# Did Tom Lehrer originate "Apart from that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?" **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 9, 2008, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tom-lehrer-originate-apart-from-that-how-was-the-play-mrs-lincoln/455773 "2008-07-09T00:17:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tom-lehrer-originate-apart-from-that-how-was-the-play-mrs-lincoln/455773/1 "2008-07-09T00:17:09Z")
A top Google entry seems to imply so. But it seems like a backwater site, and it’s user-contributed, so I don’t know if I should trust it. Plus, most Google lookups just take me to incidences of people quoting this rather popular phrase, and most cites about Lehrer don’t mention this one way or the other, not even Wikipedia/Wikiquotes. Thanks in advance! ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tom-lehrer-originate-apart-from-that-how-was-the-play-mrs-lincoln/455773/2 "2008-07-09T00:27:06Z")
I don’t think so, but I don’t have a cite. The reason I say that is that I seem to remember hearing it in a b/w movie that would be before Tom Lehrer’s heyday, but damned if I can remember which. ---
**Author:** ![pinkfreud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pinkfreud/32/17603_2.png) [@pinkfreud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinkfreud)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tom-lehrer-originate-apart-from-that-how-was-the-play-mrs-lincoln/455773/3 "2008-07-09T00:29:51Z")
When I was a youngster, one of my favorite books was a collection of campus humor from college newspapers of the 1940s. The “Mrs. Lincoln” quip was in one of them as a caption to a cartoon. Sorry, but I can’t give a precise citation. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tom-lehrer-originate-apart-from-that-how-was-the-play-mrs-lincoln/455773/4 "2008-07-09T00:37:46Z")
Recently, I seem to see a lot of fairly dodgy attributions to Mr. Lerher. My favorite so far is that he is alleged to have called “Little Boxes” the “most sanctimonious song ever written”. If it ain’t true, it outta be. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tom-lehrer-originate-apart-from-that-how-was-the-play-mrs-lincoln/455773/5 "2008-07-09T00:47:38Z")
OP: Pretty sure it was Andrew Johnson said that. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tom-lehrer-originate-apart-from-that-how-was-the-play-mrs-lincoln/455773/6 "2008-07-09T01:04:04Z")
[QUOTE=Inigo Montoya] OP: Pretty sure it was Andrew Johnson said that. [/QUOTE] Or Laura Keene. (Never underestimate the neediness of actors.) [QUOTE=BrotherCadfael] Recently, I seem to see a lot of fairly dodgy attributions to Mr. Lerher. My favorite so far is that he is alleged to have called “Little Boxes” the “most sanctimonious song ever written”. If it ain’t true, it outta be. [/QUOTE] I think that one’s true. Leastwise it was on the DVD commentary of _Weeds_ (which uses “Little Boxes” [recorded by a different artist each episode] as its themesong). ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tom-lehrer-originate-apart-from-that-how-was-the-play-mrs-lincoln/455773/7 "2008-07-09T04:52:48Z")
You can for sure find it in a report on “Cruel Jokes” in _Midwest Folklore(1960)_, using Google Books and a bit of luck tweaking the search inside the book feature. Lehrer certainly could have done it in the 50’s. But so far I can’t find anything. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tom-lehrer-originate-apart-from-that-how-was-the-play-mrs-lincoln/455773/8 "2008-07-09T14:14:52Z")
Again anecdotal, but my mother was saying it in high school in the 1940s. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tom-lehrer-originate-apart-from-that-how-was-the-play-mrs-lincoln/455773/9 "2008-07-09T14:56:22Z")
Damn, for some reason I always thought it came from Bob Newhart. ---
**Author:** ![installLSC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/54ee81/32.png) [@installLSC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/installLSC)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2008, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tom-lehrer-originate-apart-from-that-how-was-the-play-mrs-lincoln/455773/10 "2008-07-11T04:08:40Z")
In the American Peoples’ Encyclopedia yearbook for 1957, the article on Humor discussed “sick” humor. “Apart from that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?” was cited as an example. That implies it had been in wide circulation by the mid-50’s. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2008, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tom-lehrer-originate-apart-from-that-how-was-the-play-mrs-lincoln/455773/11 "2008-07-12T13:25:02Z")
I heard that the killing of Lincoln was a terrible mistake in that the assassin was under the impression that he was ridding the world of a bloody awful playwright and was gutted when he found that he’d only killed the president and not the author of the play. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2008, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tom-lehrer-originate-apart-from-that-how-was-the-play-mrs-lincoln/455773/12 "2008-07-12T13:37:05Z")
In a modern update, a while ago I saw a comedian talking about how he ran into Jackie O at a party, and trying to think of an ice breaker, said as a conversational gambit: “So Jackie, do you remember where you were and what you were doing when JFK got shot?” ---
**Author:** ![TV\_time](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f17d59/32.png) [@TV\_time](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TV_time)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2008, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tom-lehrer-originate-apart-from-that-how-was-the-play-mrs-lincoln/455773/13 "2008-07-12T22:19:20Z")
[QUOTE=panache45] Damn, for some reason I always thought it came from Bob Newhart. [/QUOTE] That was my first thought, but the only routine that I remember regarding Lincoln was his routine regarding, what if a political handler was talking to Abe Lincoln on the phone. In that routine he had the handler suggest that Lincoln take in a play at Fords Theater that evening. My first rememberence of the joke was by a cartoonist named John Wesley Smith (or the cartoonist had a character called John Wesley Smith) in about 1960. The character traveled through history making wry comments and that was one of the comments. He was also seen laying odds that Columbus would fall off the edge of the earth and trying to convince Pocohatas that “Wesley” was merely his middle name. The book with the joke in it I read was, “Through History with John Wesley Smith”. I googled it but found no reference. There were at least two sequels to the book that I remember.