Ed Wynn

1886–1966 · American comedian & actor

Ed Wynn was a vaudeville, radio and film comedian famous as “The Perfect Fool,” whose fluttery voice and self-deprecating one-liners made him a household name in the 1920s and 1930s. Quote Investigator credits his 1932 quip — “I have no ambition to be the wealthiest man in the cemetery” — as the earliest documented form of the saying. He later won an Emmy and earned an Oscar nomination for The Diary of Anne Frank (1959).

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“I don't want to be the richest man in the cemetery”

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