer as "The Girl Of The Year".

One time I saw her interviewed and the interviewer commented about her "jet-set" lifestyle and he wondered how she was able to do everything she did and she answered, "I just put my Pucci in my Gucci and go!" I tried to find that quote by her on Google and other sites, but was unsuccessful. I thought, "How pathetic that I remember that quote, but I don't remember Quantum Physics!"

In researching for the phrase, I was pleased to see that Jane Holzer is now successful in real estate, as well as being a film producer, humanitarian, and renowned collector of modern art, but that she did not end up like many others from the Studio 54 entourage. (CLICK HERE to see the NPR article.)

GRAMMARPHOBIA

Mogo on the gogo

Q: What in God’s name is “mogo on the gogo”? I heard it the other day while watching Spellbound. Did Hitchcock (or, rather, his screenwriter) coin the phrase?

A: The expression “mogo on the gogo” didn’t originate with Alfred Hitchcock or with Ben Hecht, the main screenwriter on the 1945 film Spellbound.

It was apparently a catchphrase in certain Hollywood circles in the 1930s and ’40s, though it had much earlier show-biz origins in vaudeville, burlesque, and minstrel shows.

The expression is hard to define since it isn’t in any of our slang dictionaries. But it’s generally used as a comic phrase for a mental or physical malady, like lovesickness or an exotic fictional disease.

And W. C. Fields used variations on the phrase too. Fields got his start at the turn of the century as a vaudeville juggler on the Keith and Orpheum circuits, both of which booked minstrel acts at the time.

Later, in his films, Fields used “mogo on the gogogo” to mean a fictitious disease.