"knows where the bodies are buried" (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Garson O'Toole]

Bill: Excellent find! Based on the information from your effort, here
is an instance a few days earlier in a newspaper column by John P.
Medbury. The article contains multiple witticisms without attribution.
Hence, Medbury was probably not the coiner of this quip.

Cite: 1930 November 4, Burlington Hawk-Eye, Maybe I'm Wrong by John P.
Medbury, Page 6, Column 5, Burlington, Iowa. (NewspaperArchive)
[Begin excerpt]
A grave digger usually has a lot of influence. He knows where all the
bodies are buried.
[End excerpt]

Here is an unverified cite in Google Books in 1932 without the grave
digger context.

Cite: 1932, So far, so good!: An autobiography, GB Page 338, E. P.
Dutton & Co. (Google snippet; Not verified on paper; Worldcat agrees
with date; Data may be inaccurate)
[Begin excerpt]
There, every day, we lunched, Glady Rosson, his secretary, and the
"gal" who knows where all the bodies are buried, Arthur King, his
financial adviser.
[End excerpt]

Barry Popik also examined this expression. Right now he has later
cites starting in 1938 that closely match the common version without
the word "all".

Entry from October 27, 2010
“Knows where the bodies are buried” (to know inside information)
http://bit.ly/PFSNME

Garson

On Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 4:43 PM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC
<Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> Subject:      "knows where the bodies are buried" (UNCLASSIFIED)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
>
>
>
> The June update for the OED discussed movies as a source of citations,
> and said that the script for "Citizen Kane" was the first known use of
> the phrase "knows where the bodies are buried."
>
>
>
> New Castle News | New Castle, Pennsylvania | Friday, November 07, 1930 |
> Page 25 col 4
>
>
> "A grave digger usually has a lot of influence. He knows where all the
> bodies are buried."
>
>
>
> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
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