Quote: I don't want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members (antedating Groucho attrib 1949 October 20)

[Laurence Horn]

Of course he was ripping off Bertrand Russell, who said (almost) the
same thing (mutatis mutandis).  And those admittedly perennially
lying Cretans.

LH

At 4:15 PM -0400 3/24/11, Garson O'Toole wrote:
>One of Groucho's most famous lines was delivered when he resigned a
>club membership. Here is the version given in his autobiography
>"Groucho and Me" (1959):
>
>PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT
>WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER.
>
>In Groucho's apocryphal account he sent the "Delaney Club" a wire with
>the words above. "Delaney" was employed as all-purpose pseudonym.
>Ralph Keyes discusses the saying in the Quote Verifier with evidence
>from Arthur Marx's "Life with Groucho" (1954) and other sources.
>
>The ADS list archive contains messages on the topic back in 2005. The
>earliest previously known citation I have seen is in Look magazine
>March 28, 1950 given in the Yale Book of Quotations. I have located
>reports by three syndicated columnists in 1949: Erskine Johnson,
>Jimmie Fidler, and John Crosby. These reports were duplicated in
>multiple newspapers, so I will only list one excerpt from each.
>
>Cite: 1949 October 20, Dunkirk Evening Observer, In Hollywood by
>Erskine Johnson, Page 22, Column 5, Dunkirk, New York.
>(NewspaperArchive)
>
>Groucho Marx's letter of resignation to the Friars' Club: "I don't
>want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its
>members."
>
>Cite: 1949 October 27, Oregonian, Stanley Kramer Praised For Making
>Economy Films by Jimmie Fidler, McNaught Syndicate, Page 6 [GNB Page
>26], Column 4, Portland, Oregon. (GenealogyBank)
>
>Groucho Marx, irrepressible wit. In resigning from the Friars club Mr.
>Marx, incapable of passing up an opportunity for a gag-line, wrote: "I
>don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member."
>
>Cite: 1949 November 2, St. Petersburg Times, Marx Badgers Contestants
>by John Crosby, [Unreadable Page Number; Maybe 12] GN Page 14, Column
>6, St. Petersburg, Florida. (Google News archive)
>
>(The word "as" is repeated in the original text.)
>
>Grouch Marx. a vertebrate of indeterminate origin, recently, I'm told,
>resigned from the Friars Club with the simple, chilly explanation: "I
>don't want to belong to any club that would accept me as as one of its
>members," That's a fairly typical example of the Marx wit-succinct,
>crushing, and, in a rather terrifying way, sensible.
>
>Even in 1949 the wording was variable, but Johnson and Crosby (without
>the typo) present the same quote. (Crosby may be reproducing Johnson's
>version.) The 1950 Look Magazine instance in YBQ is different: "I do
>not care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members."
>The Reader's Digest, a major nexus of propagation, cites the
>Johnson/Crosby version in 1950 and credits "John Crosby in New York
>Herald Tribune." There are many more versions in 1950 and later but I
>will stop here.
>
>Garson
>
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