Is that your gun in your pocket or are you just glad to see me? :: Hollywood Film Noir : Hollywood street corner 1930 :: Classic Cinematic S...

(not the perfect likeness I wanted, but this is the best scene so far) "Is that your gun in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?" This quote is attributed to Mae West in the 1930's, but it wasn't actually used as one of her lines until her 1978 movie "Sextette". It's as famous as "Why don't you come up sometime and see me?" and has been morphed and reused many times by many others. It's first documented use by Ms. West was in the 1944 Broadway play “Catherine Was Great” which was produced by Michael Todd and starred Mae West. In a 1958 book about a New York theatre producer titled “The Nine Lives of Michael Todd” by Art Cohn, the author writes that West improvised the humorous line of dialog when she was interacting with her fellow star Gene Barry and she actually said "Lieutenant, is that your sword or are you just glad to see me?" In her own autobiography Mae says she originally used the phrase sometime in the 1930's when talking to police off set/stage.