Any of us alive in the early 70s can figure out the rest of the phrase here.
It was made famous in a song written and first performed by Stephen Stills called
Love The One You’re With
If you’re down and confused,
and you don’t remember who you’re talkin’ to.
Concentration slip away,
‘cause your baby is so far away.
Well there’s a rose in the fisted glove
and the eagle flies with the dove,
and if you can’t be with the one you love,
honey, love the one you’re with,
love the one you’re with,
love the one you’re with,
love the one you’re with.
The song goes on from there.
The date of the publication of the song was 1970. To my mind, that song turned Stephen Stills into a major star. The song was extensively played on the radio and became quite a hit.
– —
In the theme we’ve heard recently in the political pundit realm of
“Borrowed Words”
where some candidate “recycles” a speech first spoken by another candidate,
I found another “borrowed words” situation having to do with this song and a movie I watched last night.
Borrowed words… or Plagiarism?
Okay, about the first “publication” of the words themselves.
This movie is terrible, but it was released in 1965, five years before the song that made the line famous.
Even if it’s the worst movie of all time, it still has first publication rights, yes?
The plot of the movie is that the boy is far away from the girl he loves.
Even though he’s with a local girl, he’s thinking about the girl back home.
You might even say his “concentration is slipping away”
But the local girl that’s with the boy at the moment tells him
“If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with”
When I heard that, I sat up and took notice.
Aww, a fluke, I thought.
But hey, that’s the plot of the movie, so why not use that sentiment, right?
And shortly after that in the movie, we get to see the girl, and the girl is telling the guy that she’s trying to be faithful to her guy, and the guy turns to her and says
“If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one your with”
(To their credit, neither time did the characters sing those soon to be famous lyrics)
And that’s when I had to stop and figure out when the movie was made.
Here’s a line from a crappy movie that hit the movie screens years before a song that made that line famous. It’s probably the most famous thing to come out of that movie, because the movie is otherwise forgettable.
Now… were those words in the common “free love” lexicon/slang of the day, borrowed by the screenwriters as well as Stephen Stills, five years after that? Or did Stills borrow those words straight from the movie itself? We’ll probably never know, but if I was Stills, there’s no way I would admit to “borrowing lines” from THIS movie.
So… what movie is it that Stephen Stills may have borrowed a key phrase from?
Disclaimer: Alison and The Perfessor can not give hints in the comments, because I’ve already told them enough about this bizarre plagiarism.
Can you guess the movie?
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10 users responded in this post
If anyone guesses, I hope it’s because they Googled and not because they actually KNOW this movie, ahem.
Yes, nobody would be able to know this movie… so here’s your first hint –
The movie has a motorcycle race in it, where all sorts of booby traps are set. One of the booby traps is a fake “Bridge Out!” sign and if you take the “shortcut” you go into the pond. The motorcyclists who end up in the pond… all you can see is the tops of their helmets, as the motorcycle “putters along” on the bottom of the pond, and there’s a bad reverse film effect of the motorcycle “driving up” out of the pond.
Okay, it’s not really that much of a clue.
I’m not from the 70’s, but I could finish the phrase, cause, well i listen to 70’s era music 75% of the times these days.
I don’t know the movie, but I see that in 200 a movie came out called Love the One You’re With
2000 rather. I wish I could edit my comments.
Another clue: This movie had a couple of guest stars, both of which played witches in the movie. The older played a witch doctor. The younger of the two was a cameo from her other witcht role she made famous. So in this movie she was basically a “guest witch”.
How to Stuff a Wild Bikini
Though I hate to admit it, I think I actually saw this one. I did have to Google though to find the title. The witch clue did it for me.
Wow, Cheryl!!! Exactly!
It was the last of the Beach Blanket movies with Annette and Frankie, and the guest star witches was Buster Keaton playing the witch doctor and Elizabeth Montgomery as his daughter witch.
What was the most shameful for me was the realization that Dwayne Hickman in that movie looks and sounds remarkably like… Ryan Seacrest.
Hey, I saw that film when it came out, and I liked it!(Still do.)
Seriously.
The Perfessor
DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Corp (GM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) Vice Chairman Bob Lutz has defended remarks he made dismissing global warming as a “total crock of shit,” saying his views had no bearing on GM’s commitment to build environmentally friendly vehicles.
I don’t see what the big deal is, my climatology professor, and two friends who are meteorologists have basically said the same thing inlectures and private conversations(minus the SH word).
One of my meteorologist buddies works for a TV station and wanted to do a series of stories contradicting the theory of anthropogenic global warming and the news director wouldn’t allow it because it was it was too controversial.
so much for the free exchange of ideas.
yeah, HandnHalfSword, I promised earlier this year that I would eventually make my case to why I think global warming is way overblown… and I will.
I don’t plan on providing enough evidence to convince anyone — if convincing was my goal, I would have put something up on the web a long time ago.
I’ll just put up a few things that make me believe in an earth that doesn’t have to be so paranoid that we’re going to boil away the glaciers by this time next year…