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. . . MOVIE DIALOGUE see: "ACTORS" for related links (Alphabetical by title of film) - Rumack (Leslie Nielsen): Can you fly this plane, and land it? Ted Striker (Robert Hays): Surely you can't be serious. Rumack: I am serious... and don't call me Shirley. --Jim Abrahams, David Zucker & Jerry Zucker, screenplay, "Airplane!" [1980] - [Jerry Mulligan (Gene Kelly) to Milo Roberts (Nina Foch):] That's, uh, quite a dress you almost have on. --Alan Jay Lerner (19181986) American playwright and lyricist. "An American in Paris" [1951] - [Mrs. Whitehead (Margaret Irving):] Why, that's bigamy. [Captain Jeffrey T. Spaulding (Groucho Marx):] Yes, and it's big of me too. --"Animal Crackers" [1930] Screenplay by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind. [Captain Jeffrey T. Spaulding (Groucho Marx):] Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas, and how he got in my pajamas I'll never know. --"Animal Crackers" [1930] Screenplay by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind. - [Nora Charles (Myrna Loy):] It says you were shot four times in the tabloids. [Nick Charles (William Powell):] That's ridiculous. They never came near my tabloids. _Another Thin Man_ [1939] Screenplay by Frances Goodrich & Albert Hackett. - [Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) speaking:] You'd think I would have learned by now when you're in love with a married man, you shouldn't wear mascara. --Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, screenplay, "The Apartment" [1960] - She tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up. --Philip Marlowe (Bogart) in "The Big Sleep" [1946], novel by Raymond Chandler, script by William Faulkner. - I think we're in real trouble. I don't know how this started or why, but I know it's here and we'd be crazy to ignore it ... The bird war, the bird attack, plague call it what you like. They're amassing out there someplace and they'll be back. You can count on it. --dialogue, _The Birds_ [1963] Screenplay by Evan Hunter. - [The Waco Kid (Gene Wilder):] You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new west. You know morons. --"Blazing Saddles" [1974] Screenplay by Mel Brooks, Norman Steinberg, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor, & Al Uger. [Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman) describing a gang of thugs:] ... rusters, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers, and Methodists. --ibid. - [Butch Cassidy, played by Paul Newman:] If he'd just pay me what he's paying them to stop me robbing him, I'd stop robbing him! --"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" [1969] Screenplay by William Goldman. - Ilsa: A franc for your thoughts. Rick: In America they bring only a penny. I guess that's about all they're worth. Ilsa: I'm willing to be overcharged. --Dialogue between Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) in "Casablanca" [1942]. Screenplay by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch. ILSA: Play it once, Sam, for old times' sake. SAM: I don't know what you mean, Miss Ilsa. ILSA: Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By.' --ibid. Spoken by Ingrid Bergman and Dooley Wilson. Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. --ibid. Rick speaking Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains) speaking: Major Strasser has been shot! ... Round up the usual suspects. --ibid. I'm shocked, *shocked* to find that gambling is going on in here! --ibid. Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains) speaking. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine! --ibid. Rick speaking - [Mr. Bernstein (Everett Sloan) speaking:] Old age. It's the only disease ... that you don't look forward to being cured of. --"Citizen Kane" [1941] Screenplay by Herman Mankiewicz and Orson Welles. - [Captain, played by Strother Martin:] What we've got here is failure to communicate. --"Cool Hand Luke" [1967] Screenplay by Frank R. Pierson. - [Dundee is threatened by a mugger with a switchblade:] Charlton (Linda Kozlowski): Mick, give him your wallet. Dundee (Paul Hogan): What for? Charlton: He's got a knife. Dundee: [chuckling] That's not a knife. Dundee: [Dundee draws a very large Bowie knife] Dundee: *That's* a knife. [Dundee slashes the teen mugger's jacket. He and his friends run away] Dundee: Just kids having fun. You alright? Charlton: I'm always all right when I'm with you Dundee. --Dialogue "Crocodile Dundee" [1986] Screenwriters: John Cornell, Paul Hogan and Ken Shadie. - [Robert Gold (Dirk Bogarde), speaking to Diana Scott (Julie Christie):] Your idea of fidelity is not having more than one man in bed at the same time. --"Darling" [1965] Screenplay by Frederic Raphael. - [Dr. Hackenbush (Groucho Marx), proposing:] Emily [...] marry me and I'll never look at another horse. --George Seaton (19111979) American screenwriter, director, and producer. Screenplay for _A Day at the Races_ [1937]. [Dr. Hackenbush (Groucho Marx), feeling for a pulse:] Either he's dead, or my watch has stopped. --ibid. - [Rigby Reardon (Steve Martin) speaking:] All dames are alike: they reach down your throat so they can grab your heart, pull it out and they throw it on the floor, and they step on 'em with their high heels, they spit on it, shove it in the oven and they cook the shit out of it. Then they slice it into little pieces, slam it on a hunk of toast, and they serve it to you. And they expect you to say, "Thanks, honey, it's delicious." "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" [1982], screenplay