The story behind “Comin’ in on a wing and a prayer”

The idiom “on a wing and a prayer” is a now general way to describe making an effort to succeed in the face of difficult, or dangerous, circumstances — and hoping that luck, or God, will be on your side.

During World War II, when the phrase first became part of the English language, it was meant in a very literal way.

It referred to Allied airmen flying back to their base in damaged planes, hoping and praying that they’d make it.

In his book Dictionary of Catch Phrases: British and American (first published in 1977), the late, great phrase maven Eric Partridge speculated that “a wing and a prayer” was originally associated with the British Royal Air Force. He thought it might have been used by RAF pilots as early as 1940.

That’s possible. But there are no newspapers or other sources I could find online that used the phrase prior to 1943, which is when it was made famous by an American song said to be inspired by news stories about an American bomber crew.

On February 26, 1943, a B-17 “Flying Fortress” bomber piloted by Hugh G. Ashcraft, Jr. of Charlotte, North Carolina was limping back from a bombing mission in Germany to an American base in England. The plane, dubbed The Southern Comfort by its crew, was riddled with flak and had one engine missing.

As they approached the shores of Britain, Ashcraft reportedly told his crew: “Those who want to, please pray.”

The Southern Comfort made it to the base, generating news in Ashcraft’s home state of North Carolina and elsewhere about the crew that “prayed” their plane back. Ashcraft became something of a celebrity. And, after the war, he became the first president of the Harris Teeter chain of supermarkets.

According to company lore, the story of Ashcroft’s cool-headed bravery and faith inspired the songwriting team of Harold Adamson and Jimmy McHugh to write a patriotic song.

Adamson, the lyricist, came up with words “Comin’ in on a Wing and a Prayer.” The phrase was used as the title of the song and in the chorus, which goes like this:

“Comin’ in on a wing and a prayer.
Comin’ in on a wing and a prayer.
Though there’s one motor gone, we can still carry on,
Comin’ in on a wing and a prayer.”

The first well-known version of the song, recorded by The Song Spinners, was released in June of 1943.

It quickly became a hit and the song was then covered by a long list of other singers, groups and bands.

One of the hippest versions was by a black vocal group from Missouri called The Four Vagabonds, which you can listen to on YouTube. (I also love the version by Ry Cooder, on his album Boomer's Story.)

It was the fame of this song that embedded “a wing and a prayer” in our language. And, it’s a phrase that’s still familiar to most people even if they have never heard the song or the story behind it.

The real origin of “Live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse!”

The saying “Live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse!” is often wrongly attributed to actor James Dean.

Dean didn’t actually say it — at least not in his movies.

If you’re a classic movie buff, you may know that “Live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse!” is actually a famous line said by actor John Derek in the film Knock On Any Door, which premiered on February 21, 1949 and was released nationwide the next day.

It was the first major film role for Derek, who later married and guided the early film career of Bo Derek.

He plays Nick Romano, a young Italian hoodlum from the Chicago slums who is accused of killing a cop. Humphrey Bogart plays his attorney, Andrew Morton.

In the film, Nick tells his girlfriend that “Live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse!” is his motto in life.

This great noir movie is generally given credit as the origin of the famous line — which is now usually misquoted as “…leave a good-looking corpse!” (Instead of “have.”)

And, certainly, the movie made it a popular saying (either with “have” or “leave”).

However, Nick’s motto was first used two years earlier in the book the film was based on, Knock on Any Door by the African-American novelist Willard Motley (1912-1965).

In Motley’s 1947 novel, Nick Romano says his motto several times.

Back then, it was unusual for an African-American author to write a book in which the central characters were white. But Motley was ahead of his time in terms of color-blind thinking and the book became a popular bestseller.

When some color-sensitive critics complained about a “Negro” writing about white folks, Motley responded: “My race is the human race.”

Indeed, that empathetic concept is a central theme of the book and movie.

It is memorably summed up by Bogart in the film, when he says to the jury who will decide if Nick is executed: “Until we do away with the type of neighborhood that produced this boy, ten will spring up to take his place, a hundred, a thousand. Until we wipe out the slums and rebuild them, knock on any door and you may find Nick Romano.”

