5 replies to this topic

[tsrwright]

'Leaping Lena' was the name given by journalist Dennis May to a streamlined Brough Superior JAP designed by Phi Irving and others for world motorcycle speed record attempts in Austria and Hungary in the early nineteen thirties.

The nickname seems to have been given to all sorts of cars especially before WW2.

 

Does anyone know origin of the name -  was it from a movie or cartoon or what?

 

T

[Michael Ferner]

Interesting question. A quick search in newspapers shows several hits for a horse in New York, beginning in late 1922, though I have seen the name mentioned for Tommy Milton's Miller Special which ran earlier that year at Indianapolis. However, the car was still in use by the time the horse appeared, so it could have been named then.

 

 

 

By July of 1923, the name was popular enough to appear in a "Boarding Hosue" cartoon:

 

 

 

However, the earliest mention of the name I could find was this strange story, in a Pennsylvania newspaper of 1920:

 

 

 

Make of it what you will...

[Vitesse2]

The sister of the 1930s boxer King Levinsky - who was also his manager - was known as Leaping Lena Levinsky:

 

 

For a portion of his career, Levinsky was managed by his sister Lena (Kraków) Levy. Known as "Leapin Lena", she was a colorful character who swore like a sailor, and rooted loudly for her brother during his bouts.

https://en.wikipedia...i/King_Levinsky

 

I found a couple of references in the British press to her, but they date to 1934 and 1937, so perhaps by then it was an epithet generally applied to a lot of people called Lena? There was also a South African frog called Leaping Lena entered in a 1950s world frog jumping championship ...

 

The wonderfully titled book 'Stunned Mullets and Two-pot Screamers', which is a dictionary of Australian colloquialisms, says it was also applied to the train between Birdum and Darwin.

 

'Green's Dictionary of Slang' suggests it's an American colloquialism for a small car. It seems to have been used for various 'clown cars' as well.

 

However, could this be the origin?

 

http://gamecatalog.o...e/?gameid=20580

 

There's one currently for sale on eBay: item # 373427431063

[plannerpower]

In "Romance of Australian Railways", Patsy Adam-Smith devotes a substantial chapter to "Leaping Lena's (sic)"; the term seems to have applied in Australia to any small or narrow-gauge locomotives/trains or railcars.

 

Apropos the Leaping Lena that ran between Darwin and Birdum, T. Southwell-Keely, later a war correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald, wrote in the Adelaide Advertiser of 31 Mar 1938;

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[plannerpower]

A search of the Australian "Trove" newspaper records produces 760 results; the soubriquet appears to have been applied to all manner of things mobile, including the Cessnock police car (1936), the Newcastle water police boat (1939) and the Ballarat trams of 1956.

 

The Trove records show that the earliest newspaper use of the term was in the Sydney Sunday Times of 11 Apr 1926, which contained this rather curious article;

 

 

[tsrwright]

Thanks for that. I should have looked at Trove but I assumed it was an Americanism that found its way to the UK.

 

Along with the examples I had found, the interesting responses don't explain why the name was so widely applied to funny cars let alone a very fine motorcycle.

 

So I think I will pass over this one and press on with a book about the motorcycle speed record pre WW2 and the short life of Eric Fernihough which eventually may be of interest to some TNF readers.

 

T

Edited by tsrwright, 07 February 2022 - 09:41.