by Carl Reiner, George Gipe, & Steve Martin. - [Patient (Elise Cavanna):] You won't hurt my leg, will you? My doctor says I have a very bad leg. [Dentist (W.C. Fields), leering at her leg:] Your doctor is off his nut! I don't believe in doctors anyway. There's a doctor lives right down the street here. Treated a man for yellow juandice for nine years and then found out he was a Jap. --W. C. Fields [William Claude Dukenfield] (18801946) American vaudeville star and film actor. "The Dentist" [1932 short film] w/screeplay by Fields. - Kitty Packard (Jean Harlow): I was reading a book the other day. Carlotta Vance (Marie Dressler): Reading a book? Kitty: Yes. It's all about civilization or something. A nutty kind of a book. Do you know that the guy said that machinery is going to take the place of every profession? Carlotta: Oh my dear, that's something you need never worry about. --"Dinner at Eight" [1933] Screenplay by Frances Marion and Herman Mankiewicz. - [Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) speaking:] I know what you are thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, I've kinda lost track myself. But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clear off, you've gotta ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk? --"Dirty Harry" [1971] Screenplay by Harry Julian Fink, Rita M. Fink, & Dean Riesner. (In the 1983 film "Sudden Impact," Eastwood said, "Go ahead, make my day!" to another trapped gunman. (Q)) - [James Bond (Sean Connery):] Bond. James Bond. --"Dr. No" [1962] Screenplay by Richard Maibaum & Johanna Harwood. - Rufus T. Firefly (President of Fredonia) (Groucho Marx): Not that I care, but where is your husband? Mrs. Teasdale (Margaret Dumont): Why, he's dead. Firefly: I'll bet he's just using that as an excuse. Mrs. Teasdale: I was with him till the very end. Firefly: Huh! No wonder he passed away. Mrs. Teasdale: I held him in my arms and kissed him. Firefly: Oh, I see. Then it was murder. Will you marry me? Did he leave you any money? Answer the second question first. Mrs. Teasdale: He left me his entire fortune. Firefly: Is that so? Can't you see what I'm trying to tell you? I love you. Mrs. Teasdale: Oh, your Excellency! Firefly: You're not so bad yourself. Mrs. Teasdale: Oh, I want to present to you Ambassador Trentino of Sylvania. Having him with us is indeed a great pleasure. Trentino (Louis Calhern): Thank you, but I can't stay very long. Firefly: That's even a greater pleasure. ... there's one man too many in this room and I think it's you. --"Duck Soup" [1933 film] Screenplay by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. [Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx):] I could dance with you till the cows come home. On second thought, I'd rather dance with the cows till you come home. --ibid. [Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx):] Chicolini here may talk like an idiot, and look like an idiot, but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot. --ibid. [Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx):] Remember you're fighting for this woman's honor, which is probably more than she ever did. --ibid. [Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx):] Clear? Huh! Why, a four-year-old child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four-year-old child . I can't make head or tail out of it. --ibid. [Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx):] If you can't leave in a taxi you can leave in a huff. If that's too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff. --ibid. - [Dale Arden (Melody Anderson) speaking:] Flash! Flash! I love you but we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth! --Michael Allin and Lorenzo Semple Jr, screenplay, "Flash Gordon" [1980] - [Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter) to Peggy Sawyer (Ruby Keeler):] You've got to go on, and you've got to give and give and give ... And Sawyer, you're going out a youngster but you've *got* to come back a star! --James Seymour, screenplay, "Forty-Second Street" [1933] - [Guy Holden (Fred Astaire) proposing to Mimi Glossop (Ginger Rogers):] Can I offer you anything? Frosted chocolate? Cointreau? Benedictine? Marriage? --"The Gay Divorcee" [1934] Written by George Marion Jr., Dorothy Yost & Edward Kaufman. - [Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) to Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh):] I wish I could care what you do or where you go but I can't ... My dear, I don't give a damn. --"Gone With The Wind" [1939], screenplay by Sidney Howard. [Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh):] After all, tomorrow is another day! --"Gone With The Wind" [1939], screenplay by Sidney Howard. - [Professor Wagstaff, (Groucho Marx) :] I'd horsewhip you if I had a horse. --"Horse Feathers" [1932] Screenplay by Will B. Johnstone, Bert Kalmar, S.J. Perelman, and Harry Ruby. [Professor Wagstaff, (Groucho Marx) :] Baravelli, you've got the brain of four-year-old boy, and I bet he was glad to get rid of it. --ibid. Professor Wagstaff (Groucho Marx) [to the audience as Chico began the play the piano:] I've got to stay here, but there's no reason why you folks can't go out into the lobby until this thing blows over. --ibid. Wagstaff (Groucho Marx): I'm fine, thanks, who are you? Baravelli (Chico Marx ): I'm fine too, but you can't come in unless you give the password. Wagstaff: Well, what is the password?... Wagstaff: I got it! Haddock! Baravelli: That's-a funny. I gotta haddock, too. Wagstaff: What do you take for a haddock? Baravelli: Well-a, sometimes