Draft:The whole enchilada (phrase)
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The whole enchilada is an idiomatic English phrase that implies satiating completeness. Arising in Southern California in the 1960s, it entered popular use when it appeared in transcripts of the Nixon White House tapes.
Meaning
[edit]Like the terms The whole nine yards and The whole ball of wax, the whole enchilada connotes a high degree of completeness; unlike those phrases, it is more recent and is based on something more clearly familiar. An Enchilada consists of tortillas, filling, cheese, and a chile-based sauce. A whole enchilada is metaphorically all the parts that synergistically make a whole.
Origin
[edit]The first known use in print of the phrase appeared in Budd Schulberg’s 1969 novel Sanctuary V[1] in a scene where the protagonist and his wife Marta are facing exile:
I shook my head and laughed. “Life is going to seem very stale. You’ve always added the salt and pepper.”
”Salt and pepper,” Marta said. “I want to be the whole enchilada.”
While the book is set in a fictional Latin American republic, Schulberg had been living in Hollywood for several years writing novels and screenplays. There is no telling whether Schulberg coined the phrase or heard it in casual usage.
It next appeared in print three years later in Tennessee Williams’ play Small craft warnings[2] in a conversation between two women:
[Leona sits at table with Violet and Bill.] Violet, dear, will you look at your nails?
VIOLET: I know, the enamel’s chipping.
LEONA: Yes! Exposing the dirt.
[Violet drops her hands under the table.]
Oh my god, forget it, forget the whole enchilada. Not worth a thought.
Though Williams was a New Yorker at that writing, he had many possible connections with Schulberg, most notably through the director Elia Kazan who directed both Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire and Schulberg’s On the Waterfront.
While both authors were titans of their era, the works in which the phrase appeared were both unheralded.
Another unheralded 1972 work using the phrase (twice) was the novel[3]The Lovo-maniacs by gossip columnist Rona Barrett.
Funny the way things like that can work out. How long had we talked that night, after Buddy got us out of the house and away in his mama's car? Hours. Until dawn and after. About the whole enchilada. Everything. His family. The world. My family. What we were and what we wanted, what could frighten us and what made us happy.
“Listen— fuck the demo tape. When you're ready ... go for the whole enchilada. Hire the people, check with me and I'll tap the right studio, put it together— professional— and then bring it over to Lullaby.”
Barrett was also highly connected with the Southern California film industry, and had widespread popular appeal, but The Lovo-maniacs saw the same lack of success as the other two books.
In 1973 a printed publication finally brought the term into widespread usage:
https://archive.org/details/presidentialcamp05unit/page/2214/mode/1up?q=enchilada
In a conversation between Herb Kalanbach and John Erlichman on April 19, 1973 in the Oval Office, the two White House officials discuss the unraveling of the criminal conspiracy to cover up the Watergate break-in:
E Did he tell you about Dean?
K Nope.
E Well Dean has totally cooperated with the U.S. Attorney in the hopes of getting immunity. Now what he says or how he says nobody seems to be able to divine but he
K The whole enchilada?
E He's throwing off on Bob and me heavily.
K He is?
E Yep.
K He is.