A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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Entry from July 12, 2012
“Those who go to college and never get out are called professors”

“Those who go to college and never get out are called professors” is a jocular line by the dialect actor George Givot (1903-1984), cited in print since at least April 1936. The saying has been included in many quotation collections about college.
 
   
Answers.com
George Givot (1903-1984)
Though born in Omaha, George Givot gained fame in vaudeville with his characterization of an English-language-fracturing Greek immigrant. Givot’s catch-phrase “How’d ya like that?” served as the title for one of the many 2-reelers he starred in between 1933 and 1934; another of his short-subject vehicles was Roast Beef and Movies (1933), in which he was teamed with the 3 Stooges’ Curly Howard. After making his feature debut in Meet the Baron (1933), Givot continued playing dialect parts in films and on radio.
   
Google Books
The Reader’s Digest
Volumes 28-29
1936
Pg. 50:
Those who go to college and never get out are called professors. — George Givot
 
Google News Archive
4 April 1936, Meriden (CT) Daily Journal, “In New York” by George Ross, pg. 6, col. 2:
And George Givot is the guy to hold responsible for saying that: “Those who go to college and never get out are called professors.” 
(This syndicated column also appeared in the April 2, 1936 Syracuse Herald, pg. 24, col. 6—ed.)
 
Google Books
The Treasury of Modern Humor
By Martha Lupton
Indianapolis, IN: M. Droke
1938
Pg. 62:
Professors — those who go to college and never get out. George Givot.
 
Google News Archive
4 February 1942, Norwalk (CT) Hour, “The Office Cat,” pg. 10, col. 2:
Those who go to college and never get out are called professors.
 
Google News Archive
1 September 1953, Beaver Valley Times (Beaver and Rochester, PA), “Man About Town On Gay Broadway” by Earl Wilson, pg. 4, col. 6:
WISH I’D SAID THAT: George Givot recalls this definition—“People who go to college and never get out are called professors.”

Posted by Barry Popik
New York CityEducation/Schools • Thursday, July 12, 2012 • Permalink


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