The Art of "Quotemanship" and "Misquotemanship"

Quoting people accurately is really hard — and you can quote me on that.

Critic Tosses an Intentional Misquote

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In a review of Trouble with the Curve (starring Clint Eastwood, Amy Adams, Justin Timberlake and John Goodman), the Toronto Star’s movie critic Peter Howell opens an intentional misquote.
It goes like this (from today’s issue of the paper):

If I might misquote Robert Preston for a moment, it must be said that Trouble with the Curve starts with “T” and that rhymes with “C” and that stands for Clint–and also confusion.

It’s a snappy beginning. Clearly, the writer is hoping that the reader can draw from a musical that was released in movie form in 1962.
As usual, my lack of knowledge sent me scurrying to the Google search engine. It really wasn’t that hard because I assumed the writer was referring to Preston’s most famous role… as the slick Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man. The song is “Ya Got Trouble.” According to this site, Harold’s line (repeated a few times) is in this sequence:

Townspeople: Oh, we got trouble
Harold: Right here in River City
Townspeople: Right here in River City
Harold: With a capital ‘T’ and that rhymes with ‘P’ and that stands for ‘pool’

Although the movie is getting kind of old, and references might bypass numerous readers, I like the tip-o’-the-straw-hat to the production. The movie, after all, celebrates its 50th movie-release anniversary.
Below, is the YouTube presentation of the song:

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