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What did Harry Belafonte mean when he said "they bobbed her nose."

posted 9 years ago by micaofboca-836-322711
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At the nightclub, when Bacco's thug, Coco (Richard Bright) told Johnny (Harry Belafonte), "Too bad about Lady Day", Johnny said, "Yeah, they bobbed her nose." When I looked up the idiom, I found that it means the surgical shortening or reshaping of the nose. Does he mean that Bacco busted some woman's nose that probably owed him money (seeing that Bacco was a loan shark)? The cinematography of this movie is truly artistic, not to mention the amazing musical score. Robert Wise really did a fabulous job with this unique and superior film noir.

[–] bobvend 9 years ago

Just a hunch, but 'Lady Day' was the nickname for jazz great Billie Holiday, who died in July 1959. Production on this film began in March and it was relesed in October, so the phrase may have been a reference to her passing.

[–] micaofboca-836-322711 9 years ago

Sorry, man. I misquoted the film. He said, "Too bad about Lady Care". Since I'm a jazz nut I subconsciously replaced the name with the one more familiar with me. So it probably has nothing to do with Billie. My bad.

[–] disinterested_spectator 9 years ago

Earlier in the movie, Johnny said of Lady Day that he put a lot of money on her nose, meaning he bet on her to win. When he later says that they bobbed her nose, he means that she just barely lost, as if her nose were just a little shorter, giving the winning horse an edge.

In The Asphalt Jungle, Sterling Hayden makes a similar remark about a horse he once bet $5,000 on. He says, "I put it all on her nose. She lost by a nose."

[–] disinterested_spectator 9 years ago

All right, make that "Lady Care."

[–] micaofboca-836-322711 9 years ago

A Horse!....of course. Thanks for figuring that out for me, although I saw no other direct footage of the film referring to "Lady Care" (despite I think I saw an abridged version since I saw some photos of Ed Begley and Bacco online that weren't in this cut). When I researched it online I found a scene that was cut out of my version. It reported that Ed Begley made a deal with Bacco to pressure Belafonte into paying up immediately so that Begley could force Belafonte's hand to join the caper.

But now that you figured it out, it figures that Lady Care would be a horse's moniker and also makes perfect sense that Lady Care lost by a nose, possibly due to a fix - and Coco was just rubbing it in to Harry over his bad luck at the track. Good spectating, disinterested spectator. Although "they bobbed her nose" is an odd use of slang to mean a horse was made somehow and by somebody ("they") to lose by a nose.