"It's X's world. We're (all) just living in it."

[Laurence Horn]

>On Wed, 13 Jul 2005 15:41:08 -0400, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>wrote:
>
>>  From today's Times (E1):
>>
>>"Three centuries later, it's still Louis XIV's world.  We're just
>>living in it."
>>
>>It occurs to me that although I've heard this countless times, with
>>various values for the variable in the subject line, and of course
>>without the necessary presence of the "still" in the version cited
>>here, I have no idea where and when it originated, and Google, which
>>offers 1620 hits on "world we're just living in it", doesn't
>>immediately help.  Does anyone know?  (And what's the
>>lexical/constructional counterpart of an earworm, anyway?)
>
>Didn't we do this one back in February (the "Teen Lingo" thread, which
>Larry participated in)?

Oops, sorry about that.  Threads from February must have passed my
poor old brain's pull-by date.

>The earliest cite I found was from 1964:
>
>-----
>http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0502a&L=ads-l&P=3747
>
>Looks like we may have Dean Martin to thank for the expression.  From a
>1964 column by Earl Wilson:
>
>Reno Evening Gazette, January 4, 1964, p. 10/1
>When Dean [Martin], Frank [Sinatra] and their buddy Sammy Davis Jr.
>appeared at the Las Vegas Sands' llth anniversary, Dean bowed to Frank
>and said, "It's your world, Frank; I just live in it."
>-----
Would this, I wonder, have been famous enough to have sponsored the
later occurrences of the trope, culminating in its status as one of
the several official tropes-in-residence on ESPN SportsCenter?  Or
does it reflect an already established (but not easily attested)
usage elsewhere?

L