Groucho Marx genuinely used “Who is buried in Grant’s Tomb?” as a giveaway consolation question on You Bet Your Life, but he did not invent it: the joke was already running in Ed Wynn’s syndicated newspaper column on 13 September 1925, twenty-two years before Groucho’s show first aired. Quote Investigator calls Wynn’s the earliest evidence while cautioning that Wynn recycled older material, so the gag is probably older still and has no known author.
“Who Is Buried in Grant's Tomb? Answer: Grant!” Not Groucho Marx's joke: he used it as a consolation question on You Bet Your Life, which debuted on ABC Radio on 27 October 1947, but the gag was already in print in Ed Wynn's syndicated column of 13 September 1925, and Quote Investigator thinks it is older still. Strictly, nobody is buried there: the Grants lie in above-ground sarcophagi. — quotle.info · Verbatim: “Do you know the name of the general who is buried in Grant's tomb? If you don't know, ask me.”
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Groucho Marx. Use the credit shown above instead.
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In context
Evoking the world of Ed Wynn — American comedian and actor, “The Perfect Fool”. Theme: "Who Is Buried in Grant's Tomb? Answer: Grant!". 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 "Who Is Buried in Grant's Tomb? Answer: Grant!". 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 joke actually first appears
Earliest known printing
Ed Wynn’s Question Box: He Knows All — He Sees All
Published
13 September 1925 · Sunday World-Herald Magazine, Omaha, Nebraska (The Bell Syndicate)
Popularised by
Groucho Marx on You Bet Your Life, which debuted on ABC Radio on 27 October 1947
Originator
Unknown — Quote Investigator thinks the quip predates even Wynn’s column
Do you know that a female “moth” is called a “myth?” Do you know where your lap goes to when you stand up? Do you know the name of the general who is buried in Grant’s tomb? If you don’t know, ask me.
Ed Wynn’s Question Box · 13 September 1925
Three of the questions Wynn printed side by side. Quote Investigator notes that in the newspaper image the Grant’s tomb line ends with a period rather than a question mark, and that the other two gags had both appeared in print before Wynn used them — which is why QI declines to call him the originator.
Quote Investigator traces the earliest evidence of the gag ↗ to Ed Wynn’s syndicated column of 13 September 1925, which ran it as “Do you know the name of the general who is buried in Grant’s tomb? If you don’t know, ask me.”
In June 1927 a parody quiz reprinted from the Jimtown Weekly asked “What great general was buried in Grant’s tomb?” — QI dates that printing ↗ to the Hearne Democrat of 24 June 1927, and pairs it with a straight-faced newspaper quiz of 16 August 1927 — “Is General Grant buried in Washington, Cairo, Ill., or New York city?” — as an example of the kind of general-knowledge quiz QI believes the gag was parodying.
Groucho’s quiz show You Bet Your Life ↗ debuted on ABC Radio on 27 October 1947 and moved to NBC television in 1950; from 1947 to 1956 it used “Who is buried in Grant’s Tomb?” among the deliberately easy questions put to couples who had won $25 or less.
Wikipedia’s article on Grant’s Tomb ↗ records that Marx accepted the answer “Grant” and paid out the consolation prize — while noting that the correct answer is “no one,” because neither of the Grants’ sarcophagi is underground.
The two earliest documented printings — Ed Wynn’s column of 13 September 1925 and the Hearne Democrat quiz of 24 June 1927 — are both pre-1931 American newspaper material and are in the public domain in the United States. The exact popular wording quoted here, however, matches neither: it is an anonymous quiz-show formula with no identified author and no known first publication, so no copyright status can honestly be asserted for that specific string.
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
Four things everyone gets slightly wrong
This is an unusual misattribution: Groucho Marx really did say the words, on the air, many times — he just didn’t write them. The credit that has stuck to him is authorship, and that part is wrong.
~
The joke itselfGroucho Marx popularised, not written
You Bet Your Lifedebuted on ABC Radio on 27 October 1947 ↗, and Groucho used the question as a giveaway for couples who had won $25 or less. But the gag was in newsprint in 1925, which is why Quote Investigator states flatly that “the joke was not constructed for that show.”
