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Who really said it

Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?

Not Groucho Marx — spoken by Chico, written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby Screenwriters · credited with the screenplay of Duck Soup (1933)
Disputed In copyright

The film is right and the brother is wrong. Wikiquote’s transcription of Duck Soup ↗ gives the exchange as “Mrs. Teasdale: But I saw you with my own eyes! / Chicolini: [in disguise as Rufus T. Firefly] Well, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” Chicolini is played by Chico Marx ↗; the joke of the scene is that he is impersonating Groucho’s character, which is very likely why the line has ended up filed under Groucho’s name. Quote Investigator ↗ reaches the same conclusion and finds no Groucho attribution before 1997.

Last verified 12 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?” Spoken by Chicolini (Chico Marx) in Duck Soup (1933), from the screenplay credited to Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. Not Groucho. Via quotle.info · Verbatim: “Well, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”

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

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Paramount Pictures). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby — credited screenplay, Duck Soup (1933). Theme: "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?". 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 "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?". 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

Film
Duck Soup
Released
17 November 1933 · Paramount Pictures
Written by
Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, with additional dialogue by Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin; directed by Leo McCarey
Spoken by
Chicolini (Chico Marx), disguised as Rufus T. Firefly — a fictional character — to Mrs. Gloria Teasdale (Margaret Dumont)
Popular credit
Groucho Marx, usually in the form “me or your lying eyes”

Mrs. Teasdale: But I saw you with my own eyes!
Chicolini: [in disguise as Rufus T. Firefly] Well, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?

Note the wording. The film has “Well, who you gonna believe”; the popular version smooths this to “Who are you going to believe”, and a second, even more widespread variant replaces “your own eyes” with “your lying eyes” — a phrase that, per Quote Investigator, does not attach to this joke until the 1970s, decades after the film.

The film
Duck Soup (1933) — Paramount Pictures
Wikiquote: Duck Soup — the transcribed dialogue

How we verified this

  • Wikiquote’s Duck Soup page ↗ transcribes the exchange in its Dialogue section and attributes the line to Chicolini, with the stage direction “in disguise as Rufus T. Firefly”. The same page’s header records the credits: directed by Leo McCarey, written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby.
  • Quote Investigator ↗ opens its article by stating that the remark “was spoken by Chico Marx who was playing the character Chicolini” and gives its own transcription of the same exchange with Margaret Dumont. It notes explicitly that Chico “was imitating the appearance of the character played by Groucho Marx causing other members of the cast to confuse their identities”.
  • QI dates the Groucho attribution and finds it very late: a lawyer’s closing argument reported in The Boston Globe of 23 January 1997 credited “Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?” to Marx. Groucho died in 1977, so QI records that he “implausibly received credit by 1997” — twenty years after his death and sixty-four after the film.
  • Wikipedia’s article on the film ↗ confirms the credits independently: a 1933 Paramount comedy released 17 November 1933, “written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby (with additional dialogue by Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin) and directed by Leo McCarey”, starring all four Marx brothers with Margaret Dumont.
In copyright

Screen dialogue is work made for hire, so the rights sit with the studio rather than with Kalmar and Ruby personally. Duck Soup was released by Paramount Pictures in November 1933 — well after the 1931 line beyond which works are still protected in the United States — so the film and its dialogue remain 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

The right film, the wrong brother — and a costume that explains the whole mistake.

Groucho Marx Wrong brother

Quote Investigator ↗ states the line “was spoken by Chico Marx who was playing the character Chicolini”, and Wikiquote’s transcription ↗ assigns it to Chicolini. QI dates the Groucho credit to a 1997 newspaper report — twenty years after his death.

Chico Marx, as Chicolini The real speaker

In the scene Chicolini is impersonating Rufus T. Firefly, Chico ↗ in Groucho’s painted moustache and glasses. Anyone recalling the moment from memory remembers a man who looks exactly like Groucho saying it — which is the mix-up built into the joke.