Quotation expert Ralph Keyes speculates in his book The Quote Verifier that Motley may have been “recycling street talk” when he wrote the line “Live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse.”

I did some extensive online searching and found uses and variations of the phrase “live fast and die young” dating back to the early 1900s.

But I didn’t find any uses of the longer saying mentioning a corpse prior to the publication of Knock on Any Door. So, I think Motley’s book probably is the origin of that fatalistic slogan.

Personally, I prefer the Ricky Gervais variation. In an episode of The Office (the original BBC series), he says: “You know that old thing, live fast, die young? Not my way. Live fast, sure, live too bloody fast sometimes, but die young? Die old! That’s the way. Not orthodox. I don’t live by ‘the rules’ you know.”

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Some recently released books of quotations...

“I know nothing!” – the memorable catchphrase of a forgotten political party

Given the long dominance of the Democrat and Republican parties, and the press hubbub over the recent Teabagger movement, it’s easy to overlook the fact that there have been many attempts to establish new political movements and parties in our country.

One example is The American Party of the mid-1800s — which is better known as “The Know-Nothing Party.”

The Know-Nothings essentially started out as an anti-immigrant movement. It was primarily made up of white Protestants who thought of themselves as the real, true-blue “native Americans.”

They felt the country was being overrun by new immigrants, who were not only undermining the true-blue American way of life, but also negatively affecting the outcomes of local elections and taking away jobs.

The Know-Nothings especially feared German immigrants, Jews and Irish Catholics, but they pretty much disliked just about every other ethnic and racial minority.

They didn’t call themselves the “Know-Nothing Party.” They started out in New York in 1843 as the American Republican Party. Within a few years, the movement had spread to other states and created a national party called The Native American Party. (Though I doubt that any Indians were members.)

In 1855, the party was renamed again and officially called The American Party.

The “Know-Nothing” name arose as a result of the standard answer members of the movement were told to give to any reporters (or other disreputable types) who asked about the group’s secretive meetings and activities.

They were supposed to say “I know nothing.” Thus, they came to be commonly called the “Know-Nothings.”

On February 18, 1856, the American Party formally abandoned secrecy mode and went very public, by holding its first national convention to nominate a presidential candidate.

The party nominated former U.S. President Millard Fillmore and picked Andrew Donelson of Tennessee as Fillmore’s running mate.

Their official campaign slogan was: “I know nothing but my Country, my whole Country, and nothing but my Country.”

The American Party’s platform wasn’t exactly geared to creating a “big tent.”

Planks included requiring political office holders to be “native-born” Americans, limiting the number of immigrants (especially Catholics), requiring public school teachers to be Protestants, and requiring daily Bible readings in public schools.

The party also had a plank proposing restrictions on the sale of liquor. I suspect that one wasn’t particularly popular with many white males (who were the only legal voters at the time) regardless of how they felt about them damn furriners.

In the November 1856 presidential election, Fillmore won in one state (Maryland) and got about 21% of the popular vote.

Historically, 21% isn’t a bad percentage for a third party in our country. Nonetheless, Fillmore’s defeat took the wind out of the “Know-Nothing” movement and the American Party quickly faded away.

It did, however, leave behind a snappy, oft-quoted catchphrase.

“Each man kills the thing he loves” – sometimes with a razor

On February 13, 1898, the first edition of Oscar Wilde’s now famous poem “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” was published in London by publisher Leonard Smithers.

Those initial copies of the slim volume of poesy did not mention Wilde’s name. The author was given as “C.3.3.,” a reference to Wilde’s cell number while he was in the Reading prison from 1895 to 1897, serving a two year sentence for being a homosexual.

C.3.3. was prison shorthand for Block C, third floor, third cell.

Because of his highly-publicized conviction for “sodomy,” Smithers and Wilde agreed to omit the poet’s real name on the first edition of “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” fearing it might hurt sales.

After the first small run sold out and several subsequent editions also sold well, Wilde’s name finally appeared on the seventh edition.

The most famous and quoted line from the poem is “Yet each man kills the thing he loves.”

But “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” is not some romantic love ode. It is a dark rumination about murder, the harshness of prison life and the execution of a fellow prisoner of Wilde’s, referred to as “C.T.W.” in the poem.

C.T.W. was Charles Thomas Wooldridge, a trooper in Her Majesty's Royal Horse Guards in London.

