The Paradine Case Movie Caper: 1948 Rose Bowl USC vs Michigan

My wife, Hilary, and I went to the 2019 Holiday Bowl at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium with fellow USC alumni, my uncle Stan Case, and his son Dave. The USC Trojans were soundly beaten by the Iowa Hawkeyes, but everything else was great, including spending time with my 90-year-old-still-had-a lot-of-game uncle, and tapping into his marvelous memory. As we were sitting in the stands during what seemed like the 50th 3-minute TV time out, my uncle asked me:
“Did I ever tell you about the 1948 Rose Bowl card stunts?” Some background.
The USC student body section began doing card stunts at home football games starting in 1922. Each student received a stack of 24” by 24” cards made of heavy cardboard of different colors and a sheet of instructions. At half time, the yell leaders would call out the number of the stunt, and each student would hold up the card with the color listed in their instructions and thus spell out certain phrases or create different pictures.

Moving card stunts were the brainchild of USC alumnus Lindley Bothwell (1901-1986) and were soon adopted by colleges and universities across the country. Bothwell also co-founded the Trojan Knights in 1922, a spirit and support organization that was initially comprised mostly of fraternity members. The Knights serve as ambassadors of the University and caretakers of Trojan traditions. They were also in charge of creating and directing the card stunts, as well as meting out discipline when necessary. Some over-excited (or over-served) students would sometimes throw the cards, like frisbees. The Knights would see to it they were ejected from the game. After too many fans were injured over the years by the cardboard missiles, card stunts were shut down at USC.
Bothwell also started the all-male USC Yell Leaders—and was the first “Yell King”—and was the volunteer coach of the Yell Leaders and their successors, the USC Song Girls, for almost 60 years.
Emblematic of these early ties between the Knights and SC’s fraternities, Lindley Bothwell is also credited with co-founding the USC chapter of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity in 1926. [Wikipedia, “Trojan Knights,” and “Lindley Bothwell]

USC played Michigan in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on January 1, 1948. USC was blown out 49-0, its worst bowl defeat in school history. However, the loss was overshadowed by the half-time card stunts performed by the USC student body and led by the Trojan Knights. Stan recalled,
“Towards the end of the card stunts, the SC students thought they were holding up cards to form a picture of Michigan’s All-American halfback, Bob Chappuis. Instead, their cards read: SEE THE PARADINE CASE. Shock waves rolled through the bowl, but a lot of us started cheering and laughing.”
Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller starring Gregory Peck had just been released in the theatres. The Paradine Case

This stunt received National News coverage. The movie’s producer, David O. Selznick Studios, claimed innocence and ignorance. Chortling with glee, they also said, “Naturally, we’re delighted.”
SC’s administrators were furious and launched an investigation. Apparently, the plans for the 1800-card displays were “stolen” two nights before the game. About 100 students had access to the cards, but only a dozen would have known how to alter the cards. The “principal suspects” were questioned by the Dean of Men, Neil D. Warren, but no names were disclosed.
Three other movie studios admitted “a Mr. Jones had called their advertising executives a few days before the game, offering to have the rooting section advertise their academy award contenders for a $2,500 fee. They all said they were interested and asked Mr. Jones to call them back. He never did.”
Selznick Studios insisted they didn’t pay anyone the $2,500 adding, “We wouldn’t know who to pay it to.”
Clifford Dektar, a reporter for SC’s Daily Trojan student newspaper, didn’t buy that. “Selznick’s photographers were tipped off to watch for ‘something mighty sharp’” he said. “They shot several photos during the brief display before the cheerleaders frantically waived the cards down.”

The perpetrator was never caught. But Stan Case clearly recalled the mastermind.
“Ernie Wilson was the guy behind it. We were fraternity brothers at Sigma Phi Epsilon—he was a few years older having come to SC after serving in World War II. He was also President of the Knights that year and one of those who had access to the cards. He got a brand-new Cadillac from the movie studio marketing people for pulling it off. He later became a very successful architect in Newport Beach.”
So, Selznick sort of told the truth—they didn’t pay $2,500 to anybody.

Stan also said he and Ernie’s younger brother, Ronnie, were Sig Ep pledge brothers.


