Best and Worst Lines in Movie History

[CineMaven]

H.B....I've heard that about Gable. But as Rhett Butler said:

"Frankly my dear...I don't give a damn."

[MissGoddess]

i love how you described your favorites and included images, t-mave. it really captures your personality. what we like reveals a lot about ourselves, which is what i find most interesting about these posts.

one of my favorite lines has always been John Garfield's last line in Humoresque:



"In the end, you pay for what you are."

[moira finnie]

Oh, Miss G. One of my favorite films! That line and Garfield's stricken look are so haunting.

I also like the rueful way that Helen Wright (Joan Crawford) explains her past to Paul Boray (John Garfield):

"I was married twice before - once at 16, once at 21. One was a crybaby and the other was a caveman. Between the two of them I said goodbye to girlhood."

Do you think that Sid Jeffers' lines were all written by Oscar Levant or did he just make the Clifford Odets' lines sound that way?

"Tell me, Mrs. Wright, does your husband interfere with your marriage?"

"It isn't what you are, it's what you don't become that hurts."

"You have all the characteristics of a successful virtuoso. You're self-indulgent, self-dedicated and the hero of all your dreams."

[MissGoddess]

If Levant didn't write them, his delivery made them his own. It's a great script and really lifts the movie above the ordinary.

[JackFavell]

One Way Passage


BETTY: I was sayin' I'm not any of the things you think I am. I've been a long way. And I've left a wide trail.

BURKE: If it's your past, mine ain't been no bed of violets. What do you say we forget about it? Let's start from scratch.

BETTY: You on the level, Steve?

BURKE: On the level. What do you say ... "Countess"?

BETTY: Don't smear my bangs.

[moira finnie]

That last line of Aline MacMahon's made me laugh this morning as I listened more than watched One Way Passage. I'm working on completing scads of paperwork this morning. I can't tell you how much fun I am having listening to the dialogue in these Kay Francis movies.

Right now that lounge lizard Monroe Owsley is slithering his way back into Kay Francis' life in a tawdry way in The Keyhole. Here comes Glenda Farrell, full of faux elegance and vinegar...I think Glenda ("Is the Duke of Wessex on board, my good man?") Farrell and Allen Jenkins are "fated to be mated," don't you?

[ChiO]

Bart Tare to Annie Laurie Starr (GUN CRAZY 1949): " We go together, Annie. I don't know why. Maybe like guns and ammunition go together."

And Eternal Wisdom, courtesy of DINER --

Shrevie:"Every one of my records means something! The label, the producer, the year it was made. Who was copying whose style... who's expanding on that, don't you understand? When I listen to my records they take me back to certain points in my life, OK? Just don't touch my records, ever! You! The first time I met you? Modell's sister's high school graduation party, right? 1955. And Ain't That A Shame was playing when I walked into the door!"

Fenwick: "Do you ever get the feeling that there's something going on that we don't know about?"

Eddie: "You're dealing with a rational girl; that's your problem."

Eddie: "If you want to talk, you always have the guys at the diner. You don't need a girl if you wanna talk."

Shrevie: "When you're dating, everything is talking about sex. Where can we do it? Why can't we do it? Are you parents gonna be out so we can do it? Everything is always talkin' about getting sex, and then planning the wedding, all the details. But then, when you get married... it's crazy, I dunno. You can get it whenever you want it. You wake up in the morning and she's there. You come home from work and she's there. So all that sex planning talk is over with. And so is the wedding planning talk cause you're already married. So... ya know I can come down here and we can bullshit the entire night away but I cannot hold a 5 minute conversation with Beth. I mean it's not her fault, I'm not blaming her, she's great.... It's just, we got nothing to talk about.... But it's good, it's good."

[JackFavell]

That last line of Aline MacMahon's made me laugh this morning as I listened more than watched One Way Passage. I'm working on completing scads of paperwork this morning. I can't tell you how much fun I am having listening to the dialogue in these Kay Francis movies.

Ha! There were so many good lines yesterday, I couldn't keep track! But as soon as I heard Aline mutter the immortal "Don't smear my bangs" as she and Warren Hymer went in for the clinch, I knew I had to post it here. Sorry I beat you to it!

Right now that lounge lizard Monroe Owsley is slithering his way back into Kay Francis' life in a tawdry way in The Keyhole. Here comes Glenda Farrell, full of faux elegance and vinegar...I think Glenda ("Is the Duke of Wessex on board, my good man?") Farrell and Allen Jenkins are "fated to be mated," don't you?

I'm reading the new Spencer Tracy bio and guess who was in his class at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts? Monroe Owsley. Kind of gives one pause... makes me feel I should really watch ten Monroe Owsley films in a row to see if he was actually a good actor.

