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Who really said it

It's Too Caustic" "To Hell With the Cost

Not Samuel Goldwyn — a 1930 joke, told of nobody in particular Unknown — a travelling Hollywood joke In print from 9 January 1930, with no name attached
Disputed In copyright

The exchange is a Hollywood joke, and it is older than the Goldwyn story attached to it. Quote Investigator ↗ finds it in Walter Winchell’s “On Broadway” column of 9 January 1930, told of two unnamed movie magnates and reported as a joke the humorist Robert Benchley was spreading — about nine years before The Little Foxes reached Broadway, the play the legend says prompted it. The wording people quote today is Alva Johnston’s, printed at page 34 of The Great Goldwyn (1937), which we read ourselves. We stop short of naming an author: QI’s verdict is that Benchley “was the primary source” on current evidence, while allowing that he may have invented the story or may only have reported something he saw.

Last verified 18 Oct 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed wording — copy with the correction

“It's Too Caustic" "To Hell With the Cost” said a director, when asked his opinion of a script. “To hell with the cost,” replied Sam. “If it's a good picture, we'll make it.” —Not Samuel Goldwyn: a joke in print by 9 January 1930, credited by Walter Winchell to Robert Benchley; this wording from Alva Johnston, The Great Goldwyn (1937), p. 34. Traced by Quotle.info · Verbatim: “"It's too caustic," said a director, when asked his opinion of a script. "To hell with the cost," replied Sam. "If it's a good picture, we'll make it."”

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of Alva Johnston and Random House). 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 power, creativity and truth. Theme: "It's Too Caustic" "To Hell With the Cost". 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 "It's Too Caustic" "To Hell With the Cost". 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

Where this wording comes from

Earliest documented
9 January 1930 · Walter Winchell, “On Broadway”, The Scranton Republican, p. 5
This wording first printed in
The Great Goldwyn
That book
Alva Johnston · Random House, New York, 1937 · quote at p. 34, read here in full view
QI’s best candidate
Robert Benchley — as the joke’s primary source, explicitly hedged
Verdict
Disputed — a travelling joke, not a documented Goldwyn remark

“It’s too caustic,” said a director, when asked his opinion of a script. “To hell with the cost,” replied Sam. “If it’s a good picture, we’ll make it.” Alva Johnston, The Great Goldwyn, 1937, p. 34

We read this in the Internet Archive’s full-view scan of the 1937 Random House printing ↗, at page 34, and it matches Quote Investigator’s ↗ transcription. The earliest version QI locates, from January 1930, is told of unnamed magnates and ends “Oh, thundered one of the magnates, the hell with the cost, get him!”

Scanned book, full view
The Great Goldwyn (Random House, 1937) at the Internet Archive — the exchange is at p. 34
Quote Investigator: the 1930 origin of the caustic joke

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator ↗ traces the joke to Walter Winchell’s “On Broadway” column of 9 January 1930 in The Scranton Republican, page 5, column 2 — a version about two movie magnates who had begun in the garment business, with the punchline “the hell with the cost, get him!” QI credits the find to researcher Bill Mullins and reports that the joke was being disseminated by Robert Benchley.
  • The timeline is what breaks the familiar telling. That story has Goldwyn weighing the rights to Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, a Broadway hit of 1939; QI ↗ notes the core joke was already in circulation about nine years earlier, which is what makes the tale unlikely.
  • The wording in circulation is Johnston’s, and we checked it at the source rather than taking QI’s word for it: the Internet Archive serves the 1937 Random House printing in full view ↗, and the exchange stands at page 34, between the “word of honor / promise” story and the start of the next chapter. The book’s own copyright page reads “COPYRIGHT, 1937, BY RANDOM HOUSE, INC., NEW YORK”. Wikiquote’s Samuel Goldwyn page ↗ files the same exchange in its sourced section, quoted to the same book.
  • Goldwyn’s own biographers were sceptical. QI ↗ quotes the 1989 reference They Never Said It, which reports that Goldwyn biographer Arthur Marx “relegated this story to the large body of Goldwyn apocrypha” and thought it was coined either by a gag man for a Goldwyn picture or by a press agent.
In copyright

The wording quoted here first appears in Alva Johnston’s The Great Goldwyn, published by Random House in 1937 — after the 1931 cutoff for the United States public domain — so it is treated as in copyright and only the short exchange is reproduced, for identification, verification and criticism. The earlier 1930 newspaper telling of the same joke, in The Scranton Republican, is itself 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

Often credited to Samuel Goldwyn

The joke travels under Goldwyn’s name. It was in print before it had any name attached to it at all.

