Walk this way (humor)

Walk this way is a recurrent joke in a number of movies and television shows, most notably movies by Mel Brooks. It may be derived from an old vaudeville joke. It refers to the double usage of "way" in English as both a direction and a method.

One version of the old joke goes like this: A heavy-set woman goes into a drug store and asks for talcum powder. The clerk says, "Walk this way," and the woman answers, "If I could walk that way I would not need talcum powder!"

Mel Brooks adds a visual, not any less vaudevillian, dimension to the joke:

One character would say, "Walk this way" and walks off in a limping or waddling or some such manner, and the second character would follow, walking in the same manner.

Films (and other things) that 'walk that way'

• In After the Thin Man (1936), the butler says "Walk this way" and Nick Charles does.
• In Young Frankenstein (1974), Igor says "Walk this way" and, after a bit of further urging, Doctor Frankenstein does.
• The joke is repeated in History of the World, Part 1 (1981) and Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993).
• In the animated series Drawn Together, in the episode "The Lemon-AIDS Walk", the character Captain Hero says a variation on the joke in a mall nutritional supplement store ("If I could walk that way, I wouldn't need steroids!") and is booed by an offstage voice. Later in that same episode, the character Wooldoor Sockbat runs into a Chinese restaurant named Wok This Way. In fact, there are real-life Wok This Way Chinese restaurants in a number of cities in North America.[1]
• "Walk this way" was a running gag on Monty Python's Flying Circus during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Usually, after one character says, "Walk this way," a second character would say, "If I could walk that way-" and then be interrupted and sternly warned by the "silliness police" against completing the joke. In one sketch, a character played by Eric Idle actually completes the joke, and is promptly arrested.
• In the 1946 Warner Bros. cartoon The Big Snooze, while "helping" Elmer Fudd flee his pursuers, Bugs Bunny uses a variant on this line by telling Elmer, "Hey, Doc, run 'this way'!" and puts him through some crazy dance steps while they continue to run.
• The song "Walk this Way" by the American rock band 'Aerosmith' was inspired by the line "walk this way" in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein (1974).
• In an episode of Garfield and Friends, a hunchbacked butler tells Jon, Odie and Garfield to walk this way, then walks forward in an odd manner. After a short pause, Jon, Odie and Garfield follow, pointedly walking in their normal fashion. Garfield comments, "Don't worry, we won't be using that old gag."
• In an episode of the cartoon Rugrats, when Tommy's grandfather comes to a mansion to pick up his grandson Tommy, the bulter tells him to "Walk this way." and procedes to bend over and walk through the curtained doorway. Shrugging, Tommy's grabdfather bends over and walks with him.