ALL A B C D E F G H I J K L M
N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z #

His Girl Friday

His Girl Friday quotes

54 total quotes

Bruce Baldwin
Hildegard 'Hildy' Johnson
Mollie Malloy
Multiple Characters
Walter Burns




View Quote Walter: Be honest. If you were out joy-riding, plastered, and got into some scrape, why don't you admit it instead of accusing innocent people?
Mrs. Baldwin: You ruffian. How dare you talk like that to me!
Hildy: He's just a little crazy, mother.
Mrs. Baldwin: And I can tell you something more. I can tell you why they did it...They had some kind of a murderer in here, and they were hiding him.
Walter: Madam. You're a ****-Eyed Liar, and you know it.
View Quote Walter: Get Bruce out of jail? How can you worry about a man who's resting in a nice quiet police station while this is going on? Hildy, this is WAR! You can't desert me now!
Hildy: Oh Walter, get off that trapeze. You've got your story right over there in the desk. Go on. Smear it all over the front page. Earl Williams - captured by the Morning Post. I covered your story for ya and I got in a fine mess doing it. Now I'm gettin' out.
Walter: You're a drooling idiot. What do you mean you're getting out? There are 365 days in a year one can get married. How many times you got a murderer locked up in a desk? Once-in-a-lifetime. Hildy, you got the whole city by the seat of the pants.
Hildy: Sure, I know, I know...
Walter: You know. You know. You got the brain of a pancake. This isn't just a story you're covering. It's a revolution. This is the greatest yarn in journalism since Livingston discovered Stanley.
Hildy: It's the other way around.
Walter: Oh, well don't get technical at a time like this. Do you realize what you've done, honey? You've taken a city that's been graft-ridden for 40 years under the same old gang. With this yarn, you're kicking 'em out. They're giving us a chance to have the same kind of government New York's having under LaGuardia. Listen honey, if I didn't have your best interest at heart, do you think I'd waste my time arguin' with ya? You've done something big, Hildy. You've stepped up into a new class.
Hildy: Huh?
Walter: We'll make such monkeys out of those ward heelers next Tuesday nobody will vote for 'em. Not even their wives.
Hildy: Expose 'em, eh...
Walter: Certainly. We'll crucify that mob. We'll keep Williams under cover until morning so the Post can break the story exclusive. Then we'll let the Governor in on the capture. Share the glory with him.
Hildy: I get it. I get it.
Walter: You've kicked over the whole City Hall like an applecart. You've got the Mayor and Hartwell backed up against a wall. You put one administration out and another one in. This isn't just a newspaper story, Hildy. It's a career. And you standin' there bellyache-ing about whether you're catchin' an eight o'clock train or a nine o'clock train.
Hildy: Well, Walter, I never figured it that way.
Walter: You're still a doll-faced hick, that's why.
Hildy: Gee, we'd be the white-haired boys, won't we?
Walter: Sure, they'll be naming streets after you. Hildy Johnson Street. There'll be statues of ya in the park. The movies will be after ya. The radio. By tomorrow morning, I'll betcha there's a Hildy Johnson cigar. I can see the billboards now. They say, 'Light up with Hildy Johnson.'
Hildy: Oh Walter, will you stop that acting!...We got a lot to do.
Walter: Now you're talking.
View Quote Walter: Hildy, you've got to help me out. Just this once...This will bring us back together again. Just the way we used to be. This is bigger than anything that ever happened to us. Don't do it for me, do it for the paper.
Hildy: Scram, Svengali.
Walter: Now look, if you won't do it for love, how about money? Forget the other offer. I'll raise you twenty-five bucks a week.
View Quote Walter: Listen, Bruce, I, uh, let me get that straight, I must have misunderstood you. You mean you're taking the sleeper today and then getting married tomorrow?
Bruce: Oh, well, it's not like that.
Walter: Well, what is it like?
Hildy: Oh poor Walter. He'll toss and turn all night. Perhaps we better tell him Mother's coming along, too.
Walter: [To Hildy] Mother? Why, your mother kicked the bucket!
Bruce: No, my mother, my mother.
Walter: Oh, your mother. Oh, well, that relieves my mind.
Hildy: [To Walter] It was cruel to let you suffer that way. [To Bruce] Isn't Walter sweet? Always wanting to protect me.
Walter: Well, I admit I wasn't much of a husband, but you can always count on me, Hildy.
View Quote Walter: She deserves all this happiness, Bruce. All the things I couldn't give her. Yeah, all she ever wanted was a home.
Bruce: Well, I'll certainly try to give her one.
Walter: I know you will, Bruce. Where are you gonna live?
Bruce: Albany.
Walter: Albany, huh? Got a family up there then?
Bruce: No, just my mother.
