If you can make a woman laugh, you can make her do anything.

No interview, film, article, letter or recording from Monroe’s lifetime was established for this line. The earliest dated appearance of the laugh/do-anything formula found in this run is The Dartmouth Review, 27 February 2009, p. 12, where the wording uses girl and is credited to Marilyn Monroe without a source. The Independent prints the woman version in its 2016 ninetieth-birthday roundup, again with no underlying reference for it. Wikiquote’s talk page lists the woman version among unsourced quotations. This run searched the full Richard Meryman interview transcription and the authorized Guardian reprint for make a woman laugh, make a girl laugh and make her do anything, with no match. No local full-text Monroe corpus exists; the other interviews, memoir, notebooks and film dialogue were not comprehensively searched. The original author and the first credit to Monroe remain unknown. The 2009 witness establishes circulation by that date, not when the line was composed.

1. 27 February 2009Earliest found · credited to Marilyn MonroeThe Dartmouth Review prints the girl version under Monroe’s name, with no underlying source. This is the earliest dated witness located in this run.If you can make a girl laugh you can make her do anything.The Dartmouth Review, 27 February 2009, Gordon Haff’s The Last Word quotation page, p. 12 (PDF page 12). Checked in the text of a page scan, not the image. Source
2. 1 June 2016Reworded · credited to Marilyn MonroeThe Independent birthday quotation roundup prints the woman version as a Monroe quotation without a source for this item; this establishes the changed wording by 2016, not its first use.If you can make a woman laugh, you can make her do anything.Marilyn Monroe: Defining quotes from a cultural icon on what would have been her 90th birthday, The Independent (2016). Checked in a full-text transcription. Source

A maxim about humor and romantic influence circulates as Monroe’s. The Dartmouth Review quotation page credits a girl/laugh version to her in February 2009. The Independent later includes the woman/laugh version in a birthday quotation roundup, without naming a source for this item.

The joke presents making someone laugh as a powerful route to winning their affection or cooperation.

Its popularity as a Monroe quotation is not evidence that she said it. Nor should the exaggerated do anything promise be treated as literal advice about controlling someone.

No authenticated Monroe source was established. The later attributions do not justify quoting it as hers.

• A misquotationIf you can make a girl laugh you can make her do anything. The earliest dated witness located in this run uses girl rather than woman; neither form has been authenticated as Monroe’s words. Where it was seen

Power

• Give a girl the right shoes and she can conquer the world. (misattributed)
• Two intelligent people cannot fall in love; true love needs one idiot. (not found) Fyodor Dostoevsky
• I have nothing to declare except my genius. (not found) Oscar Wilde
• Familiarity breeds contempt—and children. Mark Twain
• I used to be Snow White, but I drifted. Mae West

• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Marilyn_Monroe
• pdf-archive.com/2014/04/19/the-dartmouth-review-2-27-2009-volume-28-issue-13/the-dartmouth-review-2-27-2009-volume-28-issue-13.pdf
• the-independent.com/news/people/marilyn-monroe-defining-quotes-on-what-would-have-been-her-90th-birthday-a7059611.html

“If you can make a woman laugh, you can make her do anything.” Attributed to Marilyn Monroe. No. It is not in Monroe’s works, and who first wrote it is not known. Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/if-you-can-make-a-woman-laugh/ (checked 29 October 2026).

Have a different wording, or a source we missed? Check it or submit it.

Do you hold the rights to anything on this page? Tell us.