Quote: Calvin Coolidge dead: How can they tell? (Wilson Mizner and Dorothy Parker)

[Garson O'Toole]

Victor Steinbok wrote:
> This is just idle curiosity, but, since you had the text, what was
> Mizner's version of the joke?

To clarify the topic of this question I should note that the quip: "It
is not a novel to be thrown aside lightly. It should be thrown aside
with great force" is attributed to Dorothy Parker, and I have not yet
seen it plausibly attributed to anyone else. However, it is anonymous
in the earliest known citation in April 04, 1960.

The joke about Calvin Coolidge has been attributed to Dorothy Parker
and Wilson Mizner. Knowledge has improved since the The Penguin
Dictionary of Modern Quotations (1980) was written. Earlier citations
for Parker and Mizner are now known.

The phrasing given in The Penguin ("Why, I never even knew that he was
alive") is not typical for this joke. The Penguin cites Wit's End
(1973) by Robert E. Drennan. This same author wrote The Algonquin Wits
(1968) an earlier work that contains the joke and uses one of the
typical phrasings.

Here are citations in reverse chronological order:

Cite: 1968, The Algonquin Wits edited by Robert E. Drennan, Page 115,
Citadel Press, New York. (Verified on paper)

"How can you tell?" asked Mrs. Parker on hearing that Calvin Coolidge was dead.


Here is the phrasing given for the quote attributed to Wilson Mizner
in the 1942 New Yorker profile:

Cite: 1942 October 10, The New Yorker, “Profiles: Legend of a Sport –
Part I” by Alva Johnston, Page 21, Column 1, F-R Publishing
Corporation , New York. (New Yorker online archive)

When an excited man rushed up to him exclaiming, “Coolidge is dead,”
Mizner asked, “How do they know?”

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/backissues/2010/03/eighty-five-from-the-archive-alva-johnston.html
Short version: http://goo.gl/V1oo3


The Yale Book of Quotations has an earlier 1938 citation for Mizner in Esquire:

[When told of the death of Calvin Coolidge:] How can they tell?
Quoted in Esquire, July 1938.


A few months ago I posted to the ADS list a 1936 cite attributing the
remark to Dorothy Parker in the volume "Enjoyment of Laughter":

Cite: 1936, Enjoyment of Laughter by Max Eastman, Page 155, Simon and
Schuster, New York. (Google Books snippet view; Checked on paper in
First reprinting 1970, Johnson Reprint Corporation)

Or Dorothy Parker's remark when told that Calvin Coolidge was dead:
How can they tell?

http://books.google.com/books?id=ZIVZAAAAMAAJ&q=Calvin#search_anchor

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