the big picture (1926)

[Baker, John]

        Here's an earlier cite from Westlaw.  For "big picture" meaning a money-making movie, from testimony given 8/1/1922 and quoted in a 1925 legal opinion, Parker v. Parker, 74 Cal.App. 646, 652, 241 P. 581, 583 (1925) (ellipses, or whatever those asterisks are, are original):

        <<The defendant was again examined as a witness on the 1st of November, 1922. Relative to receipts of the Lyric Theater, he then testified:

        "It has made a little money since I was here last. *** I don't think it is making a penny these last two weeks. Before that time I made in the neighborhood of $800 or $1,000 when I had some big pictures there. *** I had a bunch of big pictures I put on September 1st up until about two weeks ago.">>


John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
Of Benjamin Zimmer
Sent: Sunday, March 13, 2005 12:44 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: the big picture (1926)


But 1942 seems late for the 'overview' sense of "the big picture". Without
even hitting the newspaper databases, I find this 1926 cite on JSTOR:

-----
"Tendencies in the Foreign Trade of the United States" by E. Dana Durand
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 127,
(Sep. 1926), p. 21

All this will sound to a good many exporters both academic and idealistic.
But is that not because details obscure the big picture?
-----


--Ben Zimmer