Talk:Morris the Explainer

Additional info from Citizendium

"Jake the Explainer is an old Hollywood industry term, probably from the 1950s or a few decades earlier. It is mentioned e.g. on page 114 sq. in the book Screenwriting Tricks of the Trade by William Froug (1992), Emmy-winning writer/producer, producer of the year 1956 (Prod. Guild of America), recipient of the Writes Guild Valentine Davies Award 1987, professor emeritus (UCLA), founder of the UCLA Film & TV Writing Program, and author of several books on screenwriting. The alternative term is Morris the Explainer, also known for several decades. This term was coined by screenwriter Burton Benjamin, possibly in the 1940s (cf. David G. Yellin, Special: Fred Freed and the Television Documentary, 1973, p. 143), and it's unclear whether Morris or Jake is the original term. My hunch is that—since Jake/Morris is a dramatic tool known e.g. from Yiddish theater plays at the beginning of the 20th century (or even earlier)—the original term would be Jake due to the Hebrew roots of the name. (But that's just a guess; since Morris is in some cases also an americanized version of the Jewish Morse, both variants might support an early origin from Yiddish culture.) However, the majority today seems to call it Morris the Explainer—e.g. Lazarus (2001) and Sawyer (2003)—, of which Sam the Explainer is only a minor variant. So it might be okay to move the article to Morris the Explainer and transform Jake the Explainer into a redirect page. In any case, with regard to Hayford's comment, it is never wise to only refer to Google search results as reference. Books still do exist, you know. ;-) So, I hope to have cleared the matter up. ADDENDUM (09-01-01): Ridley Scott calls it Irving the Explainer, found in the TV special On the Edge of "Blade Runner". User Arne Eickenberg, 21:08, 7 December 2008 (UTC)", direct copy and paste from Citizendium. Mbdfar (talk) 00:29, 14 December 2020 (UTC)