Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be at all surprised

Attributed to Dorothy Parker 1893–1967 · American poet and critic; founding Algonquin Round Table wit
Documented as hers in 1934 — but by a friend, in reported speech, and not in this wording. In copyright

The only contemporary record is second-hand: Alexander Woollcott printed the quip on page 149 of While Rome Burns (The Viking Press, March 1934) as reported speech — “If all the girls attending it were laid end to end, Mrs. Parker said, she wouldn’t be at all surprised.” Quote Investigator calls that 1934 credit substantive and finds no close match before it ↗. But Parker never wrote the line herself, and the familiar first-person wording — “who attended the Yale prom … I wouldn’t be at all surprised” — is a later smoothing of Woollcott’s sentence, not a transcript.

Last verified 17 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Unconfirmed quote & credit

“If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be at all surprised” Dorothy Parker (attributed). The earliest documented record is second-hand: Alexander Woollcott, "Our Mrs. Parker," in While Rome Burns (New York: The Viking Press, 1934), 149, which reads "And there was that wholesale libel on a Yale prom. If all the girls attending it were laid end to end, Mrs. Parker said, she wouldn't be at all surprised." The popular first-person wording is a later regularization; Quote Investigator finds no close match before 1934, though the "laid end to end" gag structure was in print by 1843. Verified at Quotle.info.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of Alexander Woollcott and his publisher, The Viking Press). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Dorothy Parker — American poet, critic and short-story writer. Theme: "If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be at all surprised". 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 "If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be at all surprised". 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

The 1934 record

Reported in
While Rome Burns
Recorded by
Alexander Woollcott (1887–1943), in his essay “Our Mrs. Parker”
First published
March 1934 · The Viking Press, New York
Page
149

And there was that wholesale libel on a Yale prom. If all the girls attending it were laid end to end, Mrs. Parker said, she wouldn’t be at all surprised. Reported speech

Read it closely: Woollcott is narrating, not transcribing. The remark arrives inside his own sentence, with “Mrs. Parker said” wedged into the middle and the verdict in the third person — she wouldn’t be at all surprised. The familiar version rewrites that as a clean first-person line. The paragraph is a run of Parker asides; the sentence just before this one is her suspicion that a friend hurt herself “sliding down a barrister.”

Scanned book
While Rome Burns, page 149, scanned at the Internet Archive
Quote Investigator’s full citation trail, 1843 to 2003

How the joke got here

  • 1843 — the frame exists. Quote Investigator points to a Liverpool Mercury item ↗ measuring printed columns laid end to end from Liverpool to London. The measurement gag is Victorian newspaper filler, decades before anyone thought to make it filthy.
  • 1927–1931 — it goes collegiate, then risqué. Judge magazine ran “If all the college boys who slept in class were placed end to end they would be much more comfortable” in August 1927, and by 1931 a book advertisement was joking that if a character’s lovers were laid end to end it would put them in a very awkward position — both catalogued by Quote Investigator ↗.
  • March 1934 — the anchor. Alexander Woollcott’s While Rome Burns reaches print, and on page 149, inside his portrait “Our Mrs. Parker,” the Yale prom line is credited to her. The scanned book is readable at the Internet Archive ↗; its copyright page records “PUBLISHED MARCH 1934” and sixteen printings by October 1935. This is the earliest close match anyone has found.
  • 1945–2003 — the drift. Samuel Hopkins Adams gives it as “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised” in 1945; Corey Ford moves it to Princeton in 1967; Scott Meredith relocates it to Smith and Bennington in 1974; Dominique Enright restores something close to Woollcott in 2003. The sequence is laid out citation by citation at Quote Investigator ↗.
In copyright

The passage that documents this quip is a 1934 publication, not a nineteenth-century one. While Rome Burns was published in March 1934 by The Viking Press, and its copyright page reads “COPYRIGHT 1934 BY ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT” — comfortably inside the era where US works remain protected, so the text is treated here as in copyright and quoted only in the brief extract needed to document the attribution. Parker’s spoken remark has no separate published source of her own; her literary estate passed to Martin Luther King Jr. and, after his death, to the NAACP.

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 gets changed in the retelling

This is not a case of the wrong name on a real quote. Parker is very probably the source. The trouble is that almost nobody quotes her the way the only contemporary record actually reads — and the joke’s skeleton was doing the rounds long before she got to it.

“… who attended the Yale prom … I wouldn’t be at all surprised” Later regularization

Woollcott wrote it as reported speech folded into his own narration: “If all the girls attending it were laid end to end, Mrs. Parker said, she wouldn’t be at all surprised.” The circulating version converts “attending it” into “who attended the Yale prom” and “she” into “I,” producing a clean first-person epigram that appears in no 1934 text. Wikiquote still prints Woollcott’s original phrasing ↗.

“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised” Competing variant

Samuel Hopkins Adams gave it as “If all the girls who attended the Yale Prom this year were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised” in his 1945 biography of Woollcott, per Quote Investigator ↗. “A bit” and “at all” have been swapping places ever since, and neither is more authentic than the other — only Woollcott’s is first.

Princeton · “Smith and Bennington” · “all those present” Floating detail

The school will not stay put. Quote Investigator records Corey Ford setting it at Princeton in 1967, Robert Drennan turning it into ‘all those sweet young things present’ in 1968, and Scott Meredith relocating it to Smith and Bennington in 1974 ↗. A specific that drifts this freely is a specific nobody is checking.