Wooldridge and his young wife Nellie did not have a happy marriage. He was said to have abused her and suspected her of infidelity. She eventually decided to live apart from him, in Windsor.

In March of 1896, Trooper Wooldridge asked Nellie to meet him at his barracks in London to talk about a reconciliation.

She supposedly agreed, but didn’t show up. So, he took a train to Windsor, brought along a straight razor, went to Nellie’s home and cut her throat.

Trooper Wooldridge was quickly sent to the Reading Gaol for murdering Nellie, where Wilde met him and apparently came to see him as a tragic figure.

It was a short relationship. On July 7, 1896 Wooldridge was executed by hanging at age 30.

Later that year, after Wilde was released from prison, he wrote “The Ballad of Reading Gaol.”

The dedication at the beginning says: “In Memoriam, C. T. W. Sometime Trooper of the Royal Horse Guards.”

Here, is a key part of the poem that indicates the gist of Wilde’s sympathetic view of Wooldridge:

“He looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved,
And so he had to die.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

He does not die a death of shame
On a day of dark disgrace,
Nor have a noose about his neck,
Nor a cloth upon his face,
Nor drop feet foremost through the floor
Into an empty space.”

The poem goes on in this vein for quite a while and is much longer. But I think you get the point.

I get it, too, and I recognize the brutal nature of “justice” in the Victorian era. I especially sympathize with Wilde over the absurdly harsh treatment he received simply for being gay.

But I find it hard to feel sorry for Trooper Wooldridge.

And, I am hereby dedicating today’s post on This Day in Quotes to poor Nellie.

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February 9th – The dual anniversary of the infamous Commie Pinko and Purple Telletubby conspiracy theories!

The anniversary of two notorious warnings about threats to the traditional American way of life happen to fall on February 9th.

On February 9, 1950, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) gave a rousing speech to the Ohio Country Women’s Republican Club of Wheeling, West Virginia.

In it, McCarthy famously claimed:

“I have here in my hand a list of 205 that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist party, and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy in the State Department.”

This quote was essentially the public launch of the anti-Communist witch hunt that would soon be called “McCarthyism.”

That term was coined in a March 29, 1950 political cartoon by the great political cartoonist Herbert Block, who signed his cartoons as “HERBLOCK.”

Exactly forty-nine years after Joe McCarthy made his announcement about the Communist threat, another warning about a different threat to American purity made national news.

In an Associated Press report published on February 9, 1999, AP journalist David Reed revealed that televangelist Rev. Jerry Falwell had claimed that the children’s TV show Teletubbies was trying to turn kids gay.

Reed’s article explained:

      The Rev. Jerry Falwell is trying to out Tinky Winky, suggesting that the purple, purse-toting character on television’s popular “Teletubbies” children’s show is gay.

   The February edition of the National Liberty Journal, edited and published by Falwell, contains an article warning parents that the rotund Teletubby with the triangular antenna may be a gay role model.

    To support its claim, the publication says Tinky Winky has the voice of a boy but carries a purse. “He is purple – the gay-pride color; and his antenna is shaped like a triangle – the gay-pride symbol.”

    Falwell contends the “subtle depictions”' are intentional and issued a statement Tuesday that said, “As a Christian I feel that role modeling the gay lifestyle is damaging to the moral lives of children.”

Of course, the fact that these famous/infamous warnings by McCarthy and Falwell both happen to be associated with the date February 9th is just a coincidence — OR IS IT!?!

February 7, 1968 – “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”

On February 7, 1968, after American bombs, rockets and napalm had obliterated much of the South Vietnamese town of Ben Tre — killing hundreds of civilians who had lived there — an unnamed U.S. officer gave an oft-quoted explanation for the destruction.

This is how Associated Press journalist Peter Arnett reported it:

“It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,” a U.S. major said Wednesday. He was talking about the grim decision that allied commanders made when Viet Cong attackers overran most of this Mekong Delta city 45 miles southwest of Saigon. They decided that regardless of civilian casualties they must bomb and shell the once placid river city of 35,000 to rout the Viet Cong forces.

