Not many people around here are likely in this category right now, but some take advantage of the bad times to make money and cry all the way to the bank.                                                                                                                                               This cliché means that in times of negative circumstances, a person did well financially. Some legitimately, some not.

The phrase is often accredited to Liberace, who used it in 1953, after a concert at Madison Square Garden for which he took a beating from critics, but made a tidy sum of money. It was quoted in 1954 by Hy Gardner in Champagne Before Breakfast.

“Yet Liberace takes it all with a grain of sugar, commenting, in his sort of slushy style of speaking, ‘Those jokes and bad notices affect me very deeply — they make me cry all the way to the bank!’”

Even earlier, however, it appeared in Waterloo Daily Courier of Iowa on Sept. 3, 1946: 

“Eddie Walker perhaps is the wealthiest fight manager in the game ... The other night when his man Belloise lost, Eddie had the miseries ... He felt so terrible, he cried all the way to the bank!”

Though it didn’t become popular until much later, the reverse phrase, laugh all the way to the bank was in print in “Peter: A Novel of Which He Is Not the Hero” by F. Hopkinson Smith in 1908. “Some of them heard Mason laugh all the way to the bank.”

At any rate, all we can do is make the best of every day. I would rather laugh, or even smile, than cry!

If you would like to know the origin of a favorite expression, text the author at 931-212-3303 or email him at stan@stclair.net.