Samuel Goldwyn Legend, not record

Goldwyn is the producer the story is told about, and Alva Johnston’s The Great Goldwyn (1937) is what fixed it to him. But Quote Investigator ↗ finds no early citation naming him: the versions from 1930 to 1935 speak of “movie magnates”, “the film producer” or “a big producer”, and QI observes that the imprecise descriptions usually matched Goldwyn without naming him.

The Little Foxes (1939) Wrong by nine years

In the familiar version the caustic property is Lillian Hellman’s play and Goldwyn buys it anyway. QI ↗ points out that the joke was circulating about nine years before that play premiered — the timeline problem that makes the whole tale unlikely.

Best evidence: a joke in circulation by 9 January 1930, reported by Walter Winchell as one Robert Benchley was telling, and attached to Samuel Goldwyn in these words by Alva Johnston in The Great Goldwyn (1937), p. 34 — per Quote Investigator ↗.

Context

Why it mattered

“Goldwynisms” were an industry in themselves: clever malapropisms pinned on a producer famous enough to carry them. Alva Johnston, a Pulitzer-winning New Yorker profile writer ↗, collected a large batch of them in The Great Goldwyn, and that book is where most of them entered general circulation.

What QI’s chronology ↗ shows is the manufacturing process. A 1930 joke about unnamed magnates picks up a named writer in 1934 (Sidney Howard in The New Yorker, Moss Hart in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle), then a named producer, and by 1998 a Goldwyn biography is telling it as a dated incident with a story editor and a title.

The joke did not come from Goldwyn. It came to him.

Read the full story

The intermediate versions are worth seeing. In May 1930 the caustic party is a leading man; in June 1930 a fictitious actor named Rosenblatt; in April 1934 a writer in a Burns and Allen routine; in August 1934 Sidney Howard, in The New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town”; in September 1934 Moss Hart, in a tale told by Eddie Cantor. All of these are documented by QI ↗ with dates and page numbers.

Why we name no author: QI’s own verdict is hedged. It concludes that “based on current evidence the humorist Robert Benchley was the primary source” while allowing that he may have constructed the story for fun, or may have been reporting something he saw — and the sentences quoted on this page are in any case Alva Johnston’s, written in 1937. We mirror QI’s uncertainty rather than hardening it into a byline.

Explore

Filed under

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

Power Creativity 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 Investigator: “It’s Too Caustic” “To Hell With the Cost”quoteinvestigator.com

The full chronology, from the January 1930 Winchell column to the 1998 Goldwyn biography.
The Great Goldwyn (1937)archive.org

Catalogue record and lending scan of the book that printed this wording.
Wikiquote: Samuel Goldwynen.wikiquote.org

Files the same exchange in its sourced section, quoted to Johnston’s 1937 biography.
Wikipedia: Robert Benchleyen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the humorist QI names as the joke’s likeliest source.
Wikipedia: Samuel Goldwynen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the producer the joke is told about.
Wikipedia: Alva Johnstonen.wikipedia.org

The journalist whose 1937 biography collected the Goldwynisms.

QI’s likeliest source

About Robert Benchley

Robert Benchley

1889–1945 · American humorist, newspaper columnist & actor

Robert Charles Benchley (1889–1945) was an American humorist, newspaper columnist and actor. From The Harvard Lampoon he went on to years of essays for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker and a run of acclaimed short films, and he was a fixture of the Algonquin Round Table. He appears here because Quote Investigator names him as the joke’s likeliest source — either its inventor, or the man who carried it out of a room where something like it was said. QI does not settle which, so neither does this page, and he is not credited as the author of the wording above: those sentences are Alva Johnston’s.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The earliest documented source (Chicago)

Winchell, Walter. “On Broadway.” The Scranton Republican, 9 January 1930, p. 5, col. 2. Earliest instance located by Quote Investigator. This wording: Johnston, Alva. The Great Goldwyn. New York: Random House, 1937, p. 34.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘It’s Too Caustic To Hell With the Cost’?” Last verified 18 Oct 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/its-too-caustic-to-hell-with-the-cost/

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