“I never promised you a rose garden.”

THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMOUS LINE: “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden”         Hannah Green (pen name of Joanne Greenberg; 1927–1996)        American author        Title of her 1964 novel                      This novel is the apparent source of the saying, though it was made even more famous by country music singer Lynn Anderson’s 1970 hit song of the same name. The well-known opening lyrics of the song, written by singer/songwriter Joe South, are: “I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden.”         Greenberg’s novel is a semi-autobiographical account of her struggle with schizophrenia as a teenager. In an emotional scene in the book, psychotherapist Dr. Clara Fried tells the main character, Deborah Blau: “I never promised you a rose garden. I never promised you perfect justice and I never promised you peace or happiness. My help is that so you can be free to fight for all of these things. The only reality I offer is challenge, and being well is being free to accept it or not at whatever level you are capable. I never promise lies, and the rose-garden world of perfection is a lie...and a bore too!” Dr. Fried is based on Greenberg's real psychiatrist, Dr. Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, who treated her at the Chestnut Lodge hospital in Rockville, Maryland.        The novel was adapted into a movie in 1977. It starred Kathleen Quinlan as Deborah and Bibi Andersson as Dr. Fried. Mel Gibson made his screen debut in the film, in a small uncredited role as a baseball player. Many years later, Mel uttered his own scary quote about a garden. (See below.)

THE BADASS MARINE SLOGAN: “We don’t promise you a rose garden.”         U.S. Marines recruiting slogan used from late 1971 until mid-1984         The “Rose Garden” slogan was used in the first series of posters and ads that featured the tagline “The Marines are looking for a few good men.” Several posters in series showed Marine Drill Instructors yelling at new recruits, like the one shown here. The drill instructor in it is Sgt. Charles A. Taliano, who passed away in 2010.

THE BADASS JUDGE VERSION: “Nobody promised them [prison inmates] a rose garden…They have been convicted of crime, and there is nothing in the Constitution which forbids their being penalized as a result of that conviction.”        William Rehnquist (1924-2005)        Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court         From his written decision on the 1981 U.S. Supreme Court case Atiyeh v. Capps, explaining why the court rejected a lawsuit brought by a group of Oregon prison inmates against the State of Oregon. The inmates wanted Oregon prisons to be forced to reduce prison overcrowding conditions they contended were inhumane and illegal.

THE PASSION OF MEL VERSION: “Apparently Mel Gibson did promise his babymama Oksana Grigorieva a rose garden…But totally not in a good way. In the latest round of the seemingly endless parade of embarrassing tape leaks purporting to capture the Passion of the Christ helmsman in full meltdown mode, a new snippet of conversation has emerged, in which Gibson reportedly threatens to bury Grigorieva in the flower bed of his Malibu, California, mansion.”        From a now-deleted post on the PEACE FM Online site, July 9, 2010

THE PRESIDENTIAL VERSION: “I never promised you a rose garden but I guess [Press Secretary] Ron Nessen did. So, I hope you enjoy this new setting and the new format, and I hope I enjoy it, too.”        President Gerald R. Ford (1913-2006)                      Comment in a news conference on October 9, 1974        Ford was joking about his newly announced plan to hold press conferences in the White House Rose Garden. When Ford and other presidents later started using this option during campaign periods to avoid the usual campaign travel grind while still generating news stories and looking presidential, it was dubbed the “Rose Garden Strategy.”

THE BIONIC VERSION: Col. Steve Austin (actor Lee Majors): “Now wait a minute, Jaime, you're not going out a torpedo tube. Now you felt the sub, it’s gonna be rough out there.”  Jaime Sommers (actress Lindsay Wagner): “You never promised me a rose garden.”                      Banter from the “Kill Oscar: Part 3” episode of the American TV series The Bionic Woman (Season 2, Episode 6, first aired in 1976).

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Comments? Corrections? Questions? Email me or post them on my Famous Quotations Facebook page.

Related reading, viewing and listening…

 

“The rich are different”… The real story behind the famed “exchange” between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.

If you’re a quotation buff, you’ve probably heard of a legendary exchange about “rich people” that supposedly took place between the American novelists F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) and Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961).

Fitzgerald is usually quoted as saying either “The rich are different from you and me” or “The rich are different from us.”

Hemingway is quoted as responding: “Yes, they have more money."

In fact, this quote-counterquote repartee never actually occurred. But it is based on things written by Fitzgerald and Hemingway.

Here’s how it became a legend…

In 1925, Fitzgerald wrote a short story titled “The Rich Boy.” In 1926, it was published in Red Book magazine and included what became a very popular collection of Fitzgerald's early short stories, titled All the Sad Young Men.

The third paragraph of the story says:

     "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different."

