ALL SCI-FI

[filmdetective]

I think a forum on Sci-Fi Artwork is just the place for me to ask a question that, despite intense searching of the Net, in the late 1990s, and the still available print media at that time, I have never found a satisfying answer to.

How far back does the saying, "Take Me To Your Leader," go?

I had often heard that the saying was associated with cartoons from the Flying Saucer era, with outer space people emerging from their saucers and asking an Earth person to "Take Me To Your Leader."

I'm studying the Twilight Zone thread here on ALL SCI-FI, and hope I come across a mention of the episode "Black Leather Jackets," where some bikers ride into a town, and one of them tells a young lady: "We are monsters from outer space Daddy-O. Take us to your leader."

Well, that was not exactly the same as "Take Me To Your Leader," which I had repeatedly heard in relation to outer space visitors telling, or asking Earthlings upon arriving on our planet.

All of my searches of books of quotations both hard copy and Internet pages gave no satisfactory answer.

Finally, I found (and when I find it among all the debris in my space ship, I'll give the exact source), a book review of a novel titled, "Take Me (or was it us?) to your President, the reviewer saying the novel was inspired by a cartoon in was it Harpers? magazine.

Well, hoping to finally find what I was looking for, and with no index to the magazine in question, either print of early years Internet, I went to the microfilm at a local collage library, starting with the year the novel was published, and worked my way backwards, issue by issue, page by page, taking several hours until I finally found "it."

A cartoon of some space people in a cow pasture, next to their landed flying saucer, asking or telling an Earthling, "Kindly take us to your President."

That was well and good, but it still was not the exact saying, "Take Me To Your Leader."

I mentioned this to my boss at my job, and he thought that "Take Me To Your Leader," might be an age-old saying meaning that the person asking or telling that to another person meant that they wanted to see whoever was in authority.

And, of course an age-old saying that may have for centuries been used as my boss suggested, long before the Flying Saucer era.

Sometimes nit picking engaging in semantics and phraseology can be Much Ado About Nothing, and Making a Mountain Out of a Mole Hill, but in this instance, I don't think that is the case.

Just how far back, in print, I suppose, can the exact words, "Take me to your leader," be traced?

I do not consider this "trivia," although if others do, no problem with me.

This is just something I have wondered about for many years and there must be more answers from people who are more informed than I am, and could possibly give some answers.

[Eadie]

I Googled "origin of "Take Me To Your Leader?" It led to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_me_to_your_leader_(phrase)

The original cartoon:


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Art Should Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.

[filmdetective]

It, Eadie, and, since in the Outer Limits thread you named a source of the saying "upholstered memories," I am hoping that you might have some leads on how far back "Take Me To Your Leader," can be traced.

[Eadie]

Mitford, Edward L., The Arab’s Pledge: A Tale of Marocco in 1830, London: Hatchard and Co., 1867, 63:

“You come alone; have you no token?”

“I have,” said he, “but it is as my life; take me to your leader.”

From http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/more/2108/
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Art Should Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.

[filmdetective]

Eadie, many thanks for what I had long suspected: that Take Me To Your Leader was an old saying long pre-dating the Flying Saucer era.

And, in all the years from the first SF stories, that saying could well have been used by Earthlings visiting other planets, as well as people from other planets visiting Earth, and it was just repeated again in some flying saucer cartoon which so far I have not been able to ID.

In my net searches of the late 1990s, I even looked for books on flying saucer cartoons, and might have found some such compliations of cartoons, whether in book form or net pages, I don't remember which. After all these years, my memory is getting hazy.

But the important thing is that we have now established that "Take Me To Your Leader," was an old saying long before the start of the later day Flying Saucer era which started in 1947.

Now, if we can just find that often mentioned cartoon, which many mention, but no one ever gives any source of, with a saucer pilot asking, or telling an Earthling, "take me to your leader."

[trekriffic]

You know... this is the kind of stuff that MAKES ME LOVE THIS SITE!

[filmdetective]

Hey Drummer, give trekriffic a Barump Bump!

[Gord Green]

While the exact verbiage "Take me to your leader" is not used, the attitude is expressed by the French herald (messenger) in Shakespear's Henry V, when he first approaches the English king to demand his surrender on the eve of Agincourt.
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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

[filmdetective]