The line really is hers — just not from the film everyone names. Quote Investigator ↗ finds no rival claimant and concludes the joke family originated with West, but its earliest located evidence is a 1958 book recalling a 1944 Broadway ad-lib in which the object was a sword, and the famous “gun in your pocket” wording is first printed — with no citation attached — in a 1967 compilation of her sayings. West speaks it on screen only in Sextette (1978).
“Is That a Gun in Your Pocket, or Are You Just Glad to See Me?” Mae West — attributed. The earliest evidence located by Quote Investigator is Art Cohn's "The Nine Lives of Michael Todd" (Random House, 1958), p. 193, reporting a 1944 Broadway ad-lib in the form "Lieutenant, is that your sword or are you just glad to see me?" The "gun in your pocket" wording is first printed, uncited, in "The Wit and Wisdom of Mae West" (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1967), p. 59, and West speaks it on screen in Sextette (1978). It is not from "She Done Him Wrong" or any of her pre-1967 films. Via quotle.info
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Provenance
The earliest documented telling
Earliest evidence
The Nine Lives of Michael Todd
Published
Art Cohn; Random House, New York, 1958 — quote page 193, recounting a 1944 Broadway ad-lib
First print of this wording
The Wit and Wisdom of Mae West, ed. Joseph Weintraub (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1967), page 59 — no citation given
First spoken on film
Sextette (1978) — Mae West as Marlo Manners, to George Hamilton’s gangster Vance Norton
Barry, playing Lieutenant Bunin, was unaccustomed to carrying a sword, and in the second act, during an embrace, his scabbard came between him and his Empress.
A covert smile stole over Mae’s face. “Lieutenant,” she ad-libbed with a Westian leer, “is that your sword or are you just glad to see me?”
Art Cohn, The Nine Lives of Michael Todd (1958), p. 193
This is the earliest evidence located by Quote Investigator ↗, and note what it is not: the object is a sword, the setting is a Broadway stage, and the telling is second-hand, published in 1958 about a 1944 performance. The scene checks out — Gene Barry’s filmography ↗ records him as Lieutenant Bunin in Catherine Was Great, the play West wrote and starred in, which opened at the Shubert Theatre on 2 August 1944 ↗ under Mike Todd’s production.
The earliest evidence located by Quote Investigator ↗ is Art Cohn’s 1958 biography of producer Michael Todd, which describes West ad-libbing the joke on stage in 1944 — with a sword, not a gun.
The film everyone names is ruled out. Quote Investigator quotes Fred R. Shapiro’s Yale Book of Quotations: the line “does not appear in that or any of her other pre-1967 movies” (QI ↗).
West finally says it on screen in Sextette (1978) — directed by Ken Hughes ↗, screenplay by Herbert Baker from West’s own play. Wikiquote ↗ lists that film as the sourced home of the line.
Every documented appearance of this line is from 1958 or later, so nothing here is old enough to be public domain in the United States. The earliest evidence is Art Cohn’s The Nine Lives of Michael Todd (Random House, 1958); the exact wording is first printed in The Wit and Wisdom of Mae West (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1967) and spoken in the 1978 film Sextette. Treat the line as in copyright and quote it as a short attributed quotation.
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
Where the story goes wrong
Almost nobody misattributes this line to the wrong person. They misattribute it to the wrong place — and that is the part worth fixing.
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Wrong sourceShe Done Him Wrong (1933), or any of her 1930s films Most common
The single most repeated claim about this line, and it is refuted by the standard reference. Quote Investigator ↗ quotes Fred R. Shapiro’s Yale Book of Quotations: the line “does not appear in that or any of her other pre-1967 movies.” Oxford University Press makes the same point — it “did not occur in a film until the 1978 Sextette” (OUP ↗).
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Wrong wording“Is that a pistol in your pocket…” Variant
There is no settled wording. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations ↗ gives “pleased to see me”; Wikiquote ↗ renders the Sextette line “happy to see me”; and the earliest documented form has a sword, not a gun at all.
~
Ancient claimantAristophanes Precursor, not source
Quote Investigator ↗ prints a passage from Lysistrata in which a magistrate accuses a herald of hiding a lance under his cloak, and presents it explicitly as “a precursor to this expression” — the same comic mechanism, not a source for these words.
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Origin anecdoteA 1930s Los Angeles police escort West's own claim
West told Films and Filming that she said it to an officer welcoming her back to Hollywood, and Jill Watts’s 2001 biography dates that meeting to her 1936 arrival (Barry Popik ↗). Quote Investigator ↗ notes the claim was published decades afterwards, in the 1980s.
✓The best-supported account: the joke is Mae West’s, but the earliest evidence for it is a 1958 book recalling a 1944 Broadway ad-lib about a sword, and the famous “gun in your pocket” wording reaches print in 1967 with no citation attached — see Quote Investigator ↗.
Context
Why this one keeps getting mis-sourced
This is the textbook case of a line that belongs to a star but not to the movie everyone names. Because Mae West wrote so much of her own material, a quip in her voice feels like it must have a scene attached — and audiences supplied one. The usual candidate is She Done Him Wrong (1933). Quote Investigator ↗ quotes Fred R. Shapiro’s Yale Book of Quotations flatly: the line “does not appear in that or any of her other pre-1967 movies.”
The paper trail runs the other way round from the legend. The joke shows up first in print as a piece of theatre gossip, drifts through novels with the object swapped out, gets collected into a book of West’s sayings without a source, and only then arrives on film — in 1978, with West herself finally saying it out loud to a gangster.
The famous version reached the screen last, not first.
The object keeps changing: sword, pipe, gun, rod, pencil, banana
Quote Investigator’s chronology tracks the swap. The 1958 telling has a sword; a 1961 novel by Robert Switzer has a pipe; Roderick Thorp’s The Detective (1966) has a gun and credits West; Andrew Sarris in 1968 has “packin’ a rod”; a 1982 Boston Globe piece has a radio DJ using a pencil; and by 1989 a New York newspaper is treating the banana version as the well-worn one. See the full chronology at Quote Investigator ↗.
The verb wanders too. Quote Investigator transcribes the Sextette line as “glad to see me”; Wikiquote ↗ renders the same film’s line as “happy to see me”; and the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations ↗ gives “pleased to see me.” There is no single settled wording.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1893–1980 · American actress, playwright and screenwriter
Mae West wrote her own material before she was famous for delivering it — Wikipedia ↗ describes her as an actress, singer, comedian, screenwriter and playwright who began writing her own risqué plays and frequently wrote her own film dialogue. That authorship is why a quip with no traceable script line still lands on her: she was the plausible source of anything sharp said in her voice. She wrote and starred in the 1944 Broadway show Catherine Was Great, and her final film, Sextette (1978), was based on a script she had written in 1959.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest documented evidence
Earliest evidence located by Quote Investigator: Art Cohn, The Nine Lives of Michael Todd (New York: Random House, 1958), 193, reporting a 1944 stage ad-lib in the form “Lieutenant, is that your sword or are you just glad to see me?” The wording “Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?” is first printed, without citation, in The Wit and Wisdom of Mae West, ed. Joseph Weintraub (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1967), 59, and is spoken by West in Sextette, dir. Ken Hughes (1978).
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Is That a Gun in Your Pocket, or Are You Just Glad to See Me?’?” Last verified 7 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/is-that-a-gun-in-your-pocket-or-are-you-just-glad-to-see-me/