After graduating from USC in 1948 with a degree in architecture, Ernest Clifford Wilson, Jr. co-founded Langdon and Wilson with fellow classmate Robert E. Langdon. Theirs became one of the most successful architectural firms in Southern California. Among the many iconic buildings designed by Ernie was the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades that was spared by the January 2025 wildfires. Ernest C. Wilson Jr. – Wikipedia
Ernie Wilson’s two sons, Pete and Cliff, were fraternity brothers of mine in Delta Tau Delta at USC during the early 1970’s. Uncle Stan got a big kick out of that. Which brings us to the next two all-time classic card stunt RFs laid squarely at the feet of two of our Delt brothers.
“Westwood Sucks”
USC faced off against its long-time rival, UCLA, in December of 1971 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum with over 68,000 fans in attendance. Back then, both the Trojan and Bruin football teams played their home games at the Coliseum. In 1971 USC was the “home” team with their student body and many Trojan faithful seated on the sunny side of the stadium. Both teams were fighting for a spot in the Rose Bowl. At the time, Pac 8 and Big Ten teams had only one shot at a bowl game: the Rose Bowl. The game was played to a hard fought 7-7 tie—there was no overtime back then—thus eliminating both teams from a Rose Bowl appearance. The game was not memorable. The SC card stunts from that game live on in infamy.
[By the way, underdog Stanford played heavily favored and undefeated Michigan in the 1972 Rose Bowl. Stanford won 13-12.]
A few years ago, The Best Colleges website listed the top 10 greatest college card stunts of all time and SC’s card stunts for that game with UCLA made the list. Here’s what they had to say.
The fierce competition between the University of Southern California (USC) and its neighbor, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), is well known, with various pranks (not least the stealing of the Victory Bell!) a hallmark of their sporting match-ups. Perhaps the most famous incident occurred live on television when ABC was broadcasting the 1971 rivalry game between the Trojans and the Bruins. Hilariously, during a well-organized stunt, the cards were meant to spell a rather long message: “Why do people go to UCLA? Westwood SUCKS…them in.” However, only the “Westwood SUCKS” part was shown on TV, allowing the true feelings of the more mischievously minded to shine through. 10 Greatest College Card Stunts of All Time – Best Colleges Online

Ben Wong was a senior at USC and in attendance at the rivalry game. He recalled that the final card stunt was planned to happen during a commercial break, so it wouldn’t appear on TV.
“The Knights got creative with it. The university-approved stunt was to be broken up in three parts: ‘Why do people,’ which flipped to ‘Go to UCLA?’ and finally to ‘Westwood Sucks….Them In.’ Somehow, the last message was split into two parts so the words ‘Them In’ were flashed after ‘Westwood Sucks.’ Well after.
“ABC Sports decided to stay on the stunts instead of going to commercial,” Wong remembered. “When ‘Westwood Sucks’ popped up, sports announcer Keith Jackson gasped, ‘Oh my God,’ at which point ABC quickly cut to commercial before ‘Them In’ was flashed.” Too late.
The USC fans, both in attendance and watching the TV broadcast, went crazy. It’s one thing to humiliate your rival on the football field or with a prank that, at best, might make the student body papers. But on national TV? It just doesn’t get any better than that.
Which begs the question. So……..who was the person who came up with that particular card stunt?
None other than one of our Delt Tau Delta fraternity brothers, James “Jimmy” Kindelberger Graham. Who only, and finally-48 years later- fessed up after I shared with him the prank pulled off in 1948 by Ernie Wilson.
In 1970 Jimmy was on the committee in charge of creating the card stunts. He described their meticulous creative process.
“When we were making up the cards in 1970 and 1971, we sketched them out on a big sheet of paper that had a tiny block for every seat in the student body rooting section, and the process required about two cases of beer for the 6 to 7 guys on the committee to accelerate creativity. I think we started on Monday night with the sheets of paper and finished on Tuesday night. Then we gave the sheets to the computer geeks in SC’s school of engineering (thank goodness for those guys), and they’d spend Wednesday and Thursday using a Fortran program to spit out all the individual cards that we taped to the bottom of the seats on Saturday morning before the game.”
It was during a “creative” session in 1970 that Jimmy came up with the “Westwood Sucks” stunt, broken up into the three parts as described above. However, the President of the Knights at the time deemed the stunt “in poor taste” and disallowed it for the 1970 USC-UCLA game. Which, in retrospect, was a godsend since my wife to be, Hilary Tedrow, had recently been crowned USC’s Helen of Troy, and was introduced at halftime and driven around the Coliseum track in a Cadillac convertible with her father. That stunt would have been a major distraction and headline grabber.