Clearly, that’s not a favorable view of rich people.

But years later, Ernest Hemingway, who had a sometimes-warm, sometimes-acrimonious relationship with Fitzgerald, decided to mock those lines from “The Rich Boy” in his short story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”

Hemingway’s original version of “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” was printed in the August 1936 issue of Esquire magazine. In a passage in that original version, Hemingway wrote:

     “The rich were dull and they drank too much, or they played too much backgammon. They were dull and they were repetitious. He remembered poor Scott Fitzgerald and his romantic awe of them and how he had started a story once that began, ‘The very rich are different from you and me.’ And how some one had said to Scott, Yes, they have more money. But that was not humorous to Scott. He thought they were a special glamorous race and when he found they weren't it wrecked him as much as any other thing that wrecked him.”

Understandably, Fitzgerald was shocked and offended.

He expressed his dismay to Hemingway in a letter. He also complained to Maxwell Perkins, the editor who oversaw publication of both writers’ novels and story collections at the Charles Scribner’s Sons book company. Hemingway responded with what Fitzgerald described as a “crazy letter,” a rambling diatribe that offered no real explanation or apology.

Perkins tried to smooth things over between his two prized writers and used his editorial power to fix the source of the problem when Scribner’s reprinted “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” in the 1938 anthology of Hemingway stories, The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories.

In the version of the story in that book, the name “Scott Fitzgerald” was changed to “Julian.” It has appeared that way in most subsequent reprintings.

Unfortunately for Fitzgerald, he made the mistake of writing a cryptic entry in a personal notebook that cemented the legendary version of his “exchange” with Hemingway into literary history.

The entry said simply: “They have more money. (Ernest’s wisecrack.)”

After Fitzgerald died in 1940, his friend, the noted critic and book reviewer Edmund Wilson, compiled a collection of his essays and unpublished writings in a book titled The Crack-Up. It was published in 1945. Wilson included various entries from Fitzgerald’s notebooks in the anthology.

One of them was the brief note about “Ernest’s wisecrack.”

Wilson decided to add an explanatory footnote for that entry in the book. He wrote:

     “Fitzgerald had said, ‘The rich are different from us.’ Hemingway had replied, ‘Yes, they have more money.’”

Then, the famous literary critic Lionel Trilling repeated what he called this “famous exchange” that “everyone knows” in a review and essay about The Crack-Up, published in The Nation.

After that, many other articles and books cited this “exchange” as if it were an actual conversation between Fitzgerald and Hemingway.

And thus a famous quote-counterquote myth was born.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Comments? Corrections? Questions? Email me or post them on my Famous Quotations Facebook page.

Related reading and listening…

 

“You shall not pass!”

THE LORD OF THE RINGS VERSION: “You shall not pass!”        Gandalf the wizard         These are Gandalf’s defiant words to a huge Balrog demon on the Bridge of Khazad-dûm, in a dramatic, pivotal scene in J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Fellowship of the Ring.         The Balrog is pursuing Frodo and the other members of “The Fellowship” who are trying to prevent Middle Earth from being conquered by the Dark Lord, Sauron, and his army of evil monsters. Gandalf saves Frodo and the others by standing on the stone bridge after they have crossed, blocking the Balrog. He tells the creature “You shall not pass!” Then he uses his magic staff to shatter the bridge to pieces. Gandalf and the Balrog both fall with it into the abyss below, presumably to their deaths.         Because Tolkien was a Word War I veteran, it is believed that Gandalf’s words may been inspired by the defiant war slogan “They shall not pass!” This slogan was originally made famous by French troops fighting the Germans at the bloody Battle of Verdun in World War I. In 1936, it was adopted by anti-fascist forces defending Madrid during the Spanish Civil War.        “You shall not pass!” became an Internet meme after the line was used in Peter Jackson’s film The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), featuring actor Ian McKellen as Gandalf. The movie includes an epic depiction of Gandalf confronting the Balrog and saying the those words, while holding his sword and staff. There are now thousands of generally humorous uses and variations of the quote posted online. Some of my favorites are below...

THE LORD OF THE BRIDGE VERSION: “YOU SHALL NOT PASS...in New Jersey!”        A headline in the Huffington Post’s Google+ feed, linking to a story about the so-called “Bridgegate” scandal.        The scandal erupted in early January of 2014, after leaked emails revealed that a top aide to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie ordered the closure of certain traffic lanes on the George Washington Bridge to purposefully create horrendous traffic jams into the city of Fort Lee, because the city’s mayor had declined to endorse Christie in the recent Gubernatorial election.

