Ted Thackrey, Jr.

Ted Thackrey, Jr. reported for The Wichita Eagle and the Los Angeles Examiner before joining the Los Angeles Times in 1968, where he became a rewrite man. He was the son of the newspaper editor Theodore Olin Thackrey. Alongside the journalism he wrote books, among them Gambling Secrets of Nick the Greek — the 1968 volume that carries the earliest known version of this line. He died in July 2001; a Los Angeles Magazine notice that year quoted a former Times colleague saying he “made stuff up all the time”.