Was this the first time we saw the Ugly American personifcation?

While the American is portrayed as the now trypical stereotype, loud, ignorant, spoilt etc...he does have a point that the hotel is badly run! I don't blame him for the way he acts at the end and everything he says is true.

I love watching the greedy, cowardly Fawlty interacting with the confident arrogant Yank, they are the exact opposites and its comedy gold!

As for if this is the first time we see the Yank abroad stereotype...I am sure its been seen before 1975, I seem to remember some british WW2 films from the 40's or 50's where they complain about visiting yank soldiers for the same sort of stuff.





'To a New Yorker like you, a hero is some type of weird sandwich'

Well nothing in Fawlty Towers is particularly flattering, I mean Manuel doesn't represent all immigrant workers from Barcelona. And not all Aussie girls are blonde and tall (I'm Aussie and the exact opposite!)

But whether the American stereotype existed pre-Fawlty Towers I'm not sure, but I doubt that the series was responsible for 'creating' it.

Having travelled around the world, I can say that the Ugly American, if not the rule, is certainly a constant that you see often.

I was in Cambodia, at the Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. It was mostly empty, except for my wife and I, and an American couple, who had hired a guide. I wasn't following them around, but just stopped for a moment to listen to the guide explain something. The man stopped him, looked at me, and said: "We paid for him".

Listen to the river sing sweet songs
to rock my soul

The Ugly American was a Marlon Brando movie from 1963 and obviously it had been referred to before then.

I remember hearing "you Americans did it first" as tho we thought of everything or did everything there was to do that was new.

Even saw an Englishman on The Price Is Right and when Bob asked him something about the way it was done in England, the guy just replied with, you did it first.

Bob laughed.

I do recall some incredible underlying envy tho with Band Aid and Do They Know It's Christmas? that none of our big American performers were on the breakthrough song.

No matter how much money We Are the World raised, how sensationalized it was (I thought the overall song was terrible), England still had it first.

I suppose it's really a tale of two stereotypes: the diffident Brit and the pushy American.

For me though, the episode is actually more disparaging to the British than the Americans. We see the British guests at the beginning of the episode all meekly enduring a dreadful evening with bad food and shoddy service, the point being that the British would rather die than cause a scene. Then we see the brash, confident American who knows what he wants, how he wants it, and he wants it yesterday. It's more than an incompetent like Basil can handle, customer service not really being his area.

Make tea, not war. 🌈

what upset me was the fact that the wife only said 'it's not very well known here' and things like that. she wasn't doing her duty as the country's citizen and standing up for it.

srsly, waldorf salad???? come on! [ps I have tried it, the mayo is disgusting! I tried it with yogurt and it was fine.]

she was such a wimp to her husband. the way he storms into the hotel and forcefully has her take this towel or something and she just takes it -- and the towel? what a wimp.

she was completely fine with him giving 20L for the chef to stay for 'a half an hour' [yeah right!] like she was entitled.

she should have known how eateries were run! [I went to London in 2001 -- about two weeks before 9/11 and I didn't behave like this when pubs closed between lunch and dinner.] that was 4:00pm and he is freaking out about 9:00.
and what if he DID have something terminal? god, a little sensitivity, please!

then he barks at basil to make the waldorf salad. if it ain't on the menu, you're not getting it! he was like that highly strung, very clever kid.



Reading the paper can really be depressing. Mr. Dithers fired Dagwood again.

I suppose the final irony is that Bruce Boa, who played the "pushy American" Hamilton, was Canadian. Canadians have the reputation of being polite and non-aggressive unless you put them into a hockey rink, or so the stereotype goes.

------------------
"Here is the ice you ordered, Mr. Ismay." – Titanic Captain E.J. Smith