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Who really said it

Why don't you come up and see me sometime?

Mae West — but the words are in the wrong order Mae West 1893–1980 · American actress, playwright and screenwriter
Disputed In copyright

The line is genuinely hers, but the famous sentence is a rearrangement. In She Done Him Wrong (Paramount, 1933) Lady Lou says “Why don’t you come up sometime and see me? I’m home every evening” — whose first sentence is the wording AFI lists at No. 26 of its 100 Movie Quotes ↗. West did later speak the popular phrase — without the opening “Why don’t you” — in I’m No Angel (1933).

Last verified 17 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed wording — copy with the correction

“Why don't you come up and see me sometime?” Mae West's actual line, in She Done Him Wrong (Paramount, 1933), is "Why don't you come up sometime and see me?" The familiar word order — "come up and see me sometime" — spread through 1933 newspaper advertising and West's next film, I'm No Angel, and she used it herself thereafter. Source: Quotle.info

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Paramount Pictures (1933 films); Universal Pictures now handles distribution of She Done Him Wrong through its EMKA division). 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 themes of love and friendship. Theme: "Why don't you come up and see me sometime?". 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 "Why don't you come up and see me sometime?". 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

Film
She Done Him Wrong
Released
Paramount Productions, 27 January 1933
Adapted from
West’s Broadway play Diamond Lil (New York, 9 April 1928)
Spoken by
Lady Lou (Mae West), to Cary Grant’s Captain Cummings

LADY LOU: I always did like a man in a uniform. That one fits you grand. Why don’t you come up sometime and see me? I’m home every evening. — CAPTAIN CUMMINGS: Yeah, but, I’m busy every evening. — LADY LOU: Busy? Say, what are you trying to do, insult me? She tries again a beat later: “Why don’t you come up sometime, hmm?”

Dialogue as transcribed by Word Histories ↗ and PBS’s American Masters ↗. Note where “sometime” sits — before “and see me,” not at the end.

Word Histories: the full dialogue and the 1933 print record

How we verified this

  • In She Done Him Wrong (Paramount, 1933) Lady Lou tells Captain Cummings, “Why don’t you come up sometime and see me? I’m home every evening.” That exact wording is what AFI lists as No. 26 of its 100 Movie Quotes ↗.
  • The rearranged version was in circulation within months. Word Histories ↗ reproduces a “Screen Bulletins” item in The Dallas Morning News of 12 May 1933 calling “Come up and see me sometime” a national byword after the film, plus an Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) cinema advertisement of 3 August 1933 built around those words.
  • West then spoke the popular phrase herself. In I’m No Angel (Paramount, 1933) Tira ends a phone call, “And don’t forget — come up and see me sometime”; American Masters ↗ notes the wording there matched the advertising.
  • By 1938 she was settling the argument in the rewrite’s favour: a Minneapolis Star interview of 1 April 1938 ↗ reports West saying the line is not “Come up some time ’n see me” but “Come up and see me some time.”
In copyright

Both films that carry this line — She Done Him Wrong and I’m No Angel — were published by Paramount in 1933, so the dialogue is still under US copyright in 2026; short quotation for identification and commentary is another matter, but the screenplays are not public domain. The film was adapted from West’s 1928 play Diamond Lil, and the sources consulted here place this line in the film rather than the play.

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

Right woman, wrong word order

This is not a fake quote hung on a famous name — it is a famous name’s line with the words shuffled. Three things get muddled.

“Why don’t you come up and see me sometime?” Misquoted

The film says “Why don’t you come up sometime and see me?” — that is the form AFI ranks at No. 26 ↗, and Wikipedia’s list of film misquotes ↗ pairs the two explicitly.

Mae West in I’m No Angel Half right

She really does say the phrase — but in the other 1933 Cary Grant picture, and without the opening clause. Word Histories ↗ transcribes Tira signing off a phone call: “And don’t forget — come up and see me sometime.” Wikiquote ↗ notes she used it in Sextette too.

