The sweet smell of victory

Posted by Victoria S Dennis December 13, 2007In reply to The sweet smell of victory posted by ESC on December 13, 2007

Who first used the expression "The sweet smell of victory"?

The phrase I've heard is -- sweet smell of success.

I don't know who first said "sweet smell of victory", but I'm fairly sure that s/he was just creating a variant on the much older (and still much commoner) "Sweet Smell of Success", which was coined by a US writer called Ernest Lehman as the title of a novelette, which was (in 1957) made into a very successful Hollywood film. (VSD)