A MAN'S GOTTA DO WHAT A MAN'S GOTTA DO

My friend Patty's favorite quote is: "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do." As one of Patty's birthday presents, I "commissioned" an original piece of art using that saying and I wanted to be able to attribute the quote to its proper source.

Although I thought I knew the source, I wanted to check to be certain. I learned that, along with many others, I am wrong. I thought that it came from the 1939 John Ford classic movie Stagecoach, with John Wayne, as The Ringo Kid, uttering the immortal words, but NO; here's the actual dialogue from that movie: "There are some things a man just can't walk away from."

A friend said that it was indeed John Wayne's utterance, but it came from Hondo, but NO: here's the actual wording from there: "A man oughta do what he thinks is best."

My brother said, "That's definitely from Shane, but NO, too, to my usually infallible brother. Van Heflin's speech: "I couldn't do what I gotta do if I hadn't always knowed I could trust you."

Charlton Heston, in Three Violent People, said, "A man must do what he must do."

After all my research, I was pleased to learn that the closest attribution of the phrase came from The Grapes Of Wrath, but from the book, not the movie. In Chapter 18, page 306, the character Jim Casy says: "I know this, a man got to do what he got to do."

Interestingly, George Jetson on The Jetsons, 1962-1968, stated: "Ha, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do; I should've won three space Oscar awards."

From here on, I'm going to say, "As George Jetson said:.......".

Hear the delightful Neil Patrick Harris sing the song A Man's Gotta Do What A Man's Gotta Do.