FW: query; "Winning Isn't Everything"

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Wed Jan 22 23:28:26 UTC 2003


At 7:12 AM -0500 1/22/03, Frank Abate wrote:
>FWIW, the Oxford History of World Cinema, in its write-up on John Ford (pp.
>288-89), does not mention the TATW title in its "Select Filmography".  For
>1940, he did The Grapes of Wrath.  He also had 3 feature films released in
>1939, and one in 1941, and one in 1942, and then was in the US Navy for
>WWII, so I expect he did not squeeze in anything else around that time.
>
>I think the John Ford-John Wayne connection was the likely cause for this
>apparent confusion.
>
>Frank Abate
>

So it would appear.  My VideoHound actually lists *another* John Ford
movie from 1940 (besides Grapes of Wrath):  The Long Voyage Home
(from the Eugene O'Neill play), starring John Wayne.  And many of his
movies did star John Wayne, so the connection, or confusion, is
plausible.  We can go with the 1953 TATW (directed not by Ford but by
Michael Curtiz) as the first clearly attested source for "WIEITOT",
whether or not Red Sanders was the one who popularized it earlier.

larry

>
>On Tue, 21 Jan 2003, Laurence Horn wrote:
>
>>  "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."  The bio traced the
>>  line to UCLA coach Red Sanders (IIRC--I was only half-listening at
>>  that point) and then played an excerpt from a John Ford movie,
>>  _Trouble Along the Way_, in which a child--not the ex-big time
>>  college coach fallen on hard times but maybe his young
>>  daughter--unmistakably utters the infamous line.
>
>The earliest anyone has found this Red Sanders quote is in the 1953 movie
>_Trouble Along the Way_.
>
>Fred Shapiro
>
>
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