THE ANTI-HOMOPHOBIA VARIATION: “You shall not pass judgement.”        Slogan on a photo posted on The Confessions of a Geek Queen blog, showing actor Ian McKellen at a Gay Pride parade.

THE PRO-LIBRARY VARIATION: “You shall not pass! Without research help Ask a Librarian.”        Online poster created by the Mississippi Library Commission

THE BROKEN URINAL ADAPTATION: “You shall not piss!”        Sign taped onto an out-of-order urinal, in a photo posted on the Karma Decay site

THE BROKEN WIND ADAPTATION: “You shall not pass…gas in an elevator and blame it on someone else.”        A graphic posted on the Meme Generator site. (One of many using “You shall not pass gas” that you can find online.)

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     * 

Comments? Corrections? Post them on the Famous Quotations Facebook page.

Related reading…

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

THE FAMOUS SIGN AT THE GATES OF HELL: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!” [“Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate!”]        Dante (Dante Alighieri; 1265-1321)        Italian poet        From Dante’s epic poem Inferno, the first part of his Divine Comedy (written c. 1310-1321)        This line is the most frequently quoted part of the admonition inscribed over the entrance to Hell that Dante sees in the allegorical tour of the underworld he takes in the poem, guided by the Roman poet Virgil. It has also been translated as “All hope abandon, ye who enter here” and “Abandon all hope, you who enter here.” The full inscription above the entrance says:        “Through me you pass into the city of woe:         Through me you pass into eternal pain:         Through me among the people lost for aye.         Justice the founder of my fabric moved:         To rear me was the task of Power divine,                Supremest Wisdom, and primeval Love.        Before me things create were none, save things         Eternal, and eternal I endure.         Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

THE HELL DIRECTOR’S VERSION: “Hello newcomers and welcome…I’m the Hell Director. It looks like we have about 8,615 of you newbies today. And, for those of you who are a little confused, uh, you are dead and this is Hell. So, abandon all hope and, uh, yada yada yada.”        The “Hell Director” speaking to souls newly arrived in Hell         In the South Park episode “Probably” (Season 4, Ep. 10; first aired July 26, 2000)

G.B. SHAW’S VIEW OF AMERICAN SOCIETY: “In your dread of dictators you established a state of society in which every ward boss is a dictator, every financier a dictator, every private employer a dictator, all with the livelihood of the workers at their mercy, and no public responsibility. And to symbolize this state of things, this defeat of all government, you have set up in New York Harbour a monstrous idol which you call Liberty. The only thing that remains to complete this monument is to put on its pedestal the inscription written by Dante on the gate of Hell ‘All hope abandon, ye who enter here.’”        George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)         Irish playwright and social activist        In a speech titled “The Future of Political Science in America,” given to the Academy of Political Science in New York City on April 11, 1933.

THE DRUG REHAB VERSION: “Abandon all dope, ye who enter here!”        Sign above the door of a drug rehab center         Fictional sign in the novel Justice Denied (2007) by Judith A. Jance

SPACE MARINES COUNTERQUOTE: Commodore Ross: “Who is that? Which squadron?” Communications officer: “It’s the 58th, sir! The Wild Cards!” Commodore Ross: “Abandon all hope, my ass!”         Commodore Glen Ross (Actor Tucker Smallwood)        In the “Never No More” episode of the great science fiction TV series Space: Above and Beyond. (Season 1, Ep. 14, first aired on February 4, 1996.)

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Comments? Corrections? Post them on the Famous Quotations Facebook page.

Related reading and viewing…

“Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” – and curves and bonds (among other things)…

THE BOOK TITLE THAT BECAME A SAYING: “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”        Anita Loos (1893-1981)        U.S. novelist, playwright and screenwriter        This is the familiar short title of Loos’ famous satiric book, first published in 1925. The full title is Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady.        Loos’ novel is the faux diary of Lorelei Lee, a young, blonde “golddigger” who goes on the hunt for a rich husband in the U.S. and Europe with her friend Dorothy Shaw. The bestselling novel was adapted as a Broadway musical in 1949, starring Carol Channing as Lorelei. In 1953, that was turned into a movie musical with Marilyn Monroe as Lorelei (wowing audiences with, among other things, her iconic performance of the song “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend”).          The phrase “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” became a modern proverbial saying that has inspired many variations and quips. One was written by Loos herself. Her 1927 sequel to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was titled But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes. According to some recent public opinion surveys, the majority of men may indeed prefer brunettes over blondes, except when they’re out on the town (or perhaps out of town without their wives).

