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Who really said it

I Would Rather Have Two Girls at 21 Each Than One At 42

Sung by W. C. Fields — not his joke W. C. Fields 1880–1946 · American comedian, juggler and writer
Disputed origin — he sang it, he didn’t write it In copyright

Fields really does sing this exact wording, about seventeen minutes into the 1939 Universal comedy You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man ↗, in a shower scene. But he did not write it: Quote Investigator’s ↗ earliest strong match is a Seattle vaudeville column of February 1915 crediting the ventriloquist Great Lester with “I would rather have two girls at 17 than one at 34.”

Last verified 27 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed wording — copy with the correction

“I'd rather have two girls at 21 each than one girl at 42.” sung by W. C. Fields in "You Can't Cheat an Honest Man" (Universal Pictures, 1939). Not his joke: the earliest strong match located by Quote Investigator is a vaudeville column in The Seattle Daily Times, 23 February 1915, crediting the ventriloquist Great Lester with "I would rather have two girls at 17 than one at 34." Via Quotle.info

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Universal Pictures, for the 1939 film). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the themes of love and happiness. Theme: "I Would Rather Have Two Girls at 21 Each Than One At 42". 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.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "I Would Rather Have Two Girls at 21 Each Than One At 42". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

“Lines From Current Vaudeville,” Seattle, 1915

Earliest strong match
“Lines From Current Vaudeville,” The Seattle Daily Times, 23 February 1915, page 9
Credited there to
“Lester, Pantages” — the ventriloquist Great Lester — as “two girls at 17 than one at 34”
This 21/42 wording
You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (Universal Pictures, 1939)
Also recorded in
Fred Allen, Much Ado About Me (1956), page 102 — the 17/34 form, copied from his first vaudeville notebook

“An optimist is a person who doesn’t give a whoop what happens so long as it doesn’t happen to him.” —Howard & McCane, Orpheum.
“I would rather have two girls at 17 than one at 34.” —Lester, Pantages. Vaudeville stock gag

The 1915 column as transcribed by Quote Investigator ↗: a newspaper simply logging the jokes then being told in local houses, each tagged with a performer and a theatre. Note the numbers — 17 and 34, not 21 and 42.

Scanned memoir, 1956 — the 17/34 variant
Fred Allen, Much Ado About Me — page 102
Quote Investigator: the full chronology, 1915 to 1970

How the joke travelled

  • 1915 — The earliest strong match located by Quote Investigator ↗: a “Lines From Current Vaudeville” column in The Seattle Daily Times of 23 February 1915 logs “I would rather have two girls at 17 than one at 34” against “Lester, Pantages” — the ventriloquist Great Lester ↗. QI does not know whether he wrote it or lifted it.
  • 1921–1922 — The gag keeps moving and keeps changing its arithmetic: a parody song title, “I’d Rather Have Two Girls at Sixteen Than One at Thirty-two,” in the Mt. Vernon Register-News of Illinois, then a reader’s submission — “I had rather have two girls 18 than one 36” — in the Greensboro Daily News, both documented by QI ↗.
  • 1956 — Fred Allen prints the same 17/34 line in his memoir Much Ado About Me, page 102 ↗, among the jokes he copied into his first notebook when he switched from juggling to comedy. He gives no date for the notebook and makes no claim to the line.
  • 1939 on screen — Fields sings the 21/42 form in You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man ↗, the Universal comedy whose story is credited to “Charles Bogle,” a Fields pen name; QI places it ↗ about seventeen minutes in, during the shower scene. From there it enters the Fields quote books — without a citation.
In copyright

The exact 21/42 wording shown here is first documented in You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (Universal Pictures, 1939) — a work published well after 1930, and treated here as in copyright. The older newspaper forms of the same gag (1915, 1921, 1922) are public domain, but they are not this wording: their numbers are 17/34, 16/32 and 18/36.

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

What actually gets misattributed here

The line travels as a Fields witticism. He did perform it — but he performed it as a vaudeville-trained comedian using vaudeville material, most of which nobody owned and nobody signed.

W. C. Fields Popularized it, didn’t write it

It was already circulating on the vaudeville stage: Quote Investigator’s ↗ earliest strong match is a February 1915 Seattle column, and QI concludes Fields — himself a vaudevillian from 1898 — may simply have heard it on the stage, calling him an important locus for its popularization rather than its source.

The 21/42 pairing Only one of several

The arithmetic kept moving: 17 and 34 in 1915, 16 and 32 in an Illinois party report in 1921, 18 and 36 in a North Carolina reader’s column in 1922. QI ↗ notes the figure was variable; 21 and 42 is the form Fields sang on screen.

