Fred Allen? Charlie Rice? Red Skelton? Anonymous?
Question for Quote Investigator: Puns are regularly lambasted, but the complaints are often comical as in the following slyly self-reflexive joke:
A person who makes puns should be drawn and quoted.
This statement has been attributed to comedian Fred Allen, newspaper columnist Charlie Rice, and entertainer Red Skelton. Would you please help me to find the true originator?
Reply from Quote Investigator: This pun alludes to the penalty of drawing and quartering which was ordained in England in the thirteenth century for the crime of treason.
The earliest match for this pun found by QI appeared in a column by Charlie Rice in the widely distributed Sunday newspaper supplement “This Week Magazine” in April 1961. Rice credited Fred Allen. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
Meanwhile, let us hope for the best, and remember the words of the late Fred Allen: “Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns. He should be drawn and quoted!”
Fred Allen (stage name of John Florence Sullivan) was one of the most popular humorists on the radio in the U.S. in the 1930s and 1940s. He died in 1956.
Additional compelling evidence appeared in the 2001 book “All the Sincerity in Hollywood” which contained writings from Fred Allen compiled and edited by Stuart Hample who was able to access the private collection of the Allen family and an archive of Allen’s documents at the Rare Book & Manuscript Division of the Boston Public Library. Hample explained the strategy Allen used to gather material for his radio program:2
Allen penciled random thoughts on the sheets of foolscap he kept in his pockets, some written as grist for his radio comedy, others for reasons known only to himself.
Hample indicated that Allen’s notes were written in lower case. Here were four items:3
most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing our wild oats — then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure.
hanging is too good for a man who makes puns, he should be drawn and quoted.
everything in radio is as valuable as a butterfly’s belch.
celebrity — person who works hard his whole life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In July 1961 publisher and columnist by Bennett Cerf attributed the quip to Charlie Rice instead of Allen:4
Incidentally, hanging is too good for punsters, Charlie Rice insists. They should be drawn and quoted.
In September 1961 the popular magazine “Reader’s Digest” printed the following:5
“Hanging,” Fred Allen once said, “is too good for a man who makes puns. He should be drawn and quoted.”
—Charlie Rice in This Week Magazine
In 1964 “Quote: The Weekly Digest” linked the joke to Red Skelton although the name was misspelled as “Skeleton”. Interestingly, Fred Allen did write jokes for Skelton early in his career:6
“Hanging,” Red Skeleton once said, “is too good for a man who makes puns. He should be drawn and quoted.” — Jim Kelly.
In 1968 Evan Esar’s compilation “20,000 Quips and Quotes” included these two items:7
Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted. – Fred Allen
No one ever enjoys anybody else’s puns, only his own. – Louis Untermeyer
In 1985 “A Teacher’s Treasury of Quotations” printed the following variant:8
A good pun deserves to be drawn and quoted. —Ronald L. Holter, quoted by L.M. Boyd, Detroit Free Press, Apr. 24, 1982
In conclusion, QI believes Fred Allen deserves credit for this pun based on the April 1961 citation and the 2001 book of Allen’s writings. QI does not know how Charlie Rice learned of the joke. Perhaps Rice heard the line spoken by Allen during a radio show.
Image Notes: A visual pun for the word “quartered”. Original image from OpenClipart-Vectors at Pixabay. The image has been modified and resized by QI.
Acknowledgements: Great thanks to Alice Mills and Luther Mckinnon whose messages on x-twitter led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.
- 1961 April 2, The Salt Lake Tribune, Section: This Week Magazine, Charlie Rice’s Punch Bowl, Start Page 18, Quote Page 19, Column 2, Salt Lake City, Utah. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 2001, “All the Sincerity in Hollywood . . .”: Selections from the Writings of Radio’s Legendary Comedian by Fred Allen, Compiled by Stuart Hample, Chapter: Introduction, Quote Page xxxiv and xxxv; Also Chapter: Allen’s Aphorisms, Quote Page 106, Fulcrum Publishing, Golden, Colorado. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 2000, “All the Sincerity in Hollywood . . .”: Selections from the Writings of Radio’s Legendary Comedian by Fred Allen, Compiled by Stuart Hample, Chapter: Allen’s Aphorisms, Sub-section: Quote Page 107, 108, and 116, Fulcrum Publishing, Golden, Colorado. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1961 July 29, The Morning Call, Try and Stop Me by Bennett Cerf, Quote Page 20, Column 5, Paterson, New Jersey. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1961 September, Reader’s Digest, Volume 79, Number 473, Pun-in-Cheek, Quote Page 225, The Reader’s Digest Association, Pleasantville, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1964 December 20, Quote: The Weekly Digest, Volume 48, Number 25, Quote-able Quips, Quote Page 17, Column 1, Published by Droke House, Indianapolis, Indiana. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1968, 20,000 Quips and Quotes by Evan Esar, Topic: Punning, Quote Page 651, Doubleday, Garden City, New York. (Verified on paper) ↩︎
- 1985, A Teacher’s Treasury of Quotations, Compiled by Bernard E. Farber, Section Pun, Quote Page 233, McFarland & Company, Inc., Jefferson, North Carolina. (Verified on paper) ↩︎