So in “Cool Hand Luke”; was that little excerpt made famous BEFORE or AFTER Guns-n-Roses used it in their song? (Cival War I think?)
Oh and in case anybody cares; You guys are settling a bet for me. My friend says after I say before.
Not that I’m trying to play favorites here or anything. 
I say before. My parents used to say it all the time when I was a kid. I promise you they never listened to G&R.
Before. My pals and I were using it while Axl was in junior high.
Before, easily. That was a popular movie, and filled with quotable quotes.
Among others. . .
“I can eat fifty eggs.”
“Sometimes nothing is the coolest hand.”
Something about rules in a knife fight. (or was that butch cassidy.)
Anyway, “what we have here is failure to communicate.” (or wrongly, “a failure to communicate”) was a widely quoted line before the GnR song, and people knew what it was from, as opposed to “we don’t need no stinking badges.”
It helps that “what we have here is failure to communicate” is applicable to lots of situations.
Toss you another quote.
“XXX…a night in the box”
My pals and I twisted that in all directions.
“Fail a midterm? A night in the box!”
“Puke on your girlfriend? A night NOT in the box!”
And so forth ad nauseum.
Before.
Was Axl Rose out of preschool when Cool Hand Luke was filmed, let alone written?
Cool Hand Luke was released in 1967.
Axl Rose was born Feb. 6, 1962.
That tends to support the contention that the phrase used in the film by Strother Martin (wonderful character actor seen in other films such as the Wild Bunch and True Grit) preceeded the song.
It was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid said by Paul Newman just before kicking Ted Cassidy in the nads (Cassidy is better known as Lurch from the TV series The Adams Family).
Not the question, reread the OP. The question was when was the quote made famous.
The answer is of course what you said however. The phrase was already famous and often heard before Guns-n-Roses.
Strother Martin was guest host of an early episode of Saturday Night Life (19 April 1980 according to IMDb, not long before his death). In one sketch, Bill Murray was at a French language summer camp and it was a direct parody of Cool Hand Luke. “All berets must be worn at a slant. Anyone not wearing his beret at a slant spends a night in le box.” Murray runs away at one point and is brought back by two guards. Martin tries to get Murray to speak French by showing him a picture of a small cat. “Le chat et petit! What we’ve got here is failure to communicate bilingually!”
Actually, it’s not exactly wrong. The phrase is first said by Captain early in the film, sans the “a”. However, Luke mocks Captain with the line while trapped in the church near the end and includes the “a”.
The phrase was promoted as part of the trailer for the film (click on the film reel), which made it a catchphrase even before the film came out. People started picking up on it even if they haven’t seen the movie.
To be precise, according to the trailer, it’s “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”
Now that one is actually “We don’t need to show you no stinkin’ badges!”
Or…
Adding “boss” on the end of whatever you’re talking about: “Changing the channel here, boss”. “Starting a new thread here, boss.”
“Wavin’ at the Pope here, boss.”
I had an English teacher in high school who, when someone answered a question incorrectly, would shout, “What we have here is a failure to communicate!” To which the class would shout back, in unison, “My mind’s right, boss!”
Courtesy of the good reverend 
:
Lookin’ at my sandles… that’s a paddlin’.
Paddlin’ the school canoe…you better believe that’s a paddlin’.
“Takin’ it off here, Boss!” I have yet to find a woman willing to use that line in the particular way I would like.