Drat! (1968), ed. Richard J. Anobile Source note: “To Come”

The collection printed the line as Fields’s and annotated a source for each quotation — but for this one, per QI ↗, the note named no movie, interview or book, carrying only a placeholder.

Wikiquote’s Fields page No citation

The line sits in the general quotes list with no source line attached ↗, immediately above an entry that is sourced to the 1939 film — so a reader scanning quickly can easily read the film credit onto the wrong line.

Fields sang it on screen in 1939; the same joke had already been printed in a Seattle vaudeville column in 1915, an Illinois social column in 1921 and a North Carolina jokes column in 1922, with only the arithmetic changing. Quote Investigator ↗ lays out the whole chain.

Context

A joke nobody owned

Vaudeville ran on borrowed material. A gag that worked in Seattle on a Tuesday could be in another comedian’s notebook a week later, and nobody signed anything. This one surfaces in The Seattle Daily Times in February 1915, in a column headed “Lines From Current Vaudeville” that simply logged what was being told on local stages — the credit is a performer and a theatre, Lester, Pantages, and nothing more.

The loop closes neatly. Great Lester taught Edgar Bergen ↗ his ventriloquism; Bergen and Charlie McCarthy would go on to co-star with Fields ↗ in the 1939 Universal comedy where the joke resurfaces — Fields singing it while showering behind the circus tent, an elephant’s trunk for a showerhead ↗. Fields wrote that film’s story under his pen name Charles Bogle, which is likely why the line has read as his ever since.

The numbers moved — 17, then 16, then 18, then 21. The joke never did.

Why nobody can name the author

Quote Investigator is explicit about the limit of the evidence: it does not know whether Great Lester crafted the statement or lifted it from a fellow performer. A newspaper column recording what was being told on local stages is a snapshot of circulation, not a birth certificate — and QI notes the line was used by multiple comedians.

Fred Allen’s memoir shows the mechanism from the inside. Starting out, he stopped studying jugglers and started writing down other comedians’ lines; this one sits in his first notebook among a handful of stray gags he had heard. He never claimed it as his own, and never said when he wrote it down — QI can only place it, from context, somewhere between his 1911 high-school class and his 1914 monologue rewrite.

The Fields quote books inherited the problem rather than solving it. Drat! (1968) annotated a source for every line it printed; for this one, the note was the placeholder “To Come.” The 1970 Stanyan collection gave no precise citations at all.

Explore

Filed under

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

Love 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 Origin: I Would Rather Have Two Girls at 21 Each Than One At 42quoteinvestigator.com

The definitive investigation: the 1915 Seattle attestation, the 1921 and 1922 variants, the Fields film, Fred Allen's notebook, and the unsourced quote books.
Much Ado About Me (1956), page 102 — full scanworldradiohistory.com

Fred Allen's memoir, scanned. Page 102 prints the 17/34 form among the jokes he copied into his first vaudeville notebook.
W. C. Fields — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Lists the line among Fields quotes with no source line attached, unlike the film-sourced entries next to it.
You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939)en.wikipedia.org

The 1939 Universal comedy in which the line appears; story credited to 'Charles Bogle', a Fields pen name (the lyric itself is documented by Quote Investigator, not here).
The Great Lesteren.wikipedia.org

The vaudeville ventriloquist credited with the 1915 version — and, later, Edgar Bergen's teacher.
W. C. Fieldsen.wikipedia.org

Biography: born William Claude Dukenfield, 1880–1946; entered vaudeville in 1898 as a tramp juggler; wrote under the name Charles Bogle.

About the performer

The man who made it famous

W. C. Fields

1880–1946 · American comedian, juggler and writer

Born William Claude Dukenfield in Darby, Pennsylvania, Fields entered vaudeville in 1898 as a silent “tramp juggler” and only later let comedy take over the act. He wrote several of his own film stories under pen names — including Charles Bogle, the credited story writer on You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man, the 1939 picture in which this line appears. That double credit, performer and writer, is a large part of why lines he merely inherited from the vaudeville circuit are still filed under his name.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Sources

“Lines From Current Vaudeville,” The Seattle Daily Times, February 23, 1915, 9 — the earliest strong match located by Quote Investigator, crediting “Lester, Pantages” with “I would rather have two girls at 17 than one at 34.” The 21/42 wording: W. C. Fields in You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (Universal Pictures, 1939). Compare Fred Allen, Much Ado About Me (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1956), 102.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I Would Rather Have Two Girls at 21 Each Than One At 42’?” Last verified 27 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-would-rather-have-two-girls-at-21-each-than-one-at-42/

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