Setting the Quote Record Straighter

Just when I hoped to put aside my dissertations on the misattribution of famous quotations, I have received a note from an authority who must not be ignored.

Moses himself.

You may remember that screenwriter Mel Shavelson said he had heard UCLA football coach Red Sanders say “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” The line is usually attributed to Vince Lombardi.

“Finally,” Shavelson philosophized, “everything goes back to Moses.”

“He’s wrong to credit Moses,” writes Charlton Heston. “I didn’t say it. God said it. I heard him, as I was walking down the mountain. He certainly did not include it in the Ten Commandments. I had enough to carry as it was.”

I trust that the question is now answered for all time.

Meanwhile, I have also heard from Russell Baker, distinguished columnist for the New York Times, on that apparently rootless quotation, “Get me out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini.”

So far, we have attributed it to Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley, Charles Butterworth and Mae West.

“Everybody wants to get into the ‘wet clothes/dry martini’ act,” writes Baker, “and I am part of that immense collective. Ages ago, after getting on a friendly footing with Nat Benchley, I naturally braced him on the origin of the immortal line. Nat said his father was always a little puzzled about it, but was certain he, Robert, didn’t originate it.”

According to Nat Benchley, an MGM press agent invented the line after the shooting of a typhoon scene for the 1935 movie “China Seas,” in which buckets of water were dumped on Benchley. The press agent attributed the line to Benchley in a press release and history was made.

“These,” Baker concludes, “are the insoluble mysteries that make our lives worth living.”

I have dredged up a letter written years ago by Benchley’s grandson, Nathaniel, correcting the common version of another Benchley story. Benchley is said to have left the Players Club and said to a man in uniform, “Get me a cab.” Haughtily the man said, “I happen to be a rear admiral in the United States Navy.” To which Benchley allegedly replied, “In that case, get me a destroyer.”

Nathaniel Benchley said: “I believe the proper quote was, ‘In that case, get me a battleship.’ A small matter of semantics, except to us ex-Navy types.”

Meanwhile, in disabusing a reader of the notion that Peter Arno had created James Thurber’s famous cartoon about the wine bore (“It’s a naive domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you’ll be amused by its presumption”) and Carl Rose’s equally famous one about broccoli (“It’s broccoli, dear.” “I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it”), I neglected to say that the caption for the Rose cartoon was written by E. B. White.

Also, in recommending that every presidential candidate read Thurber’s “Is Sex Necessary?” I should have noted that White was its co-author. As for the origin of that provocative title, I have the never-before-told story from my old colleague Don Dwiggins.

Dwiggins recalls that Thurber was one of several prominent artists who used to frequent the Dwiggins place at Canada Lake, in Upstate New York, when Dwiggins was a boy. Dwiggins’ father was Clare Victor Dwiggins, creator of the syndicated daily panel “School Days.”

One night during a party, Thurber was complaining about the difficulty of writing fiction, because the author had to think up “all that crazy sex stuff.” Dwiggins’ father said, “Jim, is sex necessary?”

Thurber jumped up and exclaimed: “Hey! That’s a great title for my next book!”

“Thus is history made,” says Dwiggins.

Dwiggins also recalls that he used to keep Thurber awake by playing his favorite Victrola record, “Horses, Horses, Horses, Crazy Over Horses, Horses, Horses” on the front porch. “One night Jim got out of bed, came up on the porch, shut off the Victrola, took the record and busted it over my head. Looking back, I really don’t blame him.”

Not history, maybe. But justice.

The night after the party at which he got the inspiration for his next book, Thurber slipped off the dock on his way home and fell into the lake. Looking up at his exasperated wife, he said, “Here I am, honey, down among the goldfish.”