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Who really said it

Origin of a Theatrical Review: I Saw It Under Adverse Conditions. The Curtain Was Up

Not George Jean Nathan — actually George S. Kaufman George S. Kaufman 1889–1961 · American playwright, director and drama critic
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

The first appearance Quote Investigator ↗ can find is Walter Winchell’s “On Broadway” column of 21 October 1931, and it credits George S. Kaufman, who had been asked how he liked Earl Carroll’s Vanities. Within a year the joke was being printed as Groucho Marx’s instead, and QI’s honest verdict is that the two of them are both plausible and it cannot separate them: “the jest was concocted by either Groucho Marx or George S. Kaufman.” George Jean Nathan is not in that argument at all — his name is attached to the line only in a Los Angeles Times column of 1 July 1968, thirty-seven years late.

Last verified 28 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Origin of a Theatrical Review: I Saw It Under Adverse Conditions. The Curtain Was Up” George S. Kaufman (or Groucho Marx) — first printed in Walter Winchell's "On Broadway", Wisconsin State Journal, 21 October 1931; not George Jean Nathan · Verbatim: “I saw it under bad conditions, the curtain was up.”

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to George Jean Nathan. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t establish where this was first published, so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above — just don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.

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In context

Evoking the world of George S. Kaufman — American playwright, theatre director and drama critic. Theme: "Origin of a Theatrical Review: I Saw It Under Adverse Conditions. The Curtain Was Up". 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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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Origin of a Theatrical Review: I Saw It Under Adverse Conditions. The Curtain Was Up". 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 earliest printing

Column
“On Broadway” by Walter Winchell
Printed in
Wisconsin State Journal, Madison, 21 October 1931, p. 3, col. 6
Credited there to
George S. Kaufman
The show being mocked
Earl Carroll’s Vanities
Nathan credit first seen
Los Angeles Times, 1 July 1968 — 37 years later

Funny crack that one…I mean when somebody asked George S. Kaufman (who collabed on “Band Wagon”) how he liked the “Vanities” show…“I saw it under bad conditions,” he niftied, “the curtain was up.” 1931

Winchell’s column as Quote Investigator ↗ transcribes it. Note the wording: bad conditions, not “adverse”. The “adverse conditions” form people search for today matches none of the early printings — the documented variants run “bad”, “unfavorable”, “unfortunate” and “peculiarly unfortunate”.

Quote Investigator’s full citation trail, 1931 to 1989

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator’s investigation ↗ gives the earliest instance as 1931 October 21, Wisconsin State Journal, “On Broadway” by Walter Winchell, Page 3, Column 6, Madison, Wisconsin, consulted via NewspaperArchive. The credit there is to Kaufman.
  • The Groucho version follows almost immediately: QI cites the Washington Post of 12 December 1932 giving it as Groucho’s (“I saw it under unfavorable circumstances. The curtain was up!”), and Winchell himself later said — in 1943, 1948 and 1949 columns QI quotes — that Groucho had told him the line.
  • QI’s stated conclusion is agnostic: it sets out two scenarios, one where Kaufman coined it and Groucho relayed it and one where Groucho coined it and blamed Kaufman to avoid antagonising the producer Earl Carroll, and ends “QI believes that the jest was concocted by either Groucho Marx or George S. Kaufman.” This page does not go further than that.
  • The George Jean Nathan credit rests on a single late source: QI records that it “did locate an article in 1968 that credited the drama critic George Jean Nathan” — Los Angeles Times, 1 July 1968, a column by Joyce Haber — referring to a Tallulah Bankhead play. Nothing earlier connects him to it.

No rights status is asserted here. The exact wording people quote today — “adverse conditions” — matches no documented printing, so it has no identifiable first publication; and the earliest wording that is documented appeared in a newspaper column of 21 October 1931, which falls just after the 1930 cut-off for automatic United States public domain and whose rights holder we cannot identify. quotle.info makes no public-domain claim for this line.

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 misattributed

A perfect one-line pan travels faster than its author. This one has been assigned to four different men, and the assignment changed within a year of the first printing.

