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Who really said it

The Next Time I Send a Damn Fool for Something, I Go Myself

Not Samuel Goldwyn — the line belongs to Michael Curtiz Michael Curtiz 1886–1962 · Hungarian-American film director
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

Quote Investigator ↗ traces the remark to Michael Curtiz, the Hungarian-born director of Casablanca, whose mangled English was a standing joke on the Warner Bros. lot. Columnist Sidney Skolsky printed “The next time I send a damn fool, I go myself” as a Curtiz line in November 1936, and Jack Warner’s 1965 memoir gives the longer wording used here. Boller and George’s They Never Said It ↗ is blunter: “It was the tongue-twisting Hungarian director Michael Curtiz, not Goldwyn, who made this priceless remark.” The joke Curtiz walked into is older than either man’s career.

Last verified 8 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“The Next Time I Send a Damn Fool for Something, I Go Myself” not Samuel Goldwyn. Quote Investigator and Paul F. Boller Jr. and John George's They Never Said It (1989, pp. 41–42) both credit the Hungarian-American director Michael Curtiz; Sidney Skolsky printed a version of it as Curtiz's on 24 November 1936, and Jack Warner's My First Hundred Years in Hollywood (1965) gives this wording. The joke itself ran as fiction in Judge magazine on 23 November 1889. Traced by Quotle.info, quotle.info/who-said/the-next-time-i-send-a-damn-fool-for-something-i-go-myself/

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Samuel Goldwyn. 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 Michael Curtiz — Hungarian-American film director, Casablanca and Mildred Pierce. Theme: "The Next Time I Send a Damn Fool for Something, I Go Myself". 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 "The Next Time I Send a Damn Fool for Something, I Go Myself". 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 the line actually comes from

The joke, as fiction
“The Easiest Way,” Judge, 23 November 1889, p. 110
Earliest Curtiz sighting
Sheilah Graham, The Hartford Courant, 1 May 1936, p. 19
This wording, as Curtiz’s
Jack L. Warner, My First Hundred Years in Hollywood (Random House, 1965), pp. 9–10
Denied to Goldwyn
Norman Zierold, The Moguls (Coward-McCann, 1969), pp. 127–128

Favorite of all the Curtiz remarks is the one he pulled when an assistant director failed to bring what he had been sent for. Director Curtiz shouted: “The next time I send a damn fool, I go myself.” Sidney Skolsky, Augusta Chronicle, 24 November 1936

Skolsky’s version has no “for something” in it. The longer form this page is titled with is the one Jack L. Warner printed in My First Hundred Years in Hollywood (1965), recalling Curtiz “who once broke up a studio conference by shouting” it. Both passages are quoted from Quote Investigator’s transcriptions ↗; the underlying newspapers sit in subscription archives we could not open, so we are relying on QI’s reading of them rather than our own.

Quote Investigator: the full 1889 to 1969 chronology

How we verified this

  • 23 November 1889 — the gag appears as invention in the New York humor weekly Judge ↗, in a squib titled “The Easiest Way”: a man called Jones tells a servant, “When I’m tempted to send a fool on an errand again I’ll not ask you—I’ll go myself.” Quote Investigator ↗ has this as the earliest instance; the bound volume is on Google Books ↗.
  • 1 May 1936 — columnist Sheilah Graham ↗ watches Curtiz shoot The Charge of the Light Brigade and quotes him wailing, after a third ruined take, “Next time I send a fool into the charge, I’ll go myself.” QI ↗ calls this the most directly supported version, while noting Curtiz may have spoken more than one.
  • 1936 to 1965 — the wording settles. Sidney Skolsky ↗ prints “The next time I send a damn fool, I go myself” that November; Time lists “Next time I send some fool for something I go myself” among its Curtizisms in August 1940; Jack Warner’s memoir gives the full sentence in 1965 — all per QI ↗.
  • 1969 — Norman Zierold’s The Moguls ↗ singles the quote out to reject it: “Goldwyn definitely did not say, ‘The next time I send a fool for something, I go myself.’ That was Hungarian director Michael Curtiz shouting at a hapless messenger who had brought back the wrong article.” Boller and George ↗ repeat the finding in They Never Said It, pp. 41–42.

We assert no rights status for this sentence. The 1889 Judge squib it descends from is long out of copyright, but that is a different wording. The line as quoted here is reported speech whose earliest printings are a 1936 newspaper column and a 1965 memoir — both after the 1931 United States public-domain threshold, and both still notionally protected as texts. Quote it as reportage and attribute it to Curtiz, not to Goldwyn.

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

Who has been credited — and who actually said it

Search the line today and it comes back as a Goldwynism. Two reference works reassign it to the same other man, and the joke underneath it was in print before either of them had made a film.

Samuel Goldwyn Misattributed

Norman Zierold’s The Moguls (1969) ↗ picks this quote out specifically to deny it — “Goldwyn definitely did not say” it — and Wikiquote ↗ files it under Misattributed, citing Boller and George.

Michael Curtiz Eyewitness column, 1936

Two Hollywood columnists put a version of the line in his mouth in 1936: Sheilah Graham ↗ on a film set in May, Sidney Skolsky ↗ from a script girl’s shorthand in November. QI ↗ treats Graham’s as the best supported.