I take-a aspirin, sometimes I take-a Calamel. Wagstaff: Say, I'd walk a mile for a Calamel. Baravelli : You mean chocolate calamel. I like that too, but you no guess it. Hey, what's-a matter, you no understand English? You can't come in here unless you say "swordfish." Now I'll give you one more guess. --ibid. - [Tira, played by Mae West, speaking:] She's the kind of girl who climbed the ladder of success, wrong by wrong. --Mae West (18931980) American stage and film actress. "I'm No Angel" [1933 film] Screenplay by Mae West. - Elsa (Alison Doody) [kissing Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford): Zat's how Austrians say goodbye. Colonel Vogel (Michael Byrne): Und zis is how ve zay goodbye in Germany, Dr. Jones. [punches Indy with the head of his cane.] Indiana Jones: I liked the Austrian way better. --"Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" [1989] Screenplay by Jeffrey Boam. - [Harold Bissonette, played by W.C. Fields, replying to a man who said, 'You're drunk.':] Yeah, and you're crazy. I'll be sober tomorrow, but you'll be crazy the rest of your life. --"It's a Gift" [1934] Screenplay by Jack Cunningham & W.C. Fields. - [Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) speaking:] Oh, no. It wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast. --"King Kong" [1933] Screenplay by James Creelman and Ruth Rose. - [Reg, played by John Cleese, speaking:] All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? --"Life of Brian" [1979] Written by Monty Python (Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, & Michael Palin.) - [Groucho Marx speaking:] I worked myself up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty. --"Monkey Business" [1931] Screenplay by Will B. Johnstone and S.J. Perelman. - [Flower Belle Lee (Mae West) speaking:] I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it. --"My Little Chickadee" [1940] Written by Mae West & W. C. Fields. - [Narrator Mark Hellinger speaking:] There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them. --"The Naked City" [1948] Screenplay by Marvin Wald and Albert Maltz. - [In reply to 'Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!' Mandie Triplett (Mae West) replies:] Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie. --"Night After Night" [1932] Screenplay by Louis Bromfield & Kathryn Scola. - [Otis B. Driftwood (Groucho Marx)]: You're willing to pay him a thousand dollars a night just to sing? Why, you could get a phonograph record of Minnie the Moocher for seventy-five cents! For a buck and a half you can get Minnie! --"A Night at the Opera" [1935] Screenplay by George S. Kaufman & Morrie Ryskind. Henderson (Robert Emmett O'Connor): You live here all alone? Otis B. Driftwood (Groucho Marx): Yes. Just me and my memories. I'm practically a hermit. Henderson: Oh. A hermit. I notice the table's set for four. Otis B. Driftwood: That's nothing my alarm clock is set for eight. That doesn't prove a thing. --ibid. - Ninotchka (Greta Garbo): Why should you carry other people's bags? Porter (George Davis): Well, that's my business, Madame. Ninotchka: That's no business. That's social injustice. Porter: That depends on the tip. --"Ninotchka" [1939] Screenplay by Melchior Lengyel, Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, & Walter Reisch. - [Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant):] In the world of advertising, there's no such thing as a lie. There's only expedient exaggeration. --"North By Northwest" [1959] Written by Ernest Lehman. Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint): It's going to be a long night. Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant): True. EK: And I don't particularly like the book I've started. RT: Ah. EK: You know what I mean? RT: Ah, let me think. Yes, I know exactly what you mean. --ibid. - [Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) speaking:] I could've been a contender. I could've had class and been somebody. Real class. Instead of a bum, let's face it, which is what I am. --Budd Schulberg (19142009) Screenplay for "On the Waterfront" [1954]. - George Taylor (Charleton Heston) speaking:] Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape! --"Planet of the Apes" [1968] Screenplay by Rod Serling and Michael Wilson. - [Lady Lou, played by Mae West, speaking:] Why don't you come up sometime and see me? --"She Done Him Wrong" [1933] Script adapted by Harvey F. Thew and John Bright from the Broadway play Diamond Lil by Mae West. - [Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins):] I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti. --Ted Tally (b. 1952) American playwright and screenwriter. Screenplay _The Silence of the Lambs_ [1991 film] - [Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown) forgiving his fiancιe's admission on being a man:] Well, nobody's perfect. --"Some Like It Hot" [1959] Screenplay by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond. - [Obi-Wan Kenobi, played by Alec Guinness, speaking:] The Force will be with you always. --George Lucas (b. 1944) American screenwriter and producer. _Star Wars_ [1977] (screenplay) [Obi-Wan Kenobi, played by Alec Guinness, speaking:] Mos Eisley Spaceport. You will never find a more retched hive of scum and villainy. --ibid. - I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. --Tennessee Williams [Thomas Lanier Williams] (19111983) American dramatist. (Blanche DuBois' final words, in "A Streetcar Named Desire.") & note: You cannot imagine the kindness I've received at the hands of perfect strangers. --W. Somerset