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Who really said it

You Are Only Interested in Art and I Am Only Interested in Money

Attributed to George Bernard Shaw 1856–1950 · Irish playwright and critic
Attributed Free to reuse

Shaw’s parting shot to film producer Samuel Goldwyn reached print in a London cable published by the Baltimore American on 1 May 1921, and Shaw claimed the exchange as his own when he retold it in 1922 and again in 1926 — but with different wording each time. A 1937 biography of Goldwyn credits the polished version everyone quotes to the producer’s publicity chief, and Quote Investigator concludes only that Shaw “likely did make the statement” ↗. No text in Shaw’s own hand carries this sentence.

Last verified 1 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“You Are Only Interested in Art and I Am Only Interested in Money” attributed to George Bernard Shaw, addressing film producer Samuel Goldwyn. Earliest documented printing: the Baltimore American, 1 May 1921, from a London cable. Shaw retold the exchange himself in 1922 and 1926, using different wording each time, and a 1937 biography of Goldwyn credits this polished version to publicist Howard Dietz. quotle.info · Verbatim: “Well, Mr. Goldwyn, there is not much use in going on. There is this difference between you and me: You are only interested in art and I am only interested in money.”

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Evoking the world of George Bernard Shaw — Irish playwright, critic and Nobel laureate. Theme: "You Are Only Interested in Art and I Am Only Interested in Money". 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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Provenance

The May 1921 cable

Earliest in print
Baltimore American, 1 May 1921
The item
“Shaw Refuses to Write for Movies” — special cable to the New York Herald and the Baltimore American, dateline London; section 2, page 1, column 2
Shaw’s own retellings
1922, to the Incorporated Society of Authors, Playwrights and Composers; 1926, to International News Service — different wording each time
Counter-claim
Alva Johnston, The Great Goldwyn (1937), credits the famous compressed wording to Goldwyn’s publicist Howard Dietz

Mr. Goldwyn is a ready talker and G.B.S. being Irish, was a little behind him at times. After going over the entire film situation in a discussion lasting several hours, Mr. Shaw closed the interview as follows: “Well, Mr. Goldwyn, there is not much use in going on. There is this difference between you and me: You are only interested in art and I am only interested in money.” Baltimore American, 1 May 1921

As transcribed by Quote Investigator from the Baltimore American of 1 May 1921, the earliest printing it was able to locate. Note that the version which circulates today — “The trouble, Mr. Goldwyn, is that you are only interested in art and I am only interested in money” — is a later, tighter form, and it is the one a 1937 Goldwyn biography attributes to a publicist rather than to Shaw.

Quote Investigator: the full chronology, 1921 to 1969

How the line got into print

Public domain

The wording survives because American newspapers printed it: the Baltimore American of 1 May 1921, its reprints later that month, and the further reports of Shaw’s own retellings in 1922 and 1926. All of those are United States publications from well before the 1931 public-domain cutoff, so the printed text is free to reproduce. That is a statement about the newspaper text only — it is not a warrant that Shaw framed the sentence in exactly these words.

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 name, contested sentence

Nobody seriously doubts that Shaw and Goldwyn met, or that Shaw walked away having made a joke at the producer’s expense. What is contested is the sentence. Three different wordings survive from the 1920s alone, and the one everybody quotes is the one a Hollywood press agent later claimed as his own handiwork.

Howard Dietz, Goldwyn’s publicity chief Press-agent polish

Alva Johnston’s 1937 biography The Great Goldwyn says a version of the conversation was cabled to Dietz, who “compressed Shaw’s words” into “The trouble, Mr. Goldwyn, is that you are only interested in art and I am only interested in money” — then had it cabled back to London and released there. Norman Zierold’s The Moguls (1969) repeats the account and notes that this is the form which gained the widest circulation ↗.

The cable desks Two framings, one punchline

The Baltimore American of 1 May 1921 has Shaw “closing the interview” after several hours of discussion; New York’s Evening Telegram of 21 May 1921, working from its own copy rather than a reprint, has him delivering “an unexpected retort” and opening with “Do you know, Mr. Goldwyn, there is a radical difference between you and me?” Both end on the same sentence ↗, but neither is a stenographic record.

George Bernard Shaw himself Three tellings, three sentences

In 1922 Shaw told a society of authors: “The difficulty between us is that you care for nothing but art and I seem to care for nothing but money.” By 1926 it had become “you’re an artist and care only about art, while I’m only a tradesman and care only about money.” Quote Investigator judges the 1926 telling the most eloquently humorous of the three ↗ — and it is not the one anyone repeats.

