[Ads-l] Quote: Cary Grant telegram anecdote - update

ADSGarson O'Toole adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM
Wed Jan 1 23:34:55 UTC 2020


Sorry, cut off the punch line

[Begin excerpt]
 . . . Our boy had already filed his story, but late at night, he got
a telegram from his editor that read: "How old Gar Wood?"
The reporter wired back: "Old Gar Wood fine. How you?"
[End excerpt]

On Wed, Jan 1, 2020 at 6:30 PM ADSGarson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ben Zimmer has a great article, "The Legend of Cary Grant's Telegram",
> at the Visual Thesaurus website:
> http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2159/
>
> I wrote a QI article on this topic back in 2010, and I made related
> posts to this mailing list in 2010 and 2011. Nether Ben nor I were
> able to search 1957 issues of the "Minneapolis Tribune" although we
> knew that it probably contained a pertinent article because the
> newspaper had not been digitized in 2010.
>
> Today, a correspondent let me know that he had located the pertinent
> article in the now digitized "Minneapolis Tribune". The QI article has
> been updated.
>
> “How Old Cary Grant?” “Old Cary Grant Fine, How You?”
> https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/10/30/how-old-cary-grant/
>
> Here is the citation information.
>
> [ref] 1957 September 22, Minneapolis Sunday Tribune (Minneapolis
> Tribune), Section: Upper Midwest and Peach Sports, Almanac: Wire You
> So Anxious to Know?, Quote Page 1, Column 1, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
> (Newspapers_com) [/ref]
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> Our Favorite Crusty Old Newspaperman, who has worked all over the
> world, has one pet hate. It is editors who don’t bother to check handy
> reference sources but instead wire last-minute queries to far-flung
> reporters.
>
> Some years ago, our F.C.O.N. was covering a Florida speedboat race in
> which the famous Gar Wood was participating. Our boy had already filed
> his story, but late at night, he got a telegram from his editor that
> read: "How old Gar Wood?"
> [End excerpt]
>
> Garson

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