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Who really said it

How Old Cary Grant?" "Old Cary Grant Fine, How You?

Not Cary Grant — a travelling joke first told about speedboat racer Gar Wood Tom Ferris Life dates not documented · Florida press agent, father of science writer Timothy Ferris
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

Cary Grant denied the telegram story outright in a 1978 Los Angeles Times profile, and the gag was already in print in September 1957 — about the speedboat racer Gar Wood, not Grant. Quote Investigator ↗ concludes the Cary Grant telling is apocryphal and finds the version featuring press agent Tom Ferris — who wired back “Old Gar Wood fine. How you?” — the convincing one.

Last verified 7 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“How Old Cary Grant?" "Old Cary Grant Fine, How You?” "Old Cary Grant fine. How you?" — not Cary Grant. He denied the story in a Los Angeles Times profile in 1978. The joke was already in print on 22 September 1957 in the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, told about the speedboat racer Gar Wood; Quote Investigator credits the reply to press agent Tom Ferris. The Cary Grant wording was popularised by Time magazine on 27 July 1962.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Cary Grant. Use the credit shown above instead.

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In context

Evoking the world of Tom Ferris — father of science writer Timothy Ferris. Theme: "How Old Cary Grant?" "Old Cary Grant Fine, How You?". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Provenance

Where the wording actually appears

Alleged source
A telegram from Cary Grant to a magazine editor — no telegram, no date, no archive
Earliest known telling
Almanac: Wire You So Anxious to Know?
First printed
Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, 22 September 1957 — subject: speedboat racer Gar Wood
First told about Grant
A newspaper column of 8 November 1959, via Celeste Holm; popularised by TIME, 27 July 1962

In his studio office, he keeps three tremendous photographs of his wives and numberless mementos of his long and lofty career. “The good old days are now,” he grins amiably. A short time ago, a magazine editor wired him: HOW OLD CARY GRANT? And he wired back: OLD CARY GRANT FINE. HOW YOU? TIME, 27 July 1962

This is the telling that made the line famous — and the first to put the reply in Grant’s own hand. The joke was already five years old in print, and belonged to somebody else: “How old Gar Wood?” / “Old Gar Wood fine. How you?”

Magazine archive
TIME, 27 July 1962: “Hollywood: Old Cary Grant Fine”
Quote Investigator: “How Old Cary Grant?” “Old Cary Grant Fine, How You?”

The paper trail

  • 22 September 1957 — the earliest known citation, an “Almanac” column in the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune: a reporter covering a Florida speedboat race gets a late-night wire from his editor reading “How old Gar Wood?” and answers “Old Gar Wood fine. How you?” No Cary Grant anywhere in it. Quote Investigator ↗
  • 1959 — the name starts moving. On 29 September the subject is General Mark Clark, cabled from Rome; by 8 November it is Cary Grant, in a telling by Celeste Holm in which the studio sends the reply. Both datings are laid out by Garson O’Toole on the American Dialect Society list. ADS-L, May 2010 ↗
  • 27 July 1962 — TIME runs a profile headlined “Hollywood: Old Cary Grant Fine” and has Grant himself wiring the answer back to a magazine editor. This is the version everyone now repeats. TIME archive ↗
  • 11 June 1978 — a Los Angeles Times profile puts the anecdote to Grant directly and he refuses it: the story has been attributed to various people, he says, and he wishes it were true. Reproduced by Quote Investigator ↗

There is no authored work to assign this line to: Cary Grant denied sending the telegram, and no telegram survives. Every documented printing of the joke — the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune column of 22 September 1957 and the TIME article of 27 July 1962 among them — was published well after 1930 and remains its publisher’s copyright, so nothing here can be treated as public domain.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Three men, one telegram

This is a joke that changes its leading man. Quote Investigator finds it told with at least three different people in the starring role, and Cary Grant was the third to arrive.

Cary Grant Apocryphal

Asked about the anecdote for a Los Angeles Times profile published 11 June 1978, Grant answered: “That story has been attributed to various people over the years. I wish I could say it was true, but it’s not.” Quote Investigator ↗, which reproduces the exchange, concludes the Grant telling is apocryphal.

General Mark Clark Also unsupported

In Earl Wilson’s column of 29 September 1959, an INS correspondent in Rome cables “How old Mark Clark?” and a New York editor cables back “Old Mark Clark fine. How you?” QI ↗ calls this imitative version questionable.

Cary Grant’s studio, not Grant Detail changed

When Celeste Holm told the story in a column of 8 November 1959 — the earliest Grant version QI ↗ documents — it is the studio that wires the reply. Grant only becomes the wit himself in TIME, 27 July 1962 ↗.