Maugham (18741965) English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer. _The Narrow Corner_, ch. 15 [1932] You know what luck is? Luck is believing you're lucky, that's all. --dialogue, Marlon Brando speaking in, "A Streetcar Named Desire" [1951 film]. - The day we stop playing is the day we start growing old. --"Mr. Bloom" (Scatman Crothers) [In the "Kick The Can" segment of the film, _The Twilight Zone: The Movie_ [1983]; screenplay by George Clayton Johnson, Richard Matheson and Melissa Mathison.] - [Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton):] I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too. --"The Wizard Of Oz" [1939] Screenplay by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf. [Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland):] Lions, and tigers, and bears! Oh my! --ibid. ["The Wizard" (Frank Morgan) speaking:] As for you, my galvanized friend, you want a heart. You don't know how lucky you are not to have one. Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable. --ibid. [Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton):] I'm melting! I'm melting! Oh, what a world! What a world! --ibid. I could wile away the hours Conferrin' with the flowers, Consultin' with the rain; And my head I'd be scratchin' While my thoughts were busy hatchin', If I only had a brain. --E.Y. "Yip" Harburg (18961981) American songwriter. "If I Only Had a Brain" 1939 song in the movie _The Wizard Of Oz_. -   MOVIE REVIEWS . . see: "ACTORS" for related links see: "CRITICS" [Headline about rural filmgoers' rejection of motion pictures about rural life:] Sticks Nix Hick Pix. --Abel Green (19001973) American journalist. "Variety" [17 July 1935] ... a travel-poster panorama of fresh young faces, firm young bodies and good old Florida sunshine. --"Time" film review, "Where the Boys Are" [1960] (A couple of years after the release of this, the original beach party picture, leading lady Dolores Hart joined a convent and became a nun.)  . . see: "ACTORS" for related links see: "ENTERTAINMENT, HOBBIES, & LEISURE ACTIVITIES" for related links - There's no bus'ness like show bus'ness, Like no bus'ness I know. Ev'rything about it is appealing, Ev'rything the traffic will allow. Nowhere could you get that happy feeling When you are stealing that extra bow. [...] Even with a turkey that you know will fold, You may be stranded out in the cold, Still you wouldn't trade it for a sack of gold. Let's go on with the show, Let's go on with the show! --Irving Berlin (18881989) American songwriter. "There's No Business like Show Business" [1946 song] What is the toughest thing about making film? Putting in the little holes. The sprocket holes are the worst. Everything else is easy, but all night you have to sit with that little puncher and make the holes on the side of the film. You could faint from that work. The rest is easy. The script is easy, the acting is easy, the directing is a breeze... but the sprockets will tear your heart out. --Mel Brooks (b. 1926) American actor, writer, and director. "My Movies: The Collision of Art and Money" If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come. --Raymond Chandler (18881959) American writer of detective fiction. Letter to Charles W. Morton [12 December 1945]. "Gone With the Wind" is going to be the biggest flop in Hollywood history. I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling flat on his face and not Gary Cooper. --Gary Cooper (19011961) American film actor. After Gable's acceptance of the Rhett Butler role Cooper had turned down. In Larry Swindell _The Last Hero: A Biography of Gary Cooper_ [1980]. What do you want me to do? Stop shooting now and release it as The Five Commandments? --Cecil B. DeMille (18811959) American filmmaker. (After Paramount Pictures' Adolph Zukor had protested at the escalating costs of the production of the 1923 version of "The Ten Commandments.") In Mervyn LeRoy _Take One_ [1974]. ^ --John Ford (18951973) American film director, notable for his westerns. While Ford was directing a film for Sam Goldwyn, the shooting schedule fell one day behind. Goldwyn visited the set, pointed out this fact, and inquired what the director was going to do about it. 'Sam, about how many script pages do you think I should shoot a day?' asked Ford. 'About five,' was the rather uncertain response. Ford picked up the script and ripped out five pages. 'Okay,' he said, 'now we're on schedule.' --_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_ edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andrι Bernard [2000 ed.] ^ You know, when I first went into the movies Lionel Barrymore played my grandfather. Later he played my father and finally he played my husband. If he had lived, I'm sure I would have played his mother. That's the way it is in Hollywood. The men get younger and the women get older. --Lillian Gish (18961993) American stage and movie actress. Quoted in Abby Adams _An Uncommon Scold_ [1989]. - Why should people go out and pay to see bad movies when they can stay at home and see bad television for nothing? --Samuel Goldwyn [Schmuel Gelbfisz] (18821974) American film producer. In _Observer_ [9 September 1956]. Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union. --Samuel Goldwyn [Schmuel Gelbfisz] (18821974) American film producer. On preachy films, in Arthur Marx, _Goldwyn: The Man behind the Myth_, ch. 15 [1976]. [On a film set of a tenement:] Goldwyn: Why is everything so dirty here? William Wyler (director): Because it's supposed to be a slum area. Goldwyn: Well, this slum cost a lot of money. It should look better than an ordinary slum. --Samuel Goldwyn [Schmuel Gelbfisz] (18821974) American film producer. Recalled by William Wyler in Arthur Marx _Goldwyn: The Man Behind the Myth_ [1976]. - The Donald Spoto biography of Hitchcock was absolute nonsense. Hitchcock couldn't have been a nicer fellow. I whistled coming to work on his films. --Cary Grant [Alexander Archibald Leach] (19041986) English actor. In "Variety" [6 December 1983]. ^ Nigel Hawthorne (19292001) British actor. Hawthorne had played many roles before rocketing to fame in the United States in the movie "The Madness of King George III," in which he played the title role. Hawthorne's opinion of his American audience can be guessed by his comment to Samuel Goldwyn, Jr., to whom he said, 'That title is no good for America. They'll stay away thinking they've missed parts one and two.' --_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_ edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andrι Bernard [2000 ed.] ^ Movies are one of the bad habits that corrupted our century. They have slapped into the American mind more misinformation in one evening than the Dark Ages could muster in a decade. --Ben Hecht (18931964) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. _A Child of the Century_ [1954] - Always make the audience suffer as much as possible. --Alfred Hitchcock (18991980) British-born film director. Quoted in Leslie Halliwell _The Filmgoer's Book of Quotes_ [1973]. Give them pleasure, the same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare. --Alfred Hitchcock (18991980) British-born film director. Quoted in George Stevens, Jr. _Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood's Golden Age_ [2006]. - They are doing things on the screen now that I wouldn't do in bed, if I could. --Bob [Leslie Townes] Hope (19032003) British-born American entertainer and actor. 1965 attributed remark. The late Pauline Kael, many years ago, was asked how movies affected political opinions. They had no influence on politics, she said, but in private life they were crucial. She could remember when the first great performances of Cary Grant in the 1930s transformed the behavior of boys. By his example, Grant taught boys the essence of suave behavior on a date. No one ever did anything nicer for girls. "Every boy became a better date," as Kael recalled. --Robert Fulford, "Always settle scores at noon: And other lessons learned at the movies", _National Post_, [9 September 2008] The immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof. --Mary McCarthy (19121989) American novelist. "America the Beautiful: The Humanist in the Bathtub", in _Commentary_ [September 1947]. Ms. de Havilland is often playfully mischievous. When Errol Flynn flirtatiously toyed with her on the set of "The Adventures of Robin Hood," she got even with him by flubbing kissing scenes, making them more passionate than needed, requiring retakes. The result: "He had, if I may say so, a little trouble with his tights," she remembers. --John Meroney "Olivia de Havilland Recalls Her Role in the Cold War" _The Wall Street Journal_ [7 September 2006] If we'd had as many soldiers as that, we'd have won the war! --Margaret Mitchell (19001949) American novelist. After seeing "Gone With the Wind." In W.G. Harris _Gable and Lombard_ [1976]. [Of director Sidney Lumet:] The only guy I know who could double-park in front of a whorehouse he's that fast. --Paul Newman (19252008) Amercan actor. Quoted in Al Clark _The Film Yearbook_ [1984]. - Janet Leigh, Hollywood's perfect "nice girl" ingenue who memorably changed her acting image and earned an Academy Award nomination with her bloodcurdling screams as she was stabbed to death in Alfred Hitchcock's classic "Psycho," has died. She was 77. [...] "Psycho," with its fatal shower scene that tantalized viewers' imaginations, was unquestionably the zenith of Leigh's prolific motion pictures. Leigh, offered the script by Hitchcock, was so convinced the role as embezzling office worker Marion Crane would establish her as a major dramatic actress that she agreed to work for one-quarter of her usual $100,000 fee. The gamble paid off. [. . . ] To shoot the scene, Leigh spent seven days in the shower on camera while Hitchcock amassed more than 70 takes of two and three seconds each. The work was easy, she said in her book, until the last 20 seconds, when her face had to reflect her realization that her bloody death was imminent. Once she saw the finished picture, Leigh often said, she abandoned showers for life. --By Myrna Oliver _Los Angeles Times_ [October 5, 2004] "Janet Leigh, 77; Memorable Shower Scene in 'Psycho' Established Her as a Major Star" - - kap goes to the movies in this 2000 post to USENET: One Friday in 1960 my mother took me to the movie 'Psycho' we both loved Hitchcock movies and I'm sure she didn't realize the macabre nature of that film. Anyway, after the movie we had plans to drive to Vermont. We stopped at a small motel which was eerily similar to the 'Bates Motel'. If you ever saw 'Psycho', you will believe that neither mother nor son slept a wink that night. kap - South Sea natives who have been exposed to American movies classify them into two types, 'kiss-kiss' and 'bang-bang'. --Hortense Powdermaker (18961970) American anthropologist. _Hollywood, The Dream Factory_, introduction [1950] To be completely candid, I think most movies nowadays are trash, and many strike me as unhealthy. The explicit sex, pointless violence, and crude language appeal only to our lowest instincts. They have taken away our idealism, our sense of fun and joy. It's chic to be cynical and tear our heroes down. What has happened to us? And what are we doing to our young people? --Nancy Reagan nθe Davis (b. 1923) Wife of President Ronald Reagan. _Nancy_ [1980] The Communist plan for Hollywood was remarkably simple. It was merely to take over the motion picture business. Not only for its profit, as the hoodlums had tried but also for a grand worldwide propaganda base. --Ronald Reagan (19112004) American President [1981-89] and former Hollywood actor. _Where's the Rest of Me?