Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US, also razzle) spectacular, dazzling; occas. as excl.

1888		C. Hoyt [song title] The Razzle Dazzle Trio.
1889		Kipling ‘The Bow Flume Cable-Car’ in Civil & Military Gaz. 10 Sept.(1909) 191: ‘[W]e started with a double load of boys and a razzle-dazzle assortment of drinks’.
1906		Sun. Times (Perth) 23 Sept. 1/1: The pugnacious pair eventually settled down over a supper at a razzle restaurant.
1907		Sun. Times (Perth) 10 Mar. 1/1: The Real Advisor to the Cabinet is the proprietress of a razzler-dazzle restaurant.
1920		V. Lindsay Golden Whales of Calif. 15: The British Lion ran and hid from Blaine / The razzle-dazzle hip-hurrah from Maine.
1923		O.O. McIntyre New York Day by Day 17 July [synd. col.] Those shrewd fellows [...] say only the razzle-dazzle jazz mosques with expensive decorations will die.
1938		C. Beaton Cecil Beaton’s N.Y. 64: At particularly rowdy parties the Rah-Rah Boy may shout at intervals the approving slogan ‘Razzle-Dazzle!’.
1941		B. Schulberg What Makes Sammy Run? (1992) 151: Employing a razzle-dazzle literary double-talk technique.
1953		E. Wilson Look Who’s Abroad Now 22: Silver dollars are dumped into garbage cans in the gambling houses on razzle-dazzle Fremont Street, the main drag.

2. (Aus./US) showing off, ostentatious.

1889		Eve. World (NY) 1 Mar. 1/1: When a man is drunk as a lord [he] will do all sorts of razzle-dazzle things.
1934		S. Walker City Editor 70: In its handling of news, the Patterson tabloid is much less razzle-dazzle, much more conservative and factual, than it used to be.
1959		J. Blake letter 23 Sept. in Joint (1972) 145: In the razzle-dazzle personality he presents to me, a sort of hipness that is more flip than hip, all glaze and no substance.
1982		G.V. Higgins Patriot Game (1985) 63: No jazz about a shock or was the guy sick a long time, or any of that razzle-dazzle ball-handling bullshit.
1991		M.B. ‘Chopper’ Read Chopper From The Inside 103: With a gun he was a razzle dazzle boy, pistol whipping drunks and weak people, pulling out the gun to impress the ladies.