“me or your lying eyes” Paraphrase

The film says “your own eyes”. QI traces “lying eyes” to a separate line of descent — the phrase appears in a 1948 Dorothy Dix column and in a 1971 Ace Reid cartoon — and it is the “lying eyes” form that most often reaches print under Groucho’s name.

A popular song of the early 1900s Precursor

QI documents a song titled “Do You Believe Your Baby or Your Eyes” described in a Santa Cruz newspaper in 1904, and the same gag retold in 1918 and 1921. The Marx Brothers sharpened an existing joke rather than inventing one.

It is a real Duck Soup line, and Chico Marx ↗ delivers it — dressed as Groucho, which is exactly how the credit went astray.

Context

Why it mattered

The line has escaped the film completely. It gets deployed in courtrooms, editorials and press briefings as the standard shorthand for a denial that contradicts the evidence in front of you — and it usually arrives with Groucho’s name attached and the word "lying" inserted. Quote Investigator’s earliest Groucho citation is itself an example: a defence lawyer using it in a closing argument in 1997.

The irony is that the scene is about exactly this. Chicolini is asking Mrs. Teasdale to disbelieve her eyes while wearing a disguise, and audiences have spent ninety years believing their memory of who was in it rather than the film.

A line about distrusting your own eyes, misremembered by everyone who saw it.

Read the full story

Quote Investigator traces the joke back three decades before the film. A song called “Do You Believe Your Baby or Your Eyes” was in circulation by 1904, in which a young man who has seen his sweetheart with a rival is asked to choose and chooses her; the same exchange is retold as a comic letter in a South Carolina paper in 1918, and the actress Peggy Hopkins Joyce used the phrase to dodge a question about her age in 1921. Kalmar and Ruby were compressing a joke the audience already half-knew.

The “lying eyes” version has its own separate history. QI finds the concept in a 1948 Dorothy Dix advice column about a wife who would disbelieve her own eyes, the compressed phrasing in a 1971 Ace Reid cartoon about cattle thieves, and a full retelling in a Texas column in 1972 — none of them referring to the Marx Brothers at all.

Explore

Filed under

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

Truth Doubt

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.

Wikiquote: Duck Soupen.wikiquote.org

The transcription. Gives the exchange with Mrs. Teasdale and attributes the line to Chicolini, in disguise as Rufus T. Firefly, plus the film’s writing and directing credits.
Quote Investigator: Who Ya Gonna Believe Me or Your Own Eyes?quoteinvestigator.com

The anchor source. States the line was spoken by Chico Marx as Chicolini, traces the joke’s ancestry to a 1904 song, and dates the Groucho attribution no earlier than 1997.
Wikipedia: Duck Soupen.wikipedia.org

The film. Confirms the 17 November 1933 Paramount release and the writing credits — Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, with additional dialogue by Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin.
Wikipedia: Chico Marxen.wikipedia.org

Leonard "Chico" Marx (1887–1961), the brother who actually delivers the line — while dressed as the brother who gets the credit.
Wikipedia: Bert Kalmaren.wikipedia.org

Half of the songwriting and screenwriting team credited with the Duck Soup screenplay.
Wikipedia: Harry Rubyen.wikipedia.org

Kalmar’s writing partner, the other credited author of the Duck Soup screenplay.

The author

About Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby

Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby

Songwriters and screenwriters · credited screenplay, Duck Soup (1933)

Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby were a Tin Pan Alley songwriting team who moved into screenwriting and wrote for the Marx Brothers at Paramount, including Horse Feathers (1932) and Duck Soup (1933). Their credit on Duck Soup is shared: Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin are credited with additional dialogue, and no source we have found assigns this particular line to one writer rather than another. What is documented is who says it — Chico Marx, playing Chicolini in a stolen greasepaint moustache.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

Duck Soup, directed by Leo McCarey, written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, with additional dialogue by Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin (Hollywood, Calif.: Paramount Pictures, 1933). Line spoken by Chicolini (Chico Marx) to Mrs. Teasdale (Margaret Dumont).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?’?” Last verified 12 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/who-are-you-going-to-believe-me-or-your-own-eyes/

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