_ [1965] The Zulus know [Charlie] Chaplin better than Arkansas knows Garbo. --Will Rogers [William Penn Adair Rogers] (18791935) American humorist and actor. Quoted in "Atlantic Monthly" [August 1939]. There are only a handful of possible jokes. The chief members of this joke band may be said to be: The fall of dignity. Mistaken identity. Almost every joke on the screen belongs, roughly, to one or the other of these clans. --Mack Sennett (18801960) Canadian-born innovator of slapstick comedy in film. Quoted in Richard Koszarski _Hollywood Directors, 1914-1940_ [1976]. Some of my best leading men have been dogs and horses. --Elizabeth Taylor (19322011) American motion-picture actress. "The Times" [18 February 1981], as quoted in Judy Allen _Picking on Men_ [1985]. [Referrring to the advent of talkies in 1927:] Who the hell wants to hear actors talk? The music that's the big plus about this. --Harry Morris Warner [Hirsch Eichelbaum] (18811958) Polish-born co-founder of Warner Brothers. Quoted in Alexander Walker _Stardom: The Hollywood Phenomenon_ [1970]. I wouldn't pay $50,000 for any damn book, any time. --Jack Warner [John Leonard Eichelbaum] (18921978) Canadian-born co-founder of Warner Brothers. Turning down the chance to film "Gone With the Wind," quoted in Max Wilk _The Wit and Wisdom of Hollywood_ [1971]. When celluloid and fags first embarked on their epic journey together, cigarettes signified all kinds of things. Sometimes they signified that you were cool (Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story); other times they implied that you were a red-hot she-cat (Rita Hayworth in Gilda). They were called upon to denote age, wisdom, rough and toughness, weary nonchalance (Humphrey Bogart), and simultaneously though not usually in the same film to bestow youthful, almost adolescent, innocence, naivety and elfin charm (Audrey Hepburn). In old movies, in other words, everyone with a personality smokes. Not smoking in a 1940s film is like being black in a 1990s film: it means you're evil, or you're not very important and you'll probably die halfway through. --Zoe Williams, "Fag End of Fashion", in _The New Statesman_ [19 April 2004]. California is a place where they shoot too many pictures and not enough actors. --attributed to Walter Winchell (18971972) American journalist. - Russian censors permitted John Ford's classic 1940 film "The Grapes of Wrath" to be shown because of its grim depiction of America's Great depression. It was soon banned, however, because Russian audiences were impressed by the fact that, in America, even a poverty-stricken family in the Dust Bowl could afford to own an automobile. --anecdotage.com - We thought a gun was too violent an image. --Colombia Pictures spokesman explaining why promotions for "The Last Action Hero" showed Schwarzenegger holding a fistful of dynamite. . . To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new. --John Milton (16081674) English poet. _Lycidas_ l. 193 [1638] - In a 2001 post kap writes to USENET about annoying people: Last Friday was our first day in our new home. It was an interesting day. As you may recall I had purchased an entertainment center and desk *already assembled* so that I wouldn't have to do it myself. Because I *couldn't* do it myself, no way, no how. So when the Lowe's truck pulled up to the door I was rife with anticipation as they unloaded my appliances and two big boxes of.....what's this? *unassembled* furniture. For the moment Lowe's wasn't my new favorite store, nor was I the new favorite person of the manager of the furniture department who fielded my irate telephone calls. At any rate, while they were unloading the truck I spotted the wife of a neighbor I had met previously and as protocol demanded I say hello, I wandered over and introduced myself and had a brief but pleasant conversation about her niece and my grandkids (schoolmates), and as I took two steps backward while bidding farewell my second step smashed her outdoor patio lights. "Crunch!" A most terrible sound. Smashed the poor thing to smithereens I did. Clutz, you say? Yes, but a prepared clutz because, as luck would have it, we had bought the same set and as I didn't think just one light could be replaced I gave her the entire set. Next to the home of the irate, thoughtful, prepared clutz came the cable man. First, you must understand that there is very little that can prevent the cable man from completing his installation. One pratfall would be if all the TV's weren't present. They weren't, they were all at the old apartment. Now you would think that the cable company might have told me this when I set up the appointment but no, they wait until the guy gets here and then they tell me. And I think I saw a smirk. The reason they can't set up, without the TV's, is a good one! Seems the cable lines leak something - don't know what - he didn't explain. Radiation? Cable ooze? CBS eyes or NBC peacocks oozing out of the lines? Don't rightly know, do know that we won't have cable until Tuesday, the next available appointment. The last helpful person to visit this uninformed, irate, thoughtfully prepared clutz last Friday was the gas man. No, he didn't blow the house to kingdom come. How could he, he turned the gas *off.