Why do we say "Cut to the chase"?

Meaning:

Get to the point

Background:

This phrase originates in the early years of the US film industry. Many of the early films (which had plots that would seem very simplistic by today's standards) contained a chase sequence that formed the core action of the film. It is believed to have been used as a direction in silent movies, albeit the earliest known reference is in the script for Hollywood Girl, a very late silent movie released in 1929, two years after the first "talkie."

There is little evidence of the expression entering common usage with its present day more general meaning of "get to the point" until the 1940s. The first known reference that could arguably be interpreted in this way is in an article about screen writing in a 1944 edition of The Winnipeg Free Press: "Miss [Helen] Deutsch has another motto, which had to do with the writing of cinematic drama. It also is on the wall where she can't miss seeing it, and it says: 'When in doubt, cut to the chase.'"

By 1947, the expression had definitely crossed over into general use with an appearance in The Berkshire Evening Eagle (Massachusetts): "Let's cut to the chase. There will be no tax relief this year."

Incidentally, according to her obituary in the New York Times, Helen Deutsch (1906-1992) was a student of medieval English, French, German and English, and a Sanskrit scholar, who received six Oscar nominations during a long and successful screenwriting career. Her credits include a wide variety of films including King Solomon's Mines (1950), I'll Cry Tomorrow (1956), The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) and National Velvet (1944, coauthor). She ended her film-writing career with Valley of the Dolls (1967) which was a box office success but critically scorned; Deutsch disavowed authorship saying that author Jacqueline Susann had meddled with the script. In addition to 15 screenplays, she wrote more than 20 short stories for magazines, hundreds of newspaper articles and several plays and television scripts.

More expressions and their source

Challenge yourself with BookBrowse Wordplays