Category Archives: George S. Kaufman

Combining the Mount Wilson and Mount Palomar Telescopes Still Won’t Be Enough

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George S. Kaufman? Eddie Fisher? Clifton Fadiman? Dick Cavett?


Dear Quote Investigator: Many, many years ago I saw an old clip on TV of George S. Kaufman and he was replying to a question submitted by a listener/viewer/audience member. For the sake of example let’s say it was a woman complaining about her husband’s smoking habit. I don’t recall his exact words, but they went something like this:

In California, I believe on Mount Palomar, there is a powerful telescope that can see to the edges of our solar system. They are constructing a new one which will let us see far beyond our own system into other universes. [More details and punch line omitted.]

My question is: Do you know which program this was, what year and what the actual quote was?

Quote Investigator: The readily available and searchable records for early television programs are poor. But there is a report of a joke delivered by Kaufman during an episode of the television program “This is Show Business” shown on the CBS network that conforms to your outline. The earliest account QI has located appeared in a memoir by the talk-show host and television personality Dick Cavett.

George S. Kaufman was a panelist on “This is Show Business” at least twice during its initial run, and the Internet Movie Database indicates that the series was first televised between 1949 and 1954 [IMSB]. Guest stars visited the show and sang, danced, or performed in some way. In addition, they were supposed to present a personal problem for the panelists to discuss. The singing sensation Eddie Fisher stated that the difficulty he faced stemmed from girls that refused to go out with him because of his youth. The following elaborate response from Kaufman is in Cavett’s 1983 book [ECGK]:

Mr. Fisher, on Mount Wilson there is a telescope that can magnify the most distant stars to twenty-four times the magnification of any previous telescope. This remarkable instrument was unsurpassed in the world of astronomy until the development and construction of the Mount Palomar telescope.

The Mount Palomar telescope is an even more remarkable instrument of magnification. Owing to advances and improvements in optical technology, it is capable of magnifying the stars to four times the magnification and resolution of the Mount Wilson telescope.

Mr. Fisher, if you could somehow put the Mount Wilson telescope inside the Mount Palomar telescope, you still wouldn’t be able to see my interest in your problem.

Cavett indicated that he was using his memory to reconstruct the wording used by Kaufman decades earlier. Unsurprisingly, human memory is imperfect. In 2010 Cavett retold the anecdote in a New York Times online article, and the quotation attributed to Kaufman is quite similar; however, the wording differs in several places.

Unless a transcript is discovered QI thinks that the exact phrasing is probably lost. Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

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Meretricious and a Happy New Year

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Gore Vidal? George S. Kaufman? Frank P. Adams? Marx Brothers? Walter Winchell? Anonymous?

Dear Quote Investigator: The holiday season is here, and I have a question about a pun. A critic once told Gore Vidal that one of his novels was meretricious and Gore pointedly replied:

Really? Well, meretricious and a happy New Year to you too!

This anecdote is set in the 1970s and when I read about it recently I was reminded of stories about the Algonquin Round Table. The group members used to play a game in which a word was selected and a participant was challenged to create a clever sentence using it. I think meretricious was one of the words chosen, and the result was the quip used by Gore Vidal many years later. Could you check into this?

Quote Investigator: The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, a top-notch reference that is enjoyable to browse, lists this anecdote of verbal jousting under the name of Gore Vidal. But the entry also mentions some instances of the pun as early as 1933 credited to The Marx Brothers and Franklin P. Adams [ODHM].

The earliest cite located by QI is in a 1930 piece by the famous columnist Walter Winchell who referred to the sentence construction activity as a “parlor pastime.” The example using meretricious was deemed “one of the cleverest”. Winchell mentioned several members of the Round Table: Alexander Woollcott, Franklin P. Adams, and Dorothy Parker, but he did not provide a name for the originator of the wordplay for meretricious in 1930.

Twelve years later in 1942 Winchell credited the pun to the playwright and Round Table member George S. Kaufman. In 1945 a biographer of Alexander Woollcott assigned the joke to Franklin P. Adams. In modern times the wordplay is often attributed to Gore or Adams.

Here are selected citations in chronological order. An interpretation for each pun is included at the end of the article.

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Theatrical Review: I Saw It Under Adverse Conditions. The Curtain Was Up

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Groucho Marx? Walter Winchell? George S. Kaufman? George Jean Nathan?

Dear Quote Investigator: When a friend asked me my opinion of a terrible play that I saw recently I answered:

I did not like it, but perhaps this judgment is unfair. I saw it under adverse conditions — the curtain was up.

Eventually she coaxed me into admitting that this joke is from Groucho Marx. However, my memory is imperfect so I decided to check with a Google search, and I found that a playwright named George S. Kaufman is also listed as the originator. Could you determine if this is a real Groucho quote or a fake one? Also, can you ascertain which show was being ridiculed?

Quote Investigator: Evidence indicates that Groucho did utter a version of this quote in 1931 to Walter Winchell who promptly reported it in his widely-read and highly-influential newspaper column. The confusion about the attribution arises because Groucho gave credit to the playwright and humorist George S. Kaufman for the quip when he told it to Winchell. In fact, the initial newspaper report in 1931 mentions only Kaufman’s name.

The target of the jest was a show called “Vanities” by the major Broadway producer Earl Carroll, and he was not happy to hear the mocking comment. His anger was primarily directed at Winchell, but there were repercussions over a period of years including: strained relationships, publicly traded insults, and a theater attendance ban.

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