Anonymous humourists, 1843 onward Predates her

The “laid end to end” comparison was a stock newspaper device long before the Round Table. Quote Investigator cites an 1843 Liverpool Mercury item measuring printed columns laid end to end from Liverpool to London ↗, collegiate gags in Judge magazine in 1927, and a 1931 book advertisement joking that if a character’s lovers were laid end to end it would put them in a very awkward position. Parker’s contribution is the swerve, not the frame.

the operetta Marinka Different line

In July 1945 The New Yorker credited the operetta Marinka with “If all your lovers were laid end to end, I’d be very much pleased,” as recorded by Quote Investigator ↗. It is a cousin of the gag rather than a challenger to Parker’s version, but it shows how many hands were working the same joke.

The whole case for Parker is one second-hand sentence on page 149 of a 1934 book written by a friend — substantive evidence, in Quote Investigator’s judgement ↗, with nothing closer found before it. Credit her; just don’t pass off the popular wording as a transcript.

Context

Why the line stuck

The joke is a trapdoor. On the surface it is an innocent measurement gag — the kind of thing that had been filling newspaper columns since the 1840s, where you line up an enormous quantity of something and report how far it stretches. Parker’s version refuses to complete the sentence. She sets up the measurement, then declines to measure anything, and the whole payload lands in the second meaning of “laid.” It is a punchline that makes the listener do the indecent part.

That structure is also why the line travels so badly. Because the joke lives in the rhythm rather than in any particular fact, the specifics are free to drift — and they have. In retellings collected by Quote Investigator ↗ the setting moves from a Yale prom to Princeton to “Smith and Bennington” to a vague “all those present,” and the tag flips between “I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised” and “I wouldn’t be surprised.” The core survives every retelling; nothing else does.

She sets up the measurement, then declines to measure anything.

Why Woollcott’s essay carries so much of Parker’s reputation

“Our Mrs. Parker” is a portrait written by a friend and fellow Round Table member for a bestselling collection, and it is where a striking number of Parker’s best-known spoken lines first reach print. On the same page 149 Woollcott sets down her line about the guest who “speaks eighteen languages, and can’t say No in any of them,” the suspicion that a friend hurt herself “sliding down a barrister,” and the Yale prom remark — three of her most-quoted quips, in a single paragraph, all inside Woollcott’s narration rather than in quotation marks she can be held to.

That is not a reason to reject the attribution. Woollcott was there, he published while Parker was very much alive and capable of objecting, and no earlier claimant has surfaced. It is a reason to be precise about what kind of evidence it is: a warm, second-hand, undated memoir sentence — and to notice that the version everybody repeats is not the sentence he actually wrote.

Explore

Filed under

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

Doubt Truth

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: If All Those Present Were Laid End to Endquoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation. Traces the “laid end to end” device to an 1843 Liverpool Mercury item, follows collegiate variants through Judge magazine in 1927 and a 1931 book advertisement, identifies Woollcott’s 1934 credit to Parker as the earliest substantive evidence, and tracks the wording drift through 1945, 1967, 1968, 1974 and 2003.
While Rome Burns — full scan, page 149archive.org

A scanned copy of Woollcott’s collection (this printing dated 1935 on the title page; the copyright page lists “PUBLISHED MARCH 1934”). The Yale prom passage sits on page 149, inside the essay “Our Mrs. Parker.”
Dorothy Parker — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Files the line under Quotes → “Our Mrs Parker” (1934), its sourced section, in Woollcott’s reported-speech wording. The page also carries a standing warning that a great many misquotations are attributed to Parker.
Dorothy Parker — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Biography: born 22 August 1893, died 7 June 1967; Vanity Fair theatre critic until January 1920; on the founding board of editors of The New Yorker in 1925; founding member of the Algonquin Round Table; estate bequeathed to Martin Luther King Jr. and thence to the NAACP.
While Rome Burns — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Background on the 1934 collection of Woollcott’s writing for The New Yorker and other magazines, and on how his radio promotion turned it into a bestseller — which is how these quips reached a mass readership.
While Rome Burns — edition recordopenlibrary.org

Catalogue record confirming first publication by The Viking Press in 1934, with later printings and reprints (Viking 1935, Grosset & Dunlap 1936, Penguin 1937, Pocket Books 1942).
Alexander Woollcott — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

On the man whose memory this attribution rests on: drama critic for The New York Times and The New Yorker, radio personality, Algonquin Round Table member, 19 January 1887 – 23 January 1943.

The wit at the head of the table

Who was Dorothy Parker?

Dorothy Parker

1893–1967 · American poet, critic and short-story writer

Dorothy Parker (born Dorothy Rothschild, 22 August 1893) wrote theatre criticism for Vanity Fair until her dismissal in January 1920, then joined the board of editors at The New Yorker when Harold Ross founded it in 1925, contributing drama reviews, verse and short fiction. She was a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table, the lunch circle of New York writers whose reputation for savage one-liners rests heavily on what its members later remembered and wrote down. That is precisely the problem with her most famous quips: Parker’s published work is fully documented, but her talk survives mainly through friends’ memoirs. She died on 7 June 1967 and left her estate to Martin Luther King Jr., and on his death to the NAACP.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Chicago

Alexander Woollcott, “Our Mrs. Parker,” in While Rome Burns (New York: The Viking Press, 1934), 149. Earliest documented appearance of the quip; Quote Investigator reports no close match before 1934 ↗. Note that Woollcott renders the remark in reported speech, not the familiar first person.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be at all surprised’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/if-all-the-girls-who-attended-the-yale-prom-were-laid-end/

Something wrong on this page?

Tell us what’s off. A link helps but isn’t required — “this is the wrong person” is a useful report on its own. Nothing here changes the page directly; it goes to our review queue and a human checks it.

Only used to tell you if we act on your report. We never sell or share it.

Copied