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The 1925 columnEd Wynn earliest, not necessarily first
Wynn’s is the earliest printing anyone has found, but QI declines to crown him ↗: his column ran many older jokes, and the two gags printed beside the Grant’s tomb line had both appeared in print earlier. QI’s own view is that the quip probably predated 1925.
✕
The wording“Who Is Buried in Grant’s Tomb? Answer: Grant!” a modern summary
No period source is known to phrase it this way. Wynn’s 1925 version reads “Do you know the name of the general who is buried in Grant’s tomb? If you don’t know, ask me,” and the 1927 parody quiz asked “What great general was buried in Grant’s tomb?” — both transcribed by QI ↗. The tidy question-and-answer form is how the gag is remembered, not how it was printed.
✕
The answer“Grant” technically wrong
Ulysses S. Grant and Julia Dent Grant lie in matching above-ground sarcophagi inside the mausoleum, so strictly nobody is buried there ↗. Groucho paid out on “Grant” anyway.
✓An anonymous newspaper gag, in print by 1925 and probably older, that Groucho Marx borrowed and made famous — per Quote Investigator ↗. And no, nobody is buried in Grant’s Tomb.
Context
Why a joke about a mausoleum became shorthand for “too easy”
The gag works because it parodies something that really existed. Quote Investigator pairs the comic 1927 quiz with a straight one printed that August, whose own preamble promised that “anyone should be able to do fairly well on this quiz, for the answers are practically given with the questions” — and which then asked, in earnest, whether Grant was buried in Washington, Cairo, Illinois, or New York City. The joke is a newspaper reader’s revenge on the general-knowledge quiz.
Groucho gave it a second life with a different job to do. On You Bet Your Life the Grant’s Tomb question was mercy, not mockery: a question so easy that a couple who had lost almost everything still went home with the consolation money. It became a running fixture — and, inevitably, a trap, since the pedantically correct answer is that nobody is buried there at all.
The joke is a newspaper reader’s revenge on the general-knowledge quiz.
How QI reconstructed the chronology
Quote Investigator’s chronology also shows how these gags travelled. The two jokes Wynn printed alongside the Grant’s tomb line — the female moth called a myth, and the question of where your lap goes when you stand up — had each already appeared in print, in a 1920 Denver vaudeville round-up and in Nellie McClung’s 1908 novel Sowing Seeds in Danny respectively. A joke column of the period was an anthology, not a body of original work.
That is the strongest argument against treating Wynn as the author, and it is QI’s own argument. The honest position is that the Grant’s Tomb question has no known creator: it is folk material that surfaced in print in 1925 and found its most famous performer twenty-two years later.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1886–1966 · American comedian and actor, “The Perfect Fool”
Born Isaiah Edwin Leopold in Philadelphia, Ed Wynn went into vaudeville in 1903, starred in the Ziegfeld Follies from 1914, and built the giggling, silly-hatted “Perfect Fool” persona that carried him through Broadway, a pioneering 1930s radio show and, much later, Disney films including Mary Poppins. Alongside the stage work he wrote a syndicated newspaper joke column, and it is there — on 13 September 1925 — that the Grant’s tomb question makes its earliest documented appearance. Quote Investigator is careful to add that Wynn’s column was a magpie’s nest of older gags, so being first into print is not the same as having invented it.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest documented printing
Ed Wynn, “Ed Wynn’s Question Box: He Knows All — He Sees All,” Sunday World-Herald Magazine (Omaha, NE), September 13, 1925, p. 1 (The Bell Syndicate). Earliest evidence per Quote Investigator, “Quiz Question Origin: Who Is Buried in Grant’s Tomb? Answer: Grant!,” November 10, 2011, which adds that the quip probably predated 1925.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Who Is Buried in Grant's Tomb? Answer: Grant!’?” Last verified 27 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/who-is-buried-in-grants-tomb-answer-grant/