An unnamed humorist in ‘Judge’, 1889 Ancestor, not author

The punch line was already a printed gag — “I’ll not ask you—I’ll go myself” — in Judge of 23 November 1889 ↗, per QI ↗. Curtiz reproduced it without knowing it existed.

Louis Cukela Repeater, not originator

The twice-decorated Marine gunnery sergeant, himself famous for idiosyncratic English, is credited with “Next time I send a goddam fool, I go myself” in Robert Debs Heinl’s Soldiers of the Sea (1962), per QI ↗. Same joke, third owner.

The line as quoted is Michael Curtiz’s, reported by two Hollywood columnists in 1936 and repeated by Jack Warner in 1965 — and the joke it is built on was a magazine squib in 1889. Read Quote Investigator’s full chronology ↗.

Context

How a magazine gag became a Goldwynism

The remark is a genuine Curtizism ↗, and Curtiz produced them by the dozen: Time counted him “the butt of more Hollywood stories than Sam Goldwyn” in 1940 and reported that colleagues hung “English Broken Here” signs on his sets. What makes this one worth a page is that he was not inventing anything. He was reproducing, out loud and in front of a columnist, a joke a New York humor weekly had printed as fiction in 1889, when Curtiz was a small child in Budapest.

Goldwyn’s part in it is structural rather than personal. By the 1930s he had become the address that unattached Hollywood malapropisms were delivered to. Wikipedia ↗ puts it flatly: “Goldwynisms were the inventions of humorists and newspaper editors,” and many of them “predate Goldwyn’s career.” He came to resent it. Boller and George ↗ quote him giving up on the whole genre: “None of them are true. They’re all made up by a bunch of comedians and pinned on me.”

Curtiz did not invent the joke. He walked into it, on a film set, in front of a columnist.

The 1889 original, and the men it passed through

“The Easiest Way” ran in Judge on 23 November 1889 and is pure fiction: “Jones, having sent a stupid servant to do an errand, was greatly annoyed on finding that he had done exactly the opposite of what he had been ordered. ‘Why, you haven’t common-sense,’ he remonstrated… ‘Shut up! I should have remembered that you were an idiot. When I’m tempted to send a fool on an errand again I’ll not ask you—I’ll go myself.’” Quote Investigator ↗ tracks reprints through the Boston Herald the following day, Judge’s Library in 1891, a Sacramento periodical in 1893, and an Ogdensburg newspaper in 1902 where “Jones” has become “Scones.”

After Curtiz the line kept moving. By 1962 it had reached the United States Marine Corps, where Robert Debs Heinl’s Soldiers of the Sea credited it to gunnery sergeant Louis Cukela in the form “Next time I send a goddam fool, I go myself.” By then the joke had been in print for more than seventy years, under at least four different owners, and the one man who certainly never said it was the one whose name it now carries.

Explore

Filed under

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

Work Failure

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: The Next Time I Send a Damn Fool for Something, I Go Myselfquoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation. Dated citations from 1889 to 1969, and the conclusion that Curtiz, not Goldwyn, is the speaker.
They Never Said It (1989), pp. 41-42archive.org

Boller and George's fake-quotation reference, readable in full. Files the line under Goldwyn and reassigns it to Michael Curtiz.
Samuel Goldwyn - Misattributeden.wikiquote.org

Lists this line under Misattributed, citing Boller & George (1990), pp. 41-42.
Michael Curtizen.wikipedia.org

The director’s life, the 102 Hollywood films, and the reputation for mangled English that made the joke stick to him.
The Moguls (1969) by Norman Zieroldarchive.org

The book Quote Investigator quotes denying the line to Goldwyn. Catalogue record; the full text is lending-restricted.
Judge, Volume 17 (1889)books.google.com

The bound volume of the humor weekly that carried the original gag on 23 November 1889. Google Books serves it as a snippet view; the transcription on this page is Quote Investigator's.

The real speaker

The director who actually said it

Michael Curtiz

1886–1962 · Hungarian-American film director, Casablanca and Mildred Pierce

Born Manó Kaminer in Budapest and known from 1905 as Kertész Mihály, Michael Curtiz had already directed 64 films in Europe when Warner Bros. brought him to Hollywood in 1926. He made 102 more there, among them Casablanca, Mildred Pierce and The Adventures of Robin Hood. His English never caught up with his eye. Time reported in 1940 that Warner jokers hung signs on his sets reading “English Broken Here” and “Curtiz Spoken Here,” and that he was “the butt of more Hollywood stories than Sam Goldwyn” — which is exactly how a joke first printed in 1889 came to be filed under his name, and then under Goldwyn’s.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented instance

“The Easiest Way,” Judge 17, no. 423 (23 November 1889): 110. Attributed to Michael Curtiz in Sheilah Graham, The Hartford Courant, 1 May 1936, 19, and in Jack L. Warner with Dean Jennings, My First Hundred Years in Hollywood (New York: Random House, 1965), 9–10; both quoted in “Quote Origin: The Next Time I Send a Damn Fool for Something, I Go Myself,” Quote Investigator, 29 February 2012.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The Next Time I Send a Damn Fool for Something, I Go Myself’?” Last verified 8 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-next-time-i-send-a-damn-fool-for-something-i-go-myself/

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