* Don't ask! And so, as moving day was the following day, we froze our asses off Saturday night. Now, five days later, I'm pretty much over my frozen, irate, uninformed, thoughtfully prepared clutz state of being and just back to being me, such as me is. Oh, the furniture was finally assembled on Tuesday but on Monday, in a burst of enthusiasm I figured I might try to conquer the entertainment center. I opened the box and ensured the presence of all pieces and then read the first page - no words actually, only pictures - showing piece F being atttached to piece C. I mean, really, couldn't they at least have the decency to start with A and B. I gave up. kap ----- acclimate [uh-KLY-mit; AK-luh-mayt], transitive and intransitive verb: To accustom or become accustomed to a new climate, environment, or situation. galumph [guh-LUHM(P)F], intransitive verb: To move in a clumsy manner or with a heavy tread. Galumph is probably an alteration of gallop. It was coined by Lewis Carroll in the nonsense poem "Jabberwocky." migrate (verb) ['mI-greyt] To move from one location or locality to another. immigrate - to migrate to a place. emigrate - migrate from a place. . . see: "MUSIC" for related links see: "PEOPLE" for related links Mozart's music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe. --Albert Einstein (18791955) German-American physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. In Armin Hermann's _Albert Einstein_ [1994]. ;void(0)) MURDER . . see: "CRIME & PUNISHMENT" for related links Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest. --W.H. [Wystan Hugh] Auden (19071973) English-born poet and man of letters. "The Guilty Vicarage" in _Harpers_ [May 1948]. Outside of the killings [Washington, D.C.] has one of the lowest crime rates in the country. --Marion Barry (b. 1936) Mayor of Washington DC [1979-91 & 1995-99]. Quoted in "Chicago Tribune" [28 March 1989]. I have never taken anybody's life, but I have often read obituary notices with considerable satisfaction. --Clarence Darrow (18571938) American lawyer. Testimony before congressional committee [1 February 1926]. If once a man indulges himself in Murder, very soon he comes to think little of Robbing, and from Robbing he comes next to Drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to Incivility and Procrastination. --Thomas De Quincey (17851859) English essayist and critic. "On Murder, Considered as One of the Fine Arts" [1839] Willie poisoned his father's tea; Father died in agony Mother came, and looked quite vexed: "Really, Will," she said, "what next?!" --Harry Graham (18741936) British writer and journalist. _Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes_ [1899] Television has brought back murder into the home where it belongs. --Alfred Hitchcock (18991980) British-born film director. In "Observer" [19 December 1965]. In that case, if we are to abolish the death penalty, let the murderers take the first step. --Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (18081890) French novelist and journalist. In "Les Guκpes" [January 1849]. Murder is a crime. Describing murder is not. Sex is not a crime. Describing sex *is*. --Gershon Legman (19171999) American folklorist. _Love & Death_ [1949] "A Study in Censorship" ^^ In Texas, when Orvell Lloyd was asked why he had killed his mother-in-law, he said he had mistaken her for a raccoon. _The Folio Book of Humorous Anecdotes_ Introduced by Edward Leeson [2005], "Crime and the Law" ^^ [Of Socrates:] The more I read about him, the less I wonder that they poisoned him. If he treated me as he is said to have treated Protagoras, Hippias, and Gorgias, I could never have forgiven him. --Thomas Babington Macaulay (18001859) English politician and historian. Letter to Thomas Ellis [29 May 1835]. ^ Dwarfing all known records for matrimonial homicide, Mr Peter Scott of Southsea made seven attempts to kill his wife without her once noticing that anything was wrong. In 1980 he took out an insurance policy on his good lady which would bring him £250,000 in the event of her accidental death. Soon afterward, he placed a lethal dose of mercury in her strawberry flan, but it all rolled out. Not wishing to waste the lethal substance, he then stuffed her mackerel with the entire contents of the bottle. This time she ate it, but with no side effects whatsoever. Warming to the task, he then took his wife on holiday to Yugoslavia. Recommending the panoramic views, he invited her to sit on the edge of a cliff she declined to do so, prompted by what she later described as some 'sixth sense.' The same occurred only weeks later when he urged her to savour the view from Beachy Head. When his spouse was in bed with chicken-pox he started a fire outside the bedroom door, but some interfering busybody put it out. Undeterred, he started another fire and burnt down the whole flat in Turswell Road, Southsea: the wife of his bosom escaped uninjured. Another time he asked her to stand in the middle of the road so that he could drive towards her and check if his brakes were working. At no time did Mrs Scott feel that the magic had gone out of their marriage. Since it appeared that nothing short of a small nuclear bomb would have alerted this good woman to her husband's intentions, he eventually gave up and confessed all to the police. After the case, a detective said Mrs Scott was absolutely shattered when told of her husband's