“Success is a great deodorant”
American actress Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011) said in Life magazine on December 18, 1964:
“I have learned, however, that there’s no deodorant like success.”
In her book Elizabeth Taylor; An Informal Memoir (1965), Taylor wrote:
“I learned in New York that there is no deodorant like success.”
Taylor used the saying many times, with several small variations. Taylor said in 1977, “Success is a great deodorant.” A possible “deodorant/success” influence was a movie, Sweet Smell of Success (1957).
American football coach and color commentator John Madden said “Winning is the best deodorant” in the 1990s, but denied having coined it and called the saying an old sports adage.
Wikipedia: Elizabeth Taylor
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, DBE (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was a British-American actress, businesswoman and humanitarian. She began as a child actress in the early 1940s, and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. She continued her career successfully into the 1960s, and remained a well-known public figure for the rest of her life. The American Film Institute named her the seventh greatest female screen legend in 1999.
Google Books
18 December 1964, Life, “Elizabeth Taylor” (interviews with Life Associate Editor Richard Meryman), pg. 82, col. 1
I have learned, however, that there’s no deodorant like success.
Google Books
Elizabeth Taylor;
An Informal Memoir
By Elizabeth Taylor
New York, NY: Harper & Row
1965
Pg. 124:
I learned in New York that there is no deodorant like success.
Google Books
14 February 1969, Life, “Letters,” pg. 18A, col. 1:
In the words of Elizabeth Taylor, “There is no deodorant like success.”
BETTY NAVA
Austin, Texas
Google Books
The Deceivers; a novel
By Joanna Barnes
New York, NY: Arbor House
1970
Pg. ?:
“There’s no deodorant like success.”
—ELIZABETH TAYLOR
Google Books
The Good Housekeeping Woman’s Almanac
By the editors of the World Almanac
New York, NY: Newspaper Enterprise Association
1977
Pg. 354:
Living well is the best revenge or, as Elizabeth Taylor (1932- ) once put it. “Success is a great deodorant.”
Google Books
Great American Anecdotes
By John Whitcomb and Claire Whitcomb
New York, NY: Morrow
1993
Pg. 133:
“I learned in New York that there is no deodorant like success.” — Elizabeth Taylor.
Google Books
The Quotable Woman:
Words of Wisdom from Mother Teresa, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, Eleanor Roosevelt, Katharine Hepburn, and More
By Carol Turkington
New York, NY: McGraw Hill Professional
2000
Pg. 166:
Success is a great deodorant. — ELIZABETH TAYLOR, ABC-TV, April 6, 1977
Google Books
Elizabeth Taylor:
The Last Star
By Kitty Kelley
New York, NY: Simon & Schuster
2011
Pg. ?:
“I learned in New York,” said Elizabeth later, “that there is no deodorant like success.”
Google Books
The 2,548 Wittiest Things Anybody Ever Said
By Robert Byrne
New York, NY: Touchstone
2012
Pg. ?:
1,412
Success is a great deodorant. —Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011)
Google Books
Elizabeth Taylor:
A Private Life for Public Consumption
By Ellis Cashmore
New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic
2016
Pg. 47:
Nothing succeeds like success. Taylor modified the maxim slightly: “There’s no deodorant like success” (in the Meryman interview, p.82).