So, the “Westwood Sucks” stunt was mothballed, but not before Jimmy saw to it that the student engineers programmed the stunt so “Westwood Sucks” would appear before and separate from “Them In” should the stunt ever be reinstated.
And it was for the following year’s SC-UCLA game. The new president of the Knights apparently had no problems with its propriety.
And a significant piece of SC lore was thus created.
Did Jimmy know beforehand that the stunt would be “in the cards.” He said, “No, not at all. In fact, I was among the 1,800 or so in the student body section, raising up cards as the yell leaders shouted the instructions. We were behind the cards, so we couldn’t see what they said. And there was no jumbotron TV screen in those days. I remember hearing some gasps and laughter, but it wasn’t until later that night—or maybe not until the next day—that I realized the stunt I designed the previous year had made it out of mothballs, and “Westwood Sucks” had made the national TV broadcast.”
But why did Jimmy wait so long to come forward to seize his fame?
”After that game aired, I proudly told my dad that I had thought up the stunt the year before, and he said, ‘Don’t ever tell anyone again – you don’t want anybody to know that.’ Not the reaction I was looking for, but in hindsight I probably would have told my kid the same thing!”
What did Jimmy think his dad would say today if he were still alive?
“I think my dad would proudly say, ‘That’s my boy!’”
But Jimmy was not done. Not even close.
“Testing…1,2,3”
The 1972 rematch was a huge game for USC who entered the contest undefeated and was number 1 in the polls—and very ripe for an upset by the Bruins. Jimmy Graham was now the President of the Knights. Because of the “Westwood Sucks” furor, SC’s Dean of Students, Dr. Robert Mannes, had to personally approve all card stunts—so that was a big bucket of cold water on that avenue for an RF. But leave it to Jimmy.
“We really wanted the UCLA stunts that day to look awful next to ours, so I enlisted our fellow Delt brother Greg Kirst to help RF the Bruin section. Greg was only a sophomore, but he had no fear. As President of Knights that year I had access to a sideline ribbon that allowed me to go anywhere on both sides of the field during the game, as long as I didn’t go near the football teams. That year SC was the visiting team, so the Bruin student body and their yell leaders were set up on what would normally be SC’s side of the field. I was very familiar with the set up for the microphones and PA system used by the yell leaders on that side of the field.
“So, about a minute before the end of the first half, I met up with Greg, and gave him my ribbon, plus a pair of wire cutters. He took off his Knights shirt and revealed the T-shirt underneath emblazoned with “GO MIGHTY BRUINS.” Greg ambled over to the UCLA section just as the clock ticked zero ending the half. He blended right in. In the ensuing confusion of the teams leaving the field, noise and general jostling of people, he calmly walked up to each of the three Bruin cheerleader microphones and cut the plugs off the cords, so that nobody in the card section could hear the commands for when to hold up their cards. Greg walked back over to the SC side, gave me back the field pass and put on his Knights shirt. SC’s stunts went first and then, when it was UCLA’s turn, they were an utter disaster. It worked so well that we felt kinda sorry. Just kinda…”
USC ended up beating UCLA 24-7 and then took on Ohio State in the Rose Bowl. SC was very sluggish at the start, but thanks to 4 second-half touchdowns by Sam “Bam” Cunningham, the Trojans beat Woody Hayes and the Buckeyes 42-7, remained undefeated at 11-0, and were voted unanimously as National Champions.



P.S. The Delts did have a serious and more formal side. Here is the group photo that appeared in the 1971 edition of SC’s El Rodeo Yearbook. I’ve never seen the brothers look more distinguished with their neckties. And yes, Dean Mannes went ballistic and for the umpteenth time threatened to throw the Delts off campus.

It’s too bad back in the day Ernie Wilson and Jimmy Graham didn’t know of the roles they played in three of the most classic USC card stunt pranks of all time. They would have had a great laugh about that. And, coincidentally—or not— Jimmy’s two sisters worked for Langdon and Wilson, one of them for over 35 years. Jimmy recalled, “Ernie Wilson was one of the all-time cool dudes.”
I suspect Ernie would have said the same thing about Jimmy.
DEDICATION
This story is dedicated in loving memory of Ernest Clifford Wilson Jr (1924-1992), Stanford Ellis Case (1929-2022), and Gregory Andrew Kirst (1953-1984).
DISCLAIMER
No animals were harmed during any of the aforementioned RFs.
Postscript
The 1957 Card Stunt Prank. I’d be remiss if I didn’t also give a tip of the cap to another ingenious card stunt prank pulled off at the 1957 USC-UCLA game at the Coliseum. A group of Squires—the Knights junior varsity squad—managed to infiltrate the UCLA card stunt room on the Westwood campus and make “slight alterations” to the stunts. Steve Marienhoff, Trojan class of 1959 and one of the masterminds, fondly shared his memories 60 years later with the USC Ripsit Blog.
“Halftime rolled around, and UCLA’s students pulled out their instruction cards, telling them which colored card in the seat pocket in front of them to hold up in order to create what they assumed would be a Bruin-friendly picture. When they came up with the first stunt, there was such a cheer and a roar that went out from USC fans, it was unbelievable. And every stunt after that. At about the eighth or ninth stunt, they started to wonder, ‘Why is USC cheering so loud?’ UCLA’s students accidentally flashed “SC” and other pro-USC messages in the upper left corner of each of their 26 card stunts throughout halftime.”

Though the Bruins won the battle on the field, USC’s students had won the day, earning “prank of the year” distinction from Sports Illustrated.
You know, they’re called card “stunts” for a reason.
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