[Ads-l] "A comic does funny things; a comedian does things funny"

[Ben Yagoda]

Question for Garson: On Facebook, I just encountered a quote attributed to Buster Keaton: “A comedian things does funny things. A good comedian does things funny.” I was skeptical of the attribution (partly because of the flat adverb) but when I Googled the quote I found lots of Keaton attributions. But Wikipedia quoted a variant (citing Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations, 1988) and attributed it to Ed Wynn: "A comic says funny things; a comedian says things funny.”

That jogged my memory that when I encountered the quote years ago the contrast was indeed comic/comedian instead of comedian/good comedian.

Anyway, Garson, I’d appreciate it if you sleuth out this quote.

Ben
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