I loved the interplay between Allen Jenkins and Glenda Farrell! I wish they had had a movie all to themselves. Of course they were perfect for each other! Perhaps this was the first of the gold-digging couples who went after each other's money, not realizing the other was even broker than they were? Like Don Ameche and Betty Grable later on?

********************************************

Love the Diner and Gun Crazy quotes!

More from Diner:

Modell: You know what word I'm not comfortable with? Nuance. It's not a real word. Like gesture. Gesture's a real word. With gesture you know where you stand. But nuance? I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong.

********************************************

Eddie: When you're making out, which do you prefer, Sinatra or Mathis?
Boogie: I like Presley.

[moira finnie]

Um, I wonder how Monroe Owsley felt competing--if that could possibly be the word--with Spencer Tracy at AADA? I know Owsley came from a theatrical family, so he might have intimidated the hell out of Tracy at times, though the rough-hewn Tracy already had considerable power dramatically--though he only seems to have known it fitfully then.

It seems as though Owsley is a '20s fixture leftover in the early '30s and already a walking relic of a devil-may-care era (He died so young, we can never know if he would have evolved). Tracy, on the other hand, seems much more modern to me.

[JackFavell]

I think your take on Owsley is completely right, he does seem more 20's than 30's. How sad. It pulled me up short seeing his name amongst the alumni of the AADA alongside Tracy's, since he seems so completely of a different time. Thelma Ritter was also in Tracy's class.

[moira finnie]

Thelma Ritter was also in Tracy's class.

I know! That was one of the few items that James Curtis neglected to detail in his comprehensive book, darn it! Too bad more isn't known about Thelma-Spencer's school days.

[JackFavell]

This is one time when I wish they had digressed from the story! I had never thought Thelma was an actress that early, somehow I had it in my head that she started late and had been a housewife or something. I would kill to have seen them in a play together.

[moira finnie]

This is one time when I wish they had digressed from the story! I had never thought Thelma was an actress that early, somehow I had it in my head that she started late and had been a housewife or something. I would kill to have seen them in a play together.

You're right, she was a housewife for a time, but she had been, according to her, an actress since her arrival in Brooklyn on Valentine's Day, 1905, where she was born to a church soloist and his wife. She was their only child.

In 1959, Ritter spoke to Associate Press reporter Hal Boyle about her early life and family situation the following:

"The French have an old saying, 'An only child makes three fools,' she told a reporter in 1959, "and there is some truth to it."

"But an only child has a great luxury--the luxury of being lonely. People today don't appreciate the advantages of being lonely individually. They seek loneliness en masse."

Lonely Thelma Ritter at the age of 8 was doing monologues in clubs and churches. At 16 she went to work in an office to earn the money to attend a drama school.

"I could afford only one year at the school," she said. There followed 14 years of stock throughout New England, low-paid years of hard work during which she played literally hundreds of roles. But looking back on them now, she thinks of them as pretty wonderful.

During that time she met and married a young actor, Joseph Moran, now a retired advertising executive. They have been married more than 30 years, have two children.

"Young actors now need 10 times the equipment I needed when I started," she said. "Except for the work of a few writers, such as Eugene O'Neill, the plays were pretty bad. They often didn't require much talent.

"Much more is demanded of young actors today. Modern plays are written with a deeper insight of how people really are."

How does a young person ever summon up the courage to try for a career in a field as capricious as the theater?

"I don't know," said Miss Ritter. "The average professional actor works under three months of each year and earns only about $1,200.

"I remember one time years ago when I became tired and disgusted with the life. I threatened to quit and take a 9-to-5 job, and my roommate just laughed and said, 'You won't be happy. You'll meet nothing but squares.'

"I guess that's the real thing about the theater, and show business generally--it gives you an inside feeling."

As a successful advertising exec, Joe Moran was making enough for Thelma to stay home and take care of the kids for several years. By the time WWII began, Thelma was looking around for another challenge and began working in radio again.

Years before, she and her husband had been friends with a starving playwright in their younger days around the NY theater world and in stock companies where they eked out a living. One day, Thelma got a call from their old friend, George Seaton, who was a big-time Hollywood writer-director by then. "It isn't much of a part," Seaton told her, "but it'll be fun and maybe you'll bring me luck." Thelma Ritter's salt-of-the-earth bit part in Miracle on 34th Street (1947) kicked her career as an "overnight success" into high gear.

I really hope that she and Spencer Tracy met again in the course of their careers in Hollywood, but who knows?

[MissGoddess]

in a way it's not so very surprising they studied together. both ritter and tracy have that real, down to earth naturalism that seems so effortless, as if all they do is saunter onto their marks and off they go until quitting time. a pair of (delicious) baked potatoes

[moira finnie]

in a way it's not so very surprising they studied together. both ritter and tracy have that real, down to earth naturalism that seems so effortless, as if all they do is saunter onto their marks and off they go until quitting time. a pair of (delicious) baked potatoes

How aptly expressed!