"take the money and run"

[Sam Clements]

If it's of interest to Arnold, there is a NYTimes interview with Allen in
Dec of 1965 during which he says he has just finished a new script titled
"Take the money and Run."  So it didn't need to wait until the movie
actually premiered.

But to give an example from Newspaperarchive-1956, Nanette Fabray says "I've
had several series offered to me and that is the feeling of all the
producers:  they all say, 'We'll do it for two years, then take the money
and run.' "

So perhaps it's a Hollywoodism.

Sam Clements

----- Original Message -----
From: "Fred Shapiro" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Monday, January 02, 2006 6:40 PM
Subject: Re: "take the money and run"


> On Wed, 28 Dec 2005, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>
>> this catchphrase came up in a family discussion last week, which got
>> me to wondering when it first gained currency -- before Woody Allen
>> used it as the title of his first movie (1969) and Steve Miller used
>> it as the title of one of his songs (on the 1976 album Fly Like an
>> Eagle).  i don't see it in our archives, and googling gives me piles
>> of stuff about the Allen movie and the Miller song and piles of
>> relatively recent uses of the expression (at least once referred to
>> as an "old adage"), but no account of its history.   has anyone here
>> looked at it?
>
> A Newspaperarchive search doesn't turn up a lot of pre-Allen references,
> but there are some, enough to indicate that it was a preexisting phrase
> that Allen picked up on.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
> Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
>   Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
> Yale Law School                             forthcoming
> e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
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>