Which artist is credited with popularizing the term "I cried all the way to the bank"?

Most word buffs credit the entertainer Liberace with using terms about crying all the way to the bank.

Władziu Valentino Liberace (May 16, 1919 – February 4, 1987) was an American pianist, singer and actor. A child prodigy born in Wisconsin to parents of Italian and Polish origin, Liberace enjoyed a career spanning four decades of concerts, recordings, television, motion pictures, and endorsements. At the height of his fame, from the 1950s to the 1970s, Liberace was the highest-paid entertainer in the world.

The actual phrase Liberace used repeatedly -- but sarcastically -- was "crying all the way to the bank." The Oxford English Dictionary quotes Liberace from a 1956 newspaper article about his concert at Madison Square Garden: "The take was terrific but the critics killed me. My brother George cried all the way to the bank." Liberace repeated the quip over the years and wrote in his 1973 autobiography, "When the reviews are bad I tell my staff that they can join me as I cry all the way to the bank."

Liberace's sarcasm implies triumphant defiance, as if to say, "Who cares what you think -- I'm rich!" In fact, Fred Shapiro, a librarian at Yale Law School and editor of "The Yale Book of Quotations," found an early example of Liberace using the phrase from the San Mateo Times in 1953. The article reported that Liberace wrote to a critic who had slammed one of his sellout shows and said, "My manager and I laughed all the way to the bank."