plot to kill her. She had not clued it at all and she was dumbstruck. --John Mortimer (19232009) English barrister and author. In _The Best After-Dinner Stories_, selected and introduced by Tim Heald [2003]. ^ Roast beef and Yorkshire, or roast pork and apple sauce, followed up by suet pudding and driven home, as it were, by a cup of mahogany-brown tea, have put you in just the right mood. Your pipe is drawing sweetly, the sofa cushions are soft underneath you, the fire is well alight, the air is warm and stagnant. In these blissful circumstances, what is it that you want to read about? Naturally, about a murder. --George Orwell [Eric Blair] (19031950) English novelist. "Decline of the English Murder" [written 1946] - "I don't know. What kind of things usually provide motives?" "For murder? Because that's what we're dealing with in this case. [...] If it's unpremeditated, then anger. Lust. Money, if the killing occurs during a hold-up. Stupidity, if it happens in a hijacking. But this was premeditated. We don't know how it was done, but it called for advance planning. So then the motives are different. Jealousy. Envy. Greed. Revenge." "You sound like you're running through the list of the seven deadly sins." "Why do you think they're called deadly?" --dialogue, Charles Sheffield "The Waste Land", _Asimov's Science Fiction_ [March 2003] - Murder most foul, as in the best it is. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _Hamlet_, I, v [1601] CAESAR: To the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand. --George Bernard Shaw (18561950) Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, Socialist propagandist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 [he didn't accept it.] _Caesar and Cleopatra_ [1899] I didn't want to hurt the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat. --Perry Smith Confession. In Truman Capote _In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences_ [1966]. Whoever destroys a single life is as guilty as though he had destroyed the entire world; and whoever rescues a single life earns as much merit as though he had rescued the entire world. --Talmud (A.D.1st6th cent.) _Mishnah_ "Sanhedrin" 4:5 If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging? --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. _Following the Equator_ [1897], ch. XLVI epigraph "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" - Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword! --Oscar Wilde (18541900) Anglo-Irish dramatist and poet. _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_, pt. 1, st. 7 [1898] & see: [Bassanio asks Shylock:] Do all men kill the things they do not love? --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _The Merchant of Venice_, IV, i [1596-98] - The aged hold far too obstinately to their outmoded ideas. Perhaps that is why the natives of the Fiji Islands kill their parents when they grow old. They facilitate evolution by garroting their ancestors. --unattributed in "The New Freeman" (mag.) [1930-31] Lizzie Borden took an axe And gave her mother forty whacks; And when she saw what she had done She gave her father forty-one. --anon. There was a young lady of Malta Who strangled her aunt with a halter. She said, 'I won't bury her; She'll do for my terrier; She'll keep for a month if I salt her.' --anon. - If a Ripuarian kills a Frankish foreigner, let him be held liable for 200 solidi ... 3, If a Ripuarian kills a Roman foreigner, let him be fined twice 50 solidi ... 5 If anyone kills a freeborn clerk, let him be held liable for twice 50 solidi 8. If anyone kills a free-born priest [or bishop], let him be fined thrice 200 solidi. 10. If anyone kills the foetus within a woman or a newborn before he has a name, let him be held liable for twice 50 solidi. If he kills the mother along with the foetus, let him be fined 700 solidi. --_The Laws of the Salian and Ripuarian Franks_ (5th or 6th century; 1986 trans.) Ripuarian pt. 40, in M.J. Cohan and John Major (eds.) _History in Quotations_ [2004]. Cohan & Major note: The blood-feud was a feature of barbarian life. All law codes included wergeld, a price by which the taking of life could be redeemed without further killing. The social status of the victim affected the price. ----- amok [uh-MUHK], adjective: 1. In or into a jumbled or confused state. 2. In or into an uncontrolled state or a state of extreme activity. 3. In a frenzy to do violence or kill. vendetta (noun) [ven-'de-tκ] A blood feud between families that usually begins with a murder and continues with violent reciprocation on both sides. . . see: "FOOD & DRINK" for related links I confess, that nothing frightens me more than the appearance of mushrooms on the table, especially in a small provincial town. --attributed to Alexandre Dumas (18021870) French novelist and dramatist. ----- mycology (noun) [mI-'ka-lκ-ji] The study of mushrooms and other fungi or the growth of fungi in a particular region. end page | MACARTHUR (DOUGLAS) - MALICE | MAN - MARINES | MARRIAGE | MARTYRS - MAUGHAM (WILLIAM SOMERSET) | McCARTHY - MEANNESS | MEDIA (THE) | MEDICINE - MEMORIAL DAY | MEMORIES - MEMORY | MEN - MEN v. WOMEN | MENTAL ILLNESS - MILK | MIND (THE) - MINDING OWN BUSINESS | MINNESOTA - MISERY | MISFORTUNE - MISSOURI | MISTAKES | MISTAKEN IDENTITY - MODESTY | MONEY | MONROE - MOON | MORAL ASSASINATION - MORALITY | MORNING - MOUNTAINS | MOVIE DIALOGUE - MUSHROOMS | MUSIC - MYTHOLOGY | | H | I - J | K - L | M | N - O | P - Q | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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