When Arnett’s story about the destruction of Ben Tre hit the news the next morning, February 8th, the major’s quote immediately became infamous. To this day, it is still cited as a classic quotation that epitomizes the insanity of war in general and of the Vietnam War in particular.

The veracity of the quote has also been a source of controversy. Since Arnett did not identify the officer who supposedly used the line, some people have questioned whether anyone actually said it.

In 2006, a Vietnam veteran named Michael D. Miller created a website titled “Saving Ben Tre.” On that site, Miller claims to have been present when a “Major Booris” said something very close to what Arnett reported. Miller gives the quote as: “We had to destroy Ben Tre in order to save it.”

Like Arnett’s report, Miller’s version has been disputed.

More significantly to the people of Vietnam, there has been a long-running dispute over whether Ben Tre actually had to be destroyed.

The U.S. military’s official explanation of why “it became necessary to destroy the town” is that it had been infiltrated by thousands of Viet Cong. Thus, their rationale went, trying to oust the VC in ground-level fighting, from street to street, would have caused a high number of American casualties and even more civilian casualties.

Perhaps they were right. But somehow, Arnett’s report on the outcome doesn’t quite smell like victory:

U.S. advisers said the heavy allied firepower hurled on the city to drive out the Viet Cong probably contributed largely to the deaths of at least 500 civilians and possibly 1,000. South Vietnamese officials say the enemy dead totaled 451. About 50 Vietnamese soldiers died, along with more than 20 Americans...Lt. Col James Dare of Chicago, commander of U.S. Advisory Team 93, said “we will never know for sure” the number of civilians who died…Maj. Chester L. Brown of Erie, Pa., spent hours over the city as an Air Force forward air controller directing helicopter and fighter-bomber attacks. “It is always a pity about the civilians,” he said.

The AP story went on to say:

U.S. officials reported it was impossible to determine the attitude of the city’s residents to the bombing and artillery fire. “Most of those we see around appear mighty relieved that they survived,” one official said, “But I know that there are lots of refugees, maybe 10,000 to 15,000, outside of town in a camp and they may not be so happy.”

I suspect that last quote was a bit of an understatement.

Updating the origin of the term “a self-made man” (Henry Clay didn’t coin it)

If you start looking into claims about the origins of many common phrases, you find that many of those claims are essentially theories or myths that were made up at some point and then repeated.

Other phrase “origins” are based on the earliest example recorded in the venerable Oxford English Dictionary or some other authoritative source. 

Now, by using resources like Google Books, it is much easier to verify — or disprove — claims about the “first use” of phrases.

And, it’s not uncommon to find out that what has long been cited as the origin or earliest recorded use of a phrase is neither.

For example, many books and websites say that the term “a self-made man” was coined by the American politician Henry Clay (1777-1852).

While serving as the U.S. Senator for Kentucky, Clay made a speech on the floor of the Senate on February 2, 1832 in which he said:

“In Kentucky, almost every manufactory known to me, is in the hands of enterprising and self-made men, who have acquired whatever wealth they possess by patient and diligent labor.”

The Oxford English Dictionary lists this as the first recorded use of the term “self-made men.”

The writers of a number of history books have assumed that this was the origin of not only “self-made men” but “self-made man” and claimed that it was.

So, if you Google “Henry Clay” + coined + “self-made man” you find many sources that say Henry Clay coined the term “self-made man.”

But, in fact, he didn’t.

Another great online research tool, NewspaperArchive.com, has searchable PDF copies of American newspapers going back to the early 1700s.

I did a search in NewspaperArchive.com and found an earlier use of “self-made man.”

It’s in a letter signed by a “Prof. Newman” that was published in the October 9, 1828 issue of the Delaware Advertiser and Farmer's Journal.

The heading above the letter is “A SELF MADE MAN” (with no hyphen).

Newman’s letter is about Roger Sherman (1721–1793), the Connecticut statesman and politician who served on the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence and later served as Connecticut’s Senator in the new U.S. Congress.

Professor Newman’s letter notes that Sherman rose from humble beginnings to “the Halls of our Congress” and “was a self made man.”

So, while the term “a self-made man” is associated with the date February 2nd, the reason for the association is that it has long been believed that Henry Clay’s speech on February 2, 1932 was the origin of the term.

I have now blown that theory.

Stop the presses on the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary! I have an edit…