Shaw really did say something very like this to Samuel Goldwyn, and he cheerfully took credit for it twice. But the crisp sentence in circulation is the press’s version of his joke, not a line documented in Shaw’s own writing — Quote Investigator’s verdict is that Shaw “likely” made the 1921 statement, with Howard Dietz conceivably contributing ↗.

Context

Why it mattered

Goldwyn called on Shaw in England to sign him for the movies. In 1921 the film business was buying literary prestige wherever it could, and Shaw was the prize that kept saying no — he turned film companies down right through the silent era, “even as the proffered sums grew higher and higher” ↗.

The joke works because it inverts the roles everyone expects: the Hollywood money man pleading for art, the playwright demanding cash. Shaw was not confessing to greed. He was warning that a producer who opens by talking about elevating the public is a producer who has not yet talked about terms. He said so out loud the following year, telling a society of authors that it is “not dishonest to get the best terms” and that the producer could look after the art ↗.

You look after the art. I’ll look after the money.

Why the publicist claim is plausible but not decisive

Alva Johnston was writing in 1937 about a conversation from 1921, in a breezy biography stuffed with anecdotes, and he does not say how he knew what Howard Dietz did. Hollywood publicity departments really did manufacture wit for their bosses, which is why the claim lands. But the wording Johnston gives Dietz is not the wording the newspapers cabled from London in May 1921: the press text runs “There is this difference between you and me,” while the Dietz form is “The trouble, Mr. Goldwyn, is that…” A press agent tightening a line that already existed is a smaller claim than a press agent inventing one.

The strongest argument for Shaw is Shaw. He performed the story twice more — in 1922 to a room full of authors, in 1926 to a wire-service reporter — both times casting himself as the tradesman and Goldwyn as the aesthete. A man handed a joke by somebody else’s publicist might have let it quietly stand; Shaw kept telling it. That is the reasoning behind Quote Investigator’s conclusion, and it is why this page reads “attributed” rather than “fabricated.”

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

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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 Investigator: art and moneyquoteinvestigator.com

The full chronology with paper-verified citations — the 1 May 1921 Baltimore American cable, the independent 21 May Evening Telegram report, Shaw’s own 1922 and 1926 retellings, and the 1937 Howard Dietz claim.
The Great Goldwyn (1937)archive.org

Alva Johnston’s Random House biography of Samuel Goldwyn — the book that credits the famous wording to publicist Howard Dietz. Scan held by the Internet Archive.
George Bernard Shawen.wikipedia.org

Life dates, the 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature, and Shaw’s long and prickly relationship with the film industry — including his contempt for Hollywood and his eventual screenplays for Pygmalion and Saint Joan.
Howard Dietzen.wikipedia.org

The Broadway lyricist who doubled as publicist and director of advertising for Goldwyn Pictures and later MGM — the man Johnston says actually wrote the line.
Wikiquote: George Bernard Shawen.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote’s Shaw page. Checked on 1 September 2026: it does not carry this quotation in any section, sourced or otherwise — a useful reminder that the line’s fame rests on newspapers and biographies, not on Shaw’s collected writings.
Pen and Pictures: George Bernard Shawthebioscope.net

Silent-cinema history on Shaw’s refusal to let his plays be filmed “even as the proffered sums grew higher and higher” — the wall Goldwyn walked into.

The man who read the contract

Who was George Bernard Shaw?

George Bernard Shaw

1856–1950 · Irish playwright, critic and Nobel laureate

Shaw was an Irish playwright, critic and polemicist who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925 and later became the first person to hold both a Nobel and an Academy Award, the latter for the screenplay of Pygmalion. He was also a famously hard-headed man of business: he refused the money that came with the Nobel on the grounds that his readers and audiences already provided him with more than enough, and he told a room of fellow authors that at the start of his career he had never signed an agreement he had not drafted himself. That combination — the moralist who reads the contract — is exactly what makes the Goldwyn story sound like him.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented printing

“Shaw Refuses to Write for Movies” (special cable to the New York Herald and the Baltimore American, dateline London), Baltimore American (Baltimore, MD), 1 May 1921, sec. 2, p. 1, col. 2 — the earliest printing located by Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: You Are Only Interested in Art and I Am Only Interested in Money,” 30 March 2013.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘You Are Only Interested in Art and I Am Only Interested in Money’?” Last verified 1 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/you-are-only-interested-in-art-and-i-am-only-interested-in/

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