GINGER ROGERS’ COUNTERQUOTE: “It isn’t that gentlemen really prefer blondes, it’s just that we look dumber.”         Ginger Rogers (playing the character Sherry Martin)         One of Ginger’s quips in the 1936 comedy film Follow the Fleet

THE POSITIVE BODY IMAGE VERSION: “Gentlemen prefer curves.”         The name of a popular Tumblr blog         The blog is intended to be “inspirational to fuller-figured women (and men) who have struggled with their weight, and their body image, to give them confidence and to show that they are beautiful and sexy!”

THE NEGATIVE BODY IMAGE VERSION: “Gentlemen do not prefer scarecrows. A very thin woman may look well in clothes, but without them she doesn’t offer much to hold on to.”        Brigitte Nioche         New York-based fashion consultant, writer and former model        A remark in her 2004 book Dress to Impress that might be a revelation to supermodel Kate Moss, who once infamously said “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.”

A NOT-SO-FUNNY QUOTE THAT SOME PEOPLE THINK IS A JOKE: “That gentlemen prefer blondes is due to the fact that, apparently, pale hair, delicate skin and an infantile expression represent the very apex of frailty which every man longs to violate.”        Alexander King (1899-1965)        Viennese-born artist, humorist and wit who was a frequent talk show guest on talk shows in the late 1950s and early 1960s (such as The Tonight Show with Jack Paar)        Quoted in The Jumbo Book of Blonde Jokes (2004)

THE AFRICAN AMERICAN VERSION: “Gentlemen Prefer Bronze”        Howard Morehead (c. 1930-2003)        Pioneering African American photographer        Title of his 1964 book of glamour girl photos featuring beautiful black female models        Morehead was one of the first professional photographers to break the color barrier in the entertainment industry. He’s best known for the photos he took of famous black musicians like Billie Holiday and Ray Charles and black leaders like Nelson Mandela, which are featured in the California African American Museum and book titled “I Shot Ray Charles”. Morehead also took “cheesecake” photos of black models for calendars and men’s magazines, many of which were collected in Gentlemen Prefer Bronze. The book was advertised in many men’s magazines of the era and was quite popular. It’s now a hard-to-find collectors’ item.

THE WALL STREET VARIATION: “Gentlemen prefer bonds.”        Andrew Mellon (1855-1937)        American banker and philanthropist who served as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from 1921 to 1932        Although some sources attribute this quip to rich industrialist Andrew Carnegie, it is most often attributed to Mellon. He appears to have said it in 1929, when stocks were still soaring to absurd levels prior to the great stock market crash that occurred in October of that year. In a seemingly prescient comment on the pre-crash runaway market, Mellon reportedly said: “This market will end when ‘Gentlemen prefer bonds.’”

THE MADISON AVENUE VARIATION: “Gentlemen prefer Hanes.”        Hanes pantyhose advertising slogan          The cleverly suggestive line used in a jingle and as a tagline in ads for Hanes “Ultra Sheer” pantyhose for women. According to the Encyclopedia of Major Marketing Campaigns, the ad campaign with this slogan ran from 1973 to 1989.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Comments? Corrections? Post them on the Famous Quotations Facebook page.

Related reading and viewing…

“A little learning is a dangerous thing.”

THE FAMOUS ORIGINAL QUOTE: “A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.”        Alexander Pope (1688-1744)        In his poem An Essay on Criticism (1711)

GOLDMAN-SACHS VERSION: “A little thieving is a dangerous art, But thieving largely is a noble part; As vile to rob a hen-roost of a hen, But stealing largely makes us gentlemen.”        The Democratic Speaker’s Handbook (1868)        A quip aimed at the 19th Century versions of Goldman Sachs

OSCAR WILDE’S VARIATION: “A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.”         Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)         “The Critic as Artist” (1891)

TERRY PRATCHETT’S TAKE: “They say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. There are some situations where the correct response is to display the sort of ignorance which happily and willfully flies in the face of the facts.”        Terry Pratchett (b.1948)        Equal Rites (1987), a Discworld novel

THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER VERSION: “Between lovers a little confession is a dangerous thing.”        Helen Rowland (1875-1950)        Quoted in the The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

THE RED GREEN VERSION: “Middle-aged men...We know everything. But you got to keep this knowledge to yourself, all right? I know that you know that your neighbor is planting that shrub the wrong way, but don’t say anything. I too have seen my wife wallpaper the bedroom the hard way. Just keep your mouth shut, all right? Because when they found out how smart we are, they get jealous, all right? I don’t know who said, ‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,’ but I’m guessing it was a middle-aged man. So whatever it is you know — and I know it’s a lot — keep it under your hat and you’ll be able to keep your friends. Believe me, I know.”        Red Green (actor Steve Smith)        In an episode of The Red Green Show (1991-2006)

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Comments? Questions? Corrections? Post them on the Quotations Facebook Group.

Some recommended books of proverbial sayings and clichés…