What's the meaning of Graziella saying ooblee-oo repeatedly in West Side Story
In West Side Story before the "Gee, Officer Krupke" song, the Jets are waiting out in front of the drug store when the Jet girls stroll up and start talking with the guys, the blonde (who I believe is named Graziella) only ever says a variation of the word "ooblee-oo" the whole time (a copy of the script for the play can be found here, though it seems to switch the dialog parts for the two girls here compared to the movie: http://www.aellea.com/script/westside.txt (just do a word-find for the word "ooblee-oo"))
What is this? I mean was this something people did / said back then? Did the word or this kind of gibberish have some specific meaning in the time period of the movie or when the movie was made?
Best Answer
According to Misha Berson, author of Something's Coming, Something Good: West Side Story and the American Imagination it was part of the slang created for the movie by writer Arthur Laurents.
According to the book Ooblee-oo and Ooblee-pooh are just giigly verbal shorthand between the two characters.
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