Mae West herself, 1938 Sided with the rewrite

Asked to settle the argument, she picked the popular form. Word Histories ↗ reproduces Robert E. Murphy’s “Mae West Comes to Town” in The Minneapolis Star of 1 April 1938, reporting that she said it is not “Come up some time ’n see me” but “Come up and see me some time.”

Mae West is the right person and 1933 is the right year — but the sentence she delivered in She Done Him Wrong is “Why don’t you come up sometime and see me?”, and the version everyone repeats reached the public through advertising and her follow-up film, as American Masters ↗ lays out.

Context

Why the wrong version won

Mae West’s original has a stumble in it. “Why don’t you come up sometime and see me?” buries the invitation in the middle of the sentence; the rearranged version saves the word “sometime” for the end, where it can be drawled. Wikipedia’s list of film misquotes ↗ makes exactly that point: the misquotation improves the rhythm.

The public was not alone in preferring it. Cinema advertising used the smoother wording — a 3 August 1933 Evening Star ad for the Metropolitan’s return engagement ran the words in quotation marks above West’s name — and PBS’s American Masters ↗ notes the phrase was used in ads for both pictures. By the time I’m No Angel opened later that year, West was saying the ad-copy version on screen, and she adopted the misquoted line for the rest of her life — she even recorded a song of the same name.

The public rewrote the line, the studio printed the rewrite, and then West started saying it that way herself.

What the actual scene sounds like

The exchange is a seduction played against a temperance officer. Lady Lou admires Captain Cummings’s uniform, issues the invitation, and gets a flat refusal — “I’m busy every evening” — which she treats as a challenge rather than an answer.

She tries again, shorter: “Why don’t you come up sometime, hmm?” Then the closer that also became a catchphrase in 1933: “you can be had.” The Dallas Morning News of 12 May 1933 listed both as new national bywords, which is a fair measure of how fast the film’s slang travelled.

Explore

Filed under

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

Love 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.

Mae Westen.wikiquote.org

Sourced quotations, with a note that the She Done Him Wrong line is widely misquoted and that West said “come up and see me sometime” in I’m No Angel and Sextette.
‘Come up and see me sometime’wordhistories.net

The fullest research on the phrase: complete film dialogue, the I’m No Angel transcript, and dated 1933 newspaper attestations of the rearranged wording.
Did Mae West really say it?pbs.org

American Masters walks through the original dialogue and explains how the advertising wording became the remembered one.
100 Years…100 Movie Quotesafi.com

The American Film Institute lists the line at No. 26 in its canonical form: “Why don’t you come up sometime and see me?”
List of film misquotesen.wikipedia.org

Pairs the misquote with the actual line and observes that the altered version scans better.
She Done Him Wrong (1933)catalog.afi.com

AFI Catalog record: Paramount Productions, released 27 January 1933, based on West’s play Diamond Lil (New York, 9 April 1928).

The true author

Who she was

Mae West

1893–1980 · American actress, playwright & screenwriter

Born in Brooklyn on 17 August 1893, Mary Jane “Mae” West went from child vaudevillian to Broadway’s most prosecuted playwright — her 1926 play Sex got her a ten-day sentence on morals charges, of which she served eight, and her 1928 hit Diamond Lil gave Hollywood the character that became Lady Lou. She arrived at Paramount in 1932 and, within a year, had handed the language two catchphrases she largely wrote herself. She then spent decades cheerfully performing the misquoted version of her own most famous line, which is a fairly complete summary of how she operated.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

She Done Him Wrong, directed by Lowell Sherman (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Productions, 1933). Dialogue transcribed in Pascal Tréguer, “meaning and origin of the phrase ‘come up and see me sometime’,” Word Histories, 20 July 2019; the rearranged popular wording is documented in print by 12 May 1933 (“Screen Bulletins,” The Dallas Morning News) and spoken by West in I’m No Angel (Paramount, 1933).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Why don't you come up and see me sometime?’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/why-dont-you-come-up-and-see-me-sometime/

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