“… You pay her to leave afterward”?
Inspired by this thread, of course. Charlie Sheen said it during his trial, but he’s most likely not the originator. Some remember it as being said by Errol Flynn. The TV show Criminal Minds attributed it to Dashiell Hammett (which is where I got the exact wording above; the actual wording of the coiner might vary, of course).
Anyone know?
The earliest quote I found is CHEF’S PROSTITUTE SONG from the Dec. 6, 2000 episode of South Park:
The form of the quote “You don’t pay a prostitute for sex, you pay her to leave” is first in Nightmare Puzzle: A Collection of Short Pieces by Philip LaVoie from 2004. Both predate Sheen’s use.
I didn’t find any evidence that Errol Flynn ever said anything like this.
Which brings to mind another quote (from where?) regarding payment for sex. I don’t have it exactly right but someone once said, that the cost of sex you pay for is much less than the cost of the sex you get for free.
The source was a Hollywood gossip columnist like Hedda Hopper or Louella Parsons. Flynn was asked “Why would a man like you, who could have any woman he wanted, pay for sex?” and he replied “I don’t pay them for sex, I pay them to go away afterwards.”
I’m still not finding any source for the second half of this quote. I found it attributed to Charlie Sheen, who probably said something like it, and to Clark Gable, of all people, but not with any actual cite.
There is exactly one hit on Google for the first half of this quote, and that’s you.
1930s gossip columnists are not well represented on the web, for some odd reason.
Are you trying to tell me you’re remembering this from the original newspaper column? And it was never quoted in any book? Or reprinted anywhere ever? Including Flynn’s sin-sational autobiography? Yet this quote got into the public memory and is still being tossed around 80 years later?
Try again.
No, I once read a book about Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons from the library. I don’t recall the name of the book, but the salacious story stuck in my memory.
Have you checked Google Books?
First time I heard it, it was attributed to Heidi Fleiss, sometime in the late 90’s, but she may have been quoting someone else.
That and a general search through Google. Literally nothing. With the publicity given that line it seems extremely odd that no one has ever found the quote and reprinted it. And odder that Google Books wouldn’t have scanned the original whether or not it’s been reprinted. Sorry, but I’d need real evidence before I accepted this.
“Never believe everything you read on the internet.”
-Abraham Lincoln
Dashiell Hammett
Dashiell Hammett
Gesundheit!
Update 2023. I tried running the line through newspapers.com, which has added many more papers since 2013. I got only one hit, from a 2001 Dan Savage column. “Someone said you don’t pay a prostitute for sex, you pay her to go away afterward.”
I also tried just the words “pay for sex” which returned 2000 hits, but their algorithm looks for “pay” and “sex” and shows those separate words as a hit far more often than the phrase.
I tried narrowing the search by adding, one at a time, “Hedda Hopper,” “Louella Parsons,” “Errol Flynn,” and Dashiell Hammett," but got no hits on any one of them.
Google Books now shows four books earlier than 2004. The earliest is High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess by Charles Fleming from 1999, but there’s no preview. There is preview from two books from 2000, but a search inside brings up nothing.
Tons of so-called quote sites attribute the line to Dashiell Hammett. Not one gives the orginal source that I can find. Ignore any such sites.
So the earlier confirmed site I have is Savage in 2001 and he didn’t claim it as original. The search continues.
Quoteinvestigator.com has an article on this:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/01/15/pay/?amp=1
They attribute it to Clark Gable with a cite:
His attitude was fairly simple, as he explained it to me one day when he confessed that the lady I had seen leaving was, indeed, an expensive import from Madam Frances’ establishment.
“Why would you do a thing like that,” I said, “when all you have to do is whistle? Or grin?”
“That’s why,” he said. “I can pay her to go away. The others stay around, want a big romance, movie lovemaking. I do not want to be the world’s great lover and I don’t like being put on that spot.”
From
Love, Laughter and Tears: My Hollywood Story by Adela Rogers St. Johns, Chapter 8: The Magnificent Gable