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Who really said it

She Runs the Gamut of Human Emotion from A to B

Attributed to Dorothy Parker 1893–1967 · American poet, critic and Algonquin Round Table wit
Attributed In copyright

Parker made the joke about Katharine Hepburn in The Lake over the winter of 1933–34, and admitted as much years later: asked about it by Garson Kanin she said, “Oh, I said it all right.” What she never did was write it down. Every surviving 1934 printing is somebody else reporting her, and each one words it differently — so the exact sentence quoted today cannot be pinned to Parker’s own pen.

Last verified 3 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“She Runs the Gamut of Human Emotion from A to B” Dorothy Parker, on Katharine Hepburn in "The Lake," winter 1933–34 — a spoken remark she later confirmed; earliest printing New York Sun, 6 January 1934. · Verbatim: “Well, let’s go back and see Katharine Hepburn run the gamut of human emotion from A to B.”

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of Dorothy Parker). 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 world of Dorothy Parker — American poet, critic and short-story writer; founding wit of the Algonquin Round Table. Theme: "She Runs the Gamut of Human Emotion from A to B". 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 "She Runs the Gamut of Human Emotion from A to B". 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 source

The target
The Lake
Staged
Martin Beck Theatre, New York — opened 26 December 1933, closed February 1934, starring Katharine Hepburn
Earliest in print
New York Sun, 6 January 1934 — John S. Cohen Jr., “The Talking Pictures,” p. 9, col. 1
Form
A spoken quip, reported at second or third hand — not a line Parker published

“Come,” she said, “let’s all go to see Miss Hepburn and hear her run the gamut of emotions from A to B!”

The earliest printing Quote Investigator located, in John S. Cohen Jr.’s New York Sun column of 6 January 1934. Note that it is not the sentence people quote: Time made it “human emotion,” Alexander Woollcott made it “the whole gamut,” and Walter Winchell’s June 1934 column produced the wording that stuck.

Quote Investigator: the citation trail, 1934 to 1971

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator ↗ traces the barb to a New York Sun column of 6 January 1934 and concludes that it “has been ascribed to Dorothy Parker and there is substantive evidence supporting the ascription” — while noting that the earliest 1930s evidence is not from Parker directly and appears to be thirdhand.
  • Parker confirmed it herself. Quote Investigator quotes Garson Kanin’s Tracy and Hepburn (1971): asked “But what about ‘all the way from A to B’?” she answered, “Oh, I said it all right. You know how it is. A joke.” ↗
  • Wikiquote ↗ files the line among Parker’s sourced quotations by way of Alexander Woollcott’s essay “Our Mrs Parker” in While Rome Burns (1934), where it reads “Miss Hepburn, it seems, had run the whole gamut from A to B” — and records that the words do not appear in a printed Parker review but “were elsewhere described as a spoken remark.”
  • The occasion is documented: Wikipedia ↗ dates Hepburn’s The Lake to a Broadway run opening 26 December 1933 at the Martin Beck Theatre. That is a stage play, which is why the Reader’s Digest version placing the quip in a review of the film Little Women disagrees with every earlier report.
In copyright

The remark was spoken over the winter of 1933–34 and first appeared in print on 6 January 1934. United States copyright can reach works first published from 1931 onward, so nothing here falls into the pre-1931 public domain, and we have classified it conservatively. Two honest caveats: a single spoken sentence this short may not attract copyright at all, and we did not check the renewal status of the 1934 periodicals that carried it.

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 people get wrong

Nobody seriously doubts that Parker made the joke. What travels with it — an older author, a different occasion, and a sentence she never uttered — is another matter, and the arguments started within weeks.

“She runs the gamut of human emotion from A to B” Later variant

This exact sentence first appears in Walter Winchell’s column in the Syracuse Journal of 9 June 1934, roughly six months after the remark was made, and it is the version that stuck. The earliest printing, in January 1934, has Parker saying “let’s all go to see Miss Hepburn and hear her run the gamut of emotions from A to B” — and Quote Investigator ↗ records at least five further wordings in 1934 alone.

