Where does 'Follow the Money' originate?

[johnsemlak]

This may not actually be Movie releted, but I thought of it watching the film 'All the President's Men', a classic that has surged in relevence due to recent events.

Where does the line 'Follow the Money' originate? I assume the film didn't coin it. Is it Watergate-related or something older?

 

[Joshua Randall]

I can't find any hits on bartleby.com , so the phrase may very well be original to the movie.

 

[wingsandsword]

The moment I saw the quote, I thought of "All the President's Men". It's a three word phrase, so it's doubtless been said before then (and it's sound advice in any investigation), but I'm pretty sure that movie made it famous (I don't know immediately if Deep Throat/Mark Felt actually said it during the original Watergate scandal though, so I don't know if it's a historic quote or a movie quote).

 

[William Ronald]

The moment I saw the quote, I thought of "All the President's Men". It's a three word phrase, so it's doubtless been said before then (and it's sound advice in any investigation), but I'm pretty sure that movie made it famous (I don't know immediately if Deep Throat/Mark Felt actually said it during the original Watergate scandal though, so I don't know if it's a historic quote or a movie quote).

I remember listening to an interview with Robert Redford, who said that line was added to the movie.

 

[Klaus]

The actual phrase may have been added in the movie, but Deep Throat instructed the reporters to follow the money, even if not in those exact terms.

 

[Fast Learner]

Woodward and Bernstein said that's just exactly what Deep Throat (Mark Felt, second in command at the FBI) said to do. So it was Mark Felt who said it.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I think I have heard it in one of the old Sam Spade movie (Boggy) but that could have been just on the lines of and not just the three words.

 

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

Woodward and Bernstein said that's just exactly what Deep Throat (Mark Felt, second in command at the FBI) said to do. So it was Mark Felt who said it.

I heard the exact opposite. He gave Woodward similar instructions, they just Hollywoodified it into something quotable in their book.

So as far as I know, Woodward and/or Bernstein coined the term.

EDIT: Did some googling. Woodward only THOUGHT he made it up. Turned out it made its first appearance in the screenplay for ATPM by William Goldman.

 

[Fast Learner]

Care to source? My googling showed a wide variety of sources (including Woodward) saying both, that it was Felt, that it was Woodward, and that it was Goldman. The more reliable-seeming ones (though it was certainly hard to tell with the tons of matches) seemed to indicate that it was Felt, so I'm just curious what made it so solid for you.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

This may not actually be Movie releted, but I thought of it watching the film 'All the President's Men', a classic that has surged in relevence due to recent events.

Where does the line 'Follow the Money' originate? I assume the film didn't coin it. Is it Watergate-related or something older?

While it MAY have been an identifiable concept before, it was that movie that really brought it to the fore, not just as a quotable expression but as a reliable tenet to adhere to in uncovering many forms of misdeeds. Tracing where monetary transactions originated from and where, when, why the money is then used has in the intervening years become even better given the even tighter restrictions on money transactions and the much more extensive records of its movement in general.

I mean think about it. For the very reason that large sums of cash draws ever sharper and more immediate suspicion money gets transferred in much more traceable ways - checks, credit cards, bank transfers... That leaves a paper trail that REQUIRES even more funny business in order to hide, circumvent, or eliminate that evidence. While cash isn't going to go away anytime soon there's no doubt that alternate methods of payment especially credit/debit cards are growing in frequency all the time.