George Jean Nathan Unsupported

QI ↗ found exactly one source attaching the line to Nathan: a Los Angeles Times column of 1 July 1968, referring to “George Jean Nathan’s line about Tallulah Bankhead play”. That is thirty-seven years after the joke was first printed under a different name. Nathan was the era’s most feared drama critic, which is exactly the kind of name a homeless theatrical insult drifts onto.

Groucho Marx Plausible

Credited from the Washington Post of 12 December 1932 onward, and Winchell repeatedly said Groucho was the one who told it to him — a claim QI quotes from Winchell’s columns of 1943, 1948 and 1949. QI treats Groucho as one of the two real possibilities.

George S. Kaufman Plausible

The name in the earliest known printing, Winchell’s column of 21 October 1931, and the name Groucho himself used when telling the joke, per the 1989 account in Peter Hay’s Broadway Anecdotes that QI ↗ quotes.

Alexander Woollcott Unsupported

Winchell complained in May 1949 that Evan Esar’s Dictionary of Humorous Quotations had given the joke to Woollcott. QI checked ↗ and found the grievance overstated: the Woollcott line in Esar’s book is a different quip about scenery, not this one.

On the documented evidence the joke belongs to George S. Kaufman or to Groucho Marx, and Quote Investigator ↗ declines to choose between them. It does not belong to George Jean Nathan.

Context

Why it mattered

The target was Earl Carroll’s Vanities, and the producer took it badly. Winchell printed the crack in his column, Carroll confronted him at a party in front of a room full of people, and Winchell was barred from Carroll’s theatres — “for nearly 20 years” by one of his own later accounts, “for the next 15 years” by another.

That is a lot of consequence for one line, and it is why the joke stayed in circulation: everybody involved kept retelling the story of the fallout.

Winchell printed one borrowed joke and lost the run of a producer’s theatres for years.

Read the full story

There is a neat explanation for the confusion, offered in Peter Hay’s Broadway Anecdotes (1989). Winchell asked Groucho what he thought of the show. Groucho answered by quoting Kaufman — “You heard what George Kaufman said about this play, didn’t you?” Winchell printed it as Groucho’s. Hay’s version has Groucho eventually owning up to having made it up himself. It is a good story, and it is also fifty-eight years after the fact, which is why Quote Investigator reports it without endorsing it.

By 1934 the joke had shed its author entirely: Reader’s Digest ran it that December with no name attached at all, just “the critic who was asked his opinion of a certain play”. An anonymous joke is a joke free to acquire any owner, which is roughly what happened next.

Explore

Filed under

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

Truth Creativity

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 Saw It Under Adverse Conditions. The Curtain Was Upquoteinvestigator.com

The full investigation: thirteen dated citations from 1931 to 1989, and QI’s two competing scenarios for who coined it.
George S. Kaufmanen.wikipedia.org

The playwright and director credited in the earliest printing — two Pulitzers, and a writer for the Marx Brothers.
Groucho Marxen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the comedian. He is the other of the two men Quote Investigator considers possible originators — that history is in QI’s article, not on this page.
Walter Winchellen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the syndicated gossip columnist and his “On Broadway” column — the column in which, per Quote Investigator, the joke first appeared in October 1931.
George Jean Nathanen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the drama critic the line is now often pinned on. The 1968 origin of that credit is documented by Quote Investigator, not here.

The earliest credited author

About George S. Kaufman

George S. Kaufman

1889–1961 · American playwright, theatre director and drama critic

George S. Kaufman was an American playwright, director and drama critic who won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice — for Of Thee I Sing in 1932 and You Can’t Take It with You in 1937 — and wrote several of the Marx Brothers’ stage vehicles. He is the name in the first printing of this joke, in October 1931. Whether he made it up or was handed it by Groucho Marx is the part nobody has settled.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented printing

Walter Winchell, “On Broadway,” Wisconsin State Journal (Madison), 21 October 1931, 3, col. 6 — crediting George S. Kaufman. Originator ambiguous between Kaufman and Groucho Marx; see Quote Investigator, “I Saw It Under Adverse Conditions. The Curtain Was Up,” 30 September 2010.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Origin of a Theatrical Review: I Saw It Under Adverse Conditions. The Curtain Was Up’?” Last verified 28 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/origin-of-a-theatrical-review-i-saw-it-under-adverse/

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