Learn English – Origin of the phrase, “Up close and personal”
etymology
What is the origin of the phrase, "up close and personal"?
Best Answer
Identifying the specific origin of a phrase is often impossible, though something can always be said about its history. But in this case we can do better. The phrase was popularized in connection with the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.
Difficulty of finding early uses in print
Search tools are unreliable. Google Book Search says the phrase was current as early as 1961, as evidenced by this excerpt from a crime novel:
A scream of pain, then a low groan, signaled that his timing had been perfect. Contact had been established, up close and personal.
down the middle of his forehead. (G. A. McKevett, Helen McCully, Eleanor Noderer. Just Desserts. Kensington Books, 1961.) [emphasis added]
However, Google Book Search is wrong; the book was published in 1995. There are various other GBS dead ends.
Connection to 1972 Olympic games
But there is an interesting true development in 1972. Sports-film producer Michael Samuelson writes:
I knew it was impossible to send film crews all over the world, yet all over the world is exactly where Olympians live, and I wanted to show them “up close and personal”, to get at their non-athletic personalities, their uniqueness as human beings.
—Michael Samuelson. “Behind the Scenes at the Olympic Games ‘Shoot’”, American Cinematographer, Volume 53, Nov. 1972, p. 1281. [emphasis added]
And then Jim McKay, famous host of Wide World of Sports for ABC who covered twelve Olympic Games for ABC and introduced the phrase “the thrill of victory – and the agony of defeat” into popular memory, writes in 1973:
The idea of the personality pieces (they’ll probably be called “up-close and personal”) can be shown by the contrasting thoughts of two American swimmers. One piece is on Mark Spitz, the brash young Californian by way of Indiana University … . (Jim McKay. My Wide World, Macmillan, 1973, p. 120.) [emphasis added]
It was around this time that the phrase “up close and personal” began its rise to popularity. (See: Google Ngram Viewer chart.)
Popularization by ABC Sports
It turns out that Jim McKay did a series of ABC television segments consisting of interviews of 1972 Olympic athletes, and these segments were called “Up Close and Personal”. (For details start with: Google Search, [jim mckay up close and personal].)
The phrase is not original to Jim McKay, but he popularized it and it remained associated with him in the public mind for the rest of his life.
The name of the segment was apparently chosen by Don Foley at ABC, who later said:
I did it with some embarrassment—it's so ungrammatical and advertiserese. I started life as an English teacher. But I decided to forget my pride and go with the thing. (Don Foley, quoted by William Taaffe. “Adding That Personal Touch: ABC’s profiles of athletes bring warmth and bad grammar to the Olympics”, Sports Illustrated, July 30, 1984.) [Tip of the hat to @Hugo for digging up that admission.]
Foley did not say where he got the phrase; neither did he say specifically that he invented it. But he is as close to an origin as we are likely to come.
Googling further, I found this quote from "The Dictionary of Clichés" by James Rogers:
penny for your thoughts — "What's on your mind? (Usually said to someone who is looking pensive.) The saying is from a time when the British penny was worth a significant sum. In 1522, Sir Thomas More wrote (in 'Four Last Things'): 'It often happeth, that the very face sheweth the mind walking a pilgrimage, in such wise that other folk sodainly say to them a peny for your thought.'"
There's no agreed derivation of the expression 'hunky-dory'.
It is American and the earliest example of it in print that I have found is from a collection of US songs, George Christy's Essence of Old Kentucky, 1862.
We do know that 'hunky-dory' wasn't conjured from nowhere but was preceded by earlier words, i.e. 'hunkey', meaning 'fit and healthy' and 'hunkum-bunkum', which had the same meaning as 'hunky-dory'. 'Hunkey' was in use in the USA by 1861, when it was used in the title of the Civil War song A Hunkey Boy Is Yankee Doodle. 'Hunkum-bunkum' is first recorded in the US sporting newspaper The Spirit of The Times, November 1842.
Best Answer
Identifying the specific origin of a phrase is often impossible, though something can always be said about its history. But in this case we can do better. The phrase was popularized in connection with the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.
Difficulty of finding early uses in print
Search tools are unreliable. Google Book Search says the phrase was current as early as 1961, as evidenced by this excerpt from a crime novel:
However, Google Book Search is wrong; the book was published in 1995. There are various other GBS dead ends.
Connection to 1972 Olympic games
But there is an interesting true development in 1972. Sports-film producer Michael Samuelson writes:
And then Jim McKay, famous host of Wide World of Sports for ABC who covered twelve Olympic Games for ABC and introduced the phrase “the thrill of victory – and the agony of defeat” into popular memory, writes in 1973:
It was around this time that the phrase “up close and personal” began its rise to popularity. (See: Google Ngram Viewer chart.)
Popularization by ABC Sports
It turns out that Jim McKay did a series of ABC television segments consisting of interviews of 1972 Olympic athletes, and these segments were called “Up Close and Personal”. (For details start with: Google Search, [
jim mckay up close and personal].)The phrase is not original to Jim McKay, but he popularized it and it remained associated with him in the public mind for the rest of his life.
The name of the segment was apparently chosen by Don Foley at ABC, who later said:
Foley did not say where he got the phrase; neither did he say specifically that he invented it. But he is as close to an origin as we are likely to come.