Does W. C. Fields’s gravestone read, “On the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia”?

No. W. C. Fields’s gravestone does not read, “On the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia”

In the first place, he isn’t in a grave: his ashes are housed in a vault.

Second, the epitaph doesn’t appear there.

Third, it wasn’t his joke. The line first appeared in the magazine Vanity Fair in the 1920s. It was attributed to Fields posthumously.

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