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Who really said it

Venice Streets Are Full of Water. Please Advise

Not David Niven — actually Robert Benchley Robert Benchley 15 September 1889 – 21 November 1945 · American humorist and “New Yorker” writer
Disputed In copyright

Benchley sent the cable; David Niven received it. Niven had arranged the trip and later told the story in print, which is how his name drifted onto the joke. The wording drifted too: the earliest published text is “STREETS FULL OF WATER. ADVISE” — no “Venice,” no “please.”

Last verified 4 Oct 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Venice Streets Are Full of Water. Please Advise” Robert Benchley (1889–1945), in a cable to David Niven; first in print as "Streets full of water. Advise." in 1958

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to David Niven. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estates of Robert Benchley and David Niven, and their publishers). 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 Robert Benchley — American humorist, critic and actor. Theme: "Venice Streets Are Full of Water. Please Advise". 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 "Venice Streets Are Full of Water. Please Advise". 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

Sent by
Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
Sent to
David Niven, in Hollywood
First in print
“Bulletin from Benchley,” “The Reader’s Digest,” October 1958, p. 52 — credited “As told to Dean Jennings in The Saturday Evening Post”
Retold by Niven in
“The Moon’s a Balloon” (1972), pp. 233–234
Date sent
Not recorded. Quote Investigator judges it “probably in the late 1930s”

David Niven tells about the time he and Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., planned a European itinerary for humorist Robert Benchley: “I made arrangements for him to visit some friends of mine in Venice. The day Benchley got there he sent us a cable which read: STREETS FULL OF WATER. ADVISE.”

From “Bulletin from Benchley” in “The Reader’s Digest” of October 1958, as transcribed by Quote Investigator. This is the earliest text of the cable we could trace — and it contains neither the word “Venice” nor the word “please.”

Quote Investigator: “Venice Streets Are Full of Water. Please Advise”

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator’s investigation ↗ was prompted by exactly the problem this page exists to solve: a reader found a 1958 newspaper version credited to a traveller named Mattie Barwick and wondered whether Benchley — who died in 1945 — was being given credit for something he never sent.
  • QI’s answer is that he did send it. The earliest text it locates is in “The Reader’s Digest” of October 1958, reprinting a “Saturday Evening Post” piece in which Niven himself tells the story — which both predates the Barwick version and identifies Benchley as the sender and Niven as the recipient.
  • Niven told it again in his 1972 memoir “The Moon’s a Balloon,” where QI transcribes the cable ↗ as “STREETS FULL OF WATER. ADVISE” above Benchley’s name; QI notes the book gives no date for it. The Internet Archive holds a catalogue record for the memoir ↗, though its scanned copy is a later printing and is lending-restricted.
  • The “please” is traceable drift: QI shows it first appearing in a 1962 Schenectady newspaper ↗, which also changed the recipient from a friend to a magazine. QI further transcribes ↗ the 1968 anthology “The Algonquin Wits” — the source the Yale Book of Quotations relies on — shortening it to “STREETS FLOODED. PLEASE ADVISE.” The Internet Archive has a catalogue record for that anthology ↗.
In copyright

The cable was probably sent in the late 1930s, but it first reached print in 1958 — in a “Saturday Evening Post” article by Dean Jennings, reprinted in “The Reader’s Digest” that October — and again in Niven’s “The Moon’s a Balloon” in 1972. Both are well after the 1931 United States public-domain cutoff, so the text as published is in copyright.

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

Almost everything about this quotation travels badly: the author, the wording, and the person it was sent to. Only the joke survives intact.

David Niven Recipient, not author

Niven arranged Benchley’s trip, received the cable, and told the story in print twice — in a 1958 “Saturday Evening Post” piece ↗ and in his 1972 memoir. Telling a joke well for fifty years is how a recipient becomes an author.

The “please advise” version Paraphrase

The earliest text has no “please”: it is “STREETS FULL OF WATER. ADVISE.” QI dates the “please” to a 1962 newspaper retelling ↗, and QI’s own conclusion is that “the most common modern versions are stated differently than the original text.”

“The New Yorker”

A 2005 “San Francisco Chronicle” version has Benchley wiring the magazine, as QI records ↗. The earliest account has him wiring Niven, a friend who had booked the trip.

Mattie Barwick Context

A Miami News column of 30 October 1958 gave the line to a traveller of that name, which is what set QI’s investigation going ↗. It appeared weeks after the Benchley version was already in national circulation.

Quote Investigator’s conclusion ↗: “there is evidence that Robert Benchley did send a witty telegram about Venice to the prominent actor David Niven probably in the late 1930s… The most common modern versions are stated differently than the original text.”

Context

Why it mattered

The joke is a tiny masterpiece of form. A telegram charged by the word, a city everyone knows is built on canals, and a man reporting the obvious back to the person who sent him there — it is a whole comic situation in six words, which is why it has outlived almost everything else Benchley wrote.

It is also a good demonstration of why wording matters. “Streets full of water. Advise.” is funnier than the tidied-up version, because “advise” alone is the clipped idiom of a real cable. Adding “please” makes it polite, and politeness is not the joke.

Adding “please” makes it polite, and politeness is not the joke.

Read the full story

The reader who wrote to Quote Investigator had spotted something genuinely suspicious: a 1958 newspaper gave the line to an ordinary tourist, Benchley had been dead thirteen years, and the earliest reference books crediting him only appeared in 1968. On that evidence the Benchley attribution looks like a famous name absorbing an anonymous joke.

What rescued it was finding the 1958 Reader’s Digest item, in which Niven tells the story himself and names Benchley. That reversed the chronology — the Benchley version was in national circulation before the tourist version, not after it. The attribution survived; the exact wording did not.

Explore

Filed under

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

Creativity Friendship

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 Investigatorquoteinvestigator.com

The full chronology from 1955 to 2005, including the 1958 text that settles the authorship question.
Robert Benchleyen.wikipedia.org

The humorist (1889–1945) who sent the cable, and a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table.
David Nivenen.wikipedia.org

The actor (1910–1983) who received it, arranged the trip, and told the story for decades.
The Moon's a Balloonarchive.org

Catalogue record for Niven’s memoir, where he reproduces the cable; the scanned copy is a later printing of the 1972 book.
The Algonquin Witsarchive.org

Catalogue record for the 1968 anthology the Yale Book of Quotations cites — and the source of the shortened “Streets flooded” variant.

The author

About Robert Benchley

Robert Benchley

1889–1945 · American humorist, critic and actor

Robert Benchley was a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table and for years the drama critic of The New Yorker, where he perfected a style of comic essay built on the bewilderment of a reasonable man in an unreasonable world. He later moved to Hollywood, won an Academy Award for the 1935 short How to Sleep, and appeared in dozens of films. The Venice cable is entirely characteristic: the joke is that he is the only person behaving sensibly.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

“Bulletin from Benchley.” The Reader’s Digest 73 (October 1958): 52. Reprinted from a Saturday Evening Post article as told to Dean Jennings. Retold in David Niven, The Moon’s a Balloon (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972), 233–34. Earliest text located by Quote Investigator, 20 April 2011.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Venice Streets Are Full of Water. Please Advise’?” Last verified 4 Oct 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/venice-streets-are-full-of-water-please-advise/

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