Having had the pleasure of pulling the engine on my Model A more than once (as I’m certain many – if not most - other FordBarner’s have) I read this thread with passing interest. Accordingly, I apologize (in advance) for the following detour:
FWIT (probably not much) the “Stinkin’ badges” line originated in the 1927 novel The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by B. Traven (which was the pen name of the German author Ret Marut) and was later popularized in the 1948 film of the same name, staring Humphrey Bogart (who never made a bad movie), Walter Huston and Tim Holt. The director was John Huston, Walter Huston’s son.
In the novel, the line was (further apologies for the language): “Badges, to g**-damned hell with badges! We have no badges. In fact, we don’t need badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges, you g**--damned cabron and c***** tu madre!”
In the movie, the line – spoken by the character Gold Hat played by Alfonso Bedoya, one of the great and largely unheralded Mexican character actors who appeared in roughly 175 Mexican films and a great many US films - became “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges.” The character Gold Hat was later executed by Mexican Federales (but not for saying this line).
The rest – as with the line “Play it again, Sam” (another often misquoted line, this time from Casablanca, another great Bogart movie) – is history, and generally misquoted as “We don’t need no stinkin’ badges/books/seat belts/etc.”
In fact the line has become so widely used (in its misquoted format) that the list of such use is legend, and includes Blazing Saddles, WKRP in Cincinnati, Stephen King’s novel It, and so on (although I didn’t note any reference to Cheech and Chong).
Just something to reflect on while taking a break with your Model A engine (hopefully sans transmission, as recommended by others) suspended in mid-air…