“a movie review of Little Women” Mis-sourced

Reader’s Digest printed the joke in May 1934 as “Reviewing the motion picture, Little Women, Dorothy Parker writes of Katherine Hepburn’s acting…”, per Quote Investigator ↗. The earlier reports all place the remark at The Lake, a Broadway play, and describe it as something Parker said aloud rather than wrote.

William Winter Unsupported

On 24 February 1934 the columnist O. O. McIntyre complained that the line “was fresher when William Winter, a gentler critic, pulled it on an actress of 30 years ago… Most Algonquin gags are that way,” as Quote Investigator ↗ reproduces. No earlier Winter text carrying the joke has been produced.

Jonathan Swift Unsupported

Quote Investigator records that in June 1934 Walter Winchell was told by the humorist Irvin S. Cobb that the quip went “all the way back to Jonathan Swift” ↗. No such passage in Swift has been located.

The joke is Parker’s, by her own admission to Garson Kanin. The sentence you have read is a newspaper columnist’s tidying-up of it, and the victim was Katharine Hepburn on a Broadway stage, not on a screen.

Context

Why it mattered

The Lake was meant to be Katharine Hepburn’s Broadway vindication after Hollywood had made her famous. It opened at the Martin Beck the day after Christmas 1933 and closed some six weeks later, and Parker’s eleven-word demolition outlived the production by nearly a century.

The joke works because of what it withholds. It does not say the performance was bad; it says it was narrow — two adjacent letters out of twenty-six — and lets the reader do the arithmetic. That compression is exactly what Alexander Woollcott admired in it when he put it into While Rome Burns the same year.

Two letters out of twenty-six, and the reader does the rest.

Read the full story

The remark’s survival is a case study in how a spoken joke becomes a quotation. Nobody wrote it down at the time; five different journalists reported it from hearsay within six months, each smoothing it a little, and the version that won was not the first but the catchiest.

Hepburn herself came to terms with it. She was 26 when the notice landed — born in May 1907 ↗ — and went on to a record four Academy Awards for Best Actress; the barb is now told as an anecdote about her early stage career rather than a verdict on it. Quote Investigator ends its own article on that note — “perceptions are labile, and Hepburn went on to a magnificent career.”

Explore

Filed under

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

Creativity Character

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: She Runs the Gamut of Human Emotion from A to Bquoteinvestigator.com

The full citation trail from the New York Sun in January 1934 to Garson Kanin’s 1971 memoir, including Parker’s own confirmation.
Wikiquote: Dorothy Parkeren.wikiquote.org

Files the line among Parker’s sourced quotations via Woollcott’s “Our Mrs Parker,” and notes it was a spoken remark rather than a printed review.
While Rome Burns (1934) by Alexander Woollcottarchive.org

A 1934 edition of Woollcott’s essay collection, catalogued at the Internet Archive. Its essay “Our Mrs Parker” is where Wikiquote traces the published form of the remark.
The Lake (play)en.wikipedia.org

The Broadway production the joke was about — dates, theatre and Hepburn’s casting.
Dorothy Parkeren.wikipedia.org

Biography, life dates and the Algonquin Round Table context.
Katharine Hepburnen.wikipedia.org

The target of the joke: born May 1907, and the winner of a record four Academy Awards for Best Actress in the career that followed.

The author

About Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker

1893–1967 · American poet, critic and short-story writer; founding wit of the Algonquin Round Table

Dorothy Parker made her name as a theatre critic for Vanity Fair and a book reviewer for The New Yorker, where she wrote as Constant Reader. She was the most quotable member of the Algonquin Round Table, which is both her fame and her problem: the table’s reputation for wit made her a magnet for other people’s jokes, and Wikiquote now carries a longer list of things she did not say than most authors have quotations. She later wrote for Hollywood, was twice nominated for an Academy Award for screenwriting, and was blacklisted for her left-wing politics.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The earliest source (Chicago)

Cohen, John S., Jr. “The Talking Pictures.” New York Sun, 6 January 1934, p. 9, col. 1. Cited in “Quote Origin: She Runs the Gamut of Human Emotion from A to B,” Quote Investigator, 26 September 2013.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘She Runs the Gamut of Human Emotion from A to B’?” Last verified 3 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/she-runs-the-gamut-of-human-emotion-from-a-to-b/

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