Origin of quotation

[luisb...@aol.com]

Bob Dylan asked his Paris audience whether it's true that "one Frenchman is worth a thousand lives." Where does that come from?

[khematite]

On Sunday, 9 July 2017 15:44:36 UTC-4, luisb...@aol.com wrote:
> Bob Dylan asked his Paris audience whether it's true that "one Frenchman is worth a thousand lives." Where does that come from?

Google it and you only get two hits, both of which are references to Dylan's having said it during his 1966 Paris concert. I'd guess that in Dylan's mental state during that concert he somewhat mangled the original phrase "A thousand Frenchmen can't be wrong." That phrase had also appeared over the years as "Ten thousand Frenchmen can't be wrong" and "Fifty thousand Frenchmen can't be wrong." In 1927, Sophie Tucker's hit song codified the phrase as "Fifty million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong," and was followed by the 1929 Herbert Fields-Cole Porter Broadway musical with the same title.

In 1959, RCA Victor borrowed the phrase for Elvis' second album of gold records, titled "50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong."

[luisb...@aol.com]

Or an explosion of "a picture is worth a thousand words," sometimes attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte.

[President_dudley]

On Sunday, July 9, 2017 at 4:11:07 PM UTC-4, khematite wrote:

Which led in turn, as we all know, to "50 Phil Ochs fans can't be wrong".

[robert...@gmail.com]

On Monday, July 10, 2017 at 12:14:55 AM UTC-4, luisb...@aol.com wrote:

> Or an explosion of "a picture is worth a thousand words," sometimes attributed
> to Napoleon Bonaparte.

I hear that he and Horatio Nelson traded photos over Instagram.

--
BR

[Just Walkin']

A piece of shit is worth a thousand luisb posts.

[The BIEVS]

[K. Hematite]

Olympia Theatre, Paris, May 24, 1966 (Dylan's 25th birthday). The crowd was probably more upset with the gigantic American flag that suddenly appeared behind Dylan as he began his electric set than with his extended guitar tuning. But hear the banter for yourself:

https://www.bobdylan-comewritersandcritics.com/pages/programmes/dylan-paris-24-may-1966.htm

[Hoyle Kiger]

I would say it's more likely Dylan knew exactly what he was saying and parlayed the expression into an attempt to compliment the French, perhaps?

[K. Hematite]

> I would say it's more likely Dylan knew exactly what he was saying and parlayed the expression into an attempt to compliment the French, perhaL


Looking back on this thread five years later, I have to wonder whether Dylan wasn't just twitting his French audience in response to its apparent hostility to him. Perhaps he was making the point (rather hyperbolically--the ratio obviously wasn't 1000:1) that a lot of American lives had to be sacrificed to liberate France in World War II--by some estimates, nearly 30,000, in fact. The war , of course, had ended only twenty years earlier and was a lot fresher in people's minds at that point. That explanation would also tie in Dylan's remark to the gigantic American flag displayed behind him on the Paris stage.

From Sean Wilentz's Bob Dylan in America:

"…the curtains part, and there they see to their horror, attached to the backdrop, the emblem of everything they are coming to hate, the emblem of napalm and Coca-Cola and white racism and colonialism and imagination’s death. It is a huge fifty-star American flag. And Bob Dylan, the emblem of American rebellion and imagination’s rebirth, has hoisted it aloft.

"Was it a joke? But it is no joke…this Stars and Stripes stuff turns a musical challenge into an assault, an incitement…In England, the idol had traded insults with the hecklers, but in Paris, on this, his twenty-fifth birthday, he strikes first."