“Old Cary Grant fine. How you?” Rewritten

The line as originally printed names a speedboat racer: “Old Gar Wood fine. How you?” George Dixon’s 1961 telling is different again — the request reads “Please wire me how old Gar Wood is” and the reply keeps the verb: “Old Gar Wood is fine.” See the variants ↗.

Quote Investigator ↗ finds the anecdote with press agent Tom Ferris and speedboat racer Gar Wood convincing, supported by the testimony of Ferris’s son, the science writer Timothy Ferris. Cary Grant simply inherited a good line.

Context

Why the joke travels so well

Telegrams charged by the word, so senders stripped out every “is” and “are” they could. That economy is the whole engine of this gag: strip the verb from “How old is Gar Wood?” and you get a question that reads equally well as a greeting to a man named Old Gar Wood. The joke needs only a famous name and an editor too cheap to spell out a sentence — which is exactly why the name kept changing.

In the surviving record it changed twice in a little over two years. A Florida speedboat regatta in 1957, a general in Rome in 1959, and by November 1959 a Hollywood star. Grant’s name fit best because his age was the thing reporters actually wanted and never quite dared ask, and because a wire from Cary Grant is a better story than a wire from a press agent.

“Old Gar Wood fine. How you?”

How it drifted onto Cary Grant

The 1957 tellings do not name the reporter at all — the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune column calls him only “our F.C.O.N.,” the paper’s Favorite Crusty Old Newspaperman, and the Reader’s Digest reprint that December has him only as “a crusty old newspaperman, who has worked all over the world.” The name Tom Ferris arrives in 1961, in George Dixon’s column, along with the detail that Ferris was a Florida press agent for Steve Hannagan.

Even the first Cary Grant telling did not credit Grant with the wit. In Celeste Holm’s November 1959 version it is the studio that fires back “Old Cary Grant fine. How you?” The upgrade — Grant intercepting the wire and answering it himself — is Time’s, in 1962.

Grant, unusually for a film star, refused the free anecdote when a reporter put it to him in 1978.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Time Happiness

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator: “How Old Cary Grant?”quoteinvestigator.com

The definitive investigation: the full 1957–1978 citation chain, the Gar Wood and Mark Clark versions, and Grant’s own denial.
TIME, 27 July 1962: “Hollywood: Old Cary Grant Fine”time.com

The magazine profile that put the wire in Grant’s own hands and made the story famous.
ADS-L: “How old Cary Grant?” citationslistserv.linguistlist.org

Garson O’Toole’s 2010 posting to the American Dialect Society list, laying out the Gar Wood, Mark Clark and Cary Grant datings.
“Old Cary Grant Fine” (1962 article reprint)carygrant.net

A fan-archive transcription of the 1962 TIME piece, useful for reading the telegram passage in its full context.
Cary Grant — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Grant’s sourced quotations. Notably, the telegram line does not appear here at all — the article has no attributed or misattributed section, and the line is absent from the sourced quotes.
Gar Wood — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

The racer at the centre of the original 1957 telling: nine-time Harmsworth Trophy winner and the first man to travel over 100 mph on water.

The man Quote Investigator finds most likely sent it

Tom Ferris

Tom Ferris

Mid-century Florida press agent · father of science writer Timothy Ferris

Thomas A. Ferris worked in Florida as a press agent for the New York publicist Steve Hannagan, whose habit of firing off trivial telegram queries set up the joke. Columnist George Dixon named Ferris as the sender of the famous reply in 1961, and Ferris’s son — the science writer Timothy Ferris, born in Miami in 1944 to a publicist father — told Quote Investigator in 2011 that he had heard his father quote the exchange within the family. His life dates are not documented in the sources that record the anecdote; he survives in print mainly as the punchline’s author.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Source

Earliest known telling: “Almanac: Wire You So Anxious to Know?,” Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, September 22, 1957, sec. Upper Midwest, p. 1 — in the Gar Wood form. The Cary Grant wording as popularly quoted appears in “Hollywood: Old Cary Grant Fine,” Time, July 27, 1962. Chronology and citations per Garson O’Toole, Quote Investigator, “Dialogue Origin: ‘How Old Cary Grant?’ ‘Old Cary Grant Fine, How You?’” (October 30, 2010).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘How Old Cary Grant? Old Cary Grant Fine, How You?’?” Last verified 7 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/how-old-cary-grant-old-cary-grant-fine-how-you/

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