Walter: 'Just your mother.' Oh, you're gonna live with your mother?
Bruce: Well, just for the first year.
Walter: Oh, that will be nice! Yes, yes, a home with mother - in Albany too!
Bruce: Mighty nice little town - Albany. They've got the state capital there, you know.
Walter: Well Bruce, how is business up there? Any better?
Bruce: Well, Albany's a mighty good insurance town. Most people there take it out pretty early in life.
Walter: Yeah, well I can see why they would.
Bruce: I figure I'm in one business that really helps people. Of course, we don't help you much while you're alive, but afterward - that's what counts!
View Quote Walter: Well, he'll (Egelhoffer) say the same as all the rest.
Hildy: Suppose he does.
Walter: Well, what's the scheme, Hildy?
Hildy: Look Walter, you get the interview with Earl Williams. Print Egelhoffer's statement. And right alongside of it - you know, double column - run your interview. Alienist says he's sane. Interview shows he's goofy.
Walter: Aw Hildy, you can do it. You could save that poor devil's life.
View Quote Walter: What's the use of fighting, Hildy? I'll tell you what you do. You come back to work on the paper, and if we find we can't get along in a friendly fashion, we'll get married again.
Hildy: Oh Walter, you're wonderful - in a loathsome sort of way. Listen, Walter, you are no longer my husband and no longer my boss. And you're not going to be my boss.
Walter: All right, take it. Work for somebody else. That's the gratitude I get.
Hildy: Oh, I wish you'd stop hamming.
Walter: What were you when you came here five years ago? A little college girl from a school of journalism. I took a doll-faced hick.
Hildy: Well, you wouldn't take me if I hadn't been doll-faced...
Walter: Listen. I made a great reporter out of you, Hildy. But you won't be half as good on any other paper and you know it. We're a team. That's what we are. You need me and I need you, and the paper needs both of us.
Hildy: Sold American! Listen, Walter, the paper's gonna have to get along without me. So are you. It just didn't work out, Walter.
Walter: Well, it would have worked out if you'd been satisfied with just being editor and reporter - but not you! You had to marry me and spoil everything.
Hildy: I wasn't satisfied? I suppose I proposed to you?
View Quote Williams: He [the soap-box speaker] said everything should be made use of.
Hildy: It makes quite a bit of sense, doesn't it?...Now look, Earl, when you found yourself with that gun in your hand, and that policeman coming at you, what did you think about?...You must have thought of something...Could it have been, uh, 'production for use'?...What's a gun for Earl?
Williams: A gun?...Why to shoot, of course.
Hildy: Oh. Maybe that's why you used it.
Williams: Maybe.
Hildy: Seems reasonable?
Williams: Yes, yes it is. You see, I've never had a gun in my hand before. That's what a gun's for, isn't it? Maybe that's why.
Hildy: Sure it is.
Williams: Yes, that's what I thought of. Production for use. Why, it's simple isn't it?
Hildy: Very simple.
Williams: There's nothing crazy about that, is there?
Hildy: Nope. Nothing at all.
Williams: You'll write about that in your paper, won't you?
Hildy: You bet I will.
Williams: I liked talking to you.
View Quote [in her story] And so, into this little tortured mind came the idea that that gun had been produced for use. And use it he did. But the state has a 'production-for-use' plan too. It has a gallows. And at seven a.m. unless a miracle occurs, that gallows will be used to separate the soul of Earl Williams from his body. And out of Mollie Malloy's life will go the one kindly soul she ever knew.
View Quote [on the phone to Hildy] I was sitting right in the taxi where you left me and the young lady seemed to have a dizzy spell and I just...Yes, she's a blonde. Yes, very blonde.
View Quote [on the phone to Walter] Now get this, you double-crossing chimpanzee! There ain't gonna be any interview and there ain't gonna be any story. And that certified check of yours is leaving with me in twenty minutes. I wouldn't cover the burning of Rome for you if they were just lighting it up. And if I ever lay my two eyes on you again, I'm gonna walk right up to you and hammer on that monkey skull of yours 'til it rings like a Chinese gong! [she tears up her story] Do you hear that? That's the story I just wrote. Yes, yes, I know we had a bargain. I just said I'd write it. I didn't say I wouldn't tear it up. It's all in little pieces now, Walter, and I hope to do the same for you some day. [to newsroom] And that my friends, is my farewell to the newspaper game. I'm gonna be a woman, not a news-getting machine. I'm gonna have babies and take care of them. Give 'em cod liver oil and watch their teeth grow.
View Quote [on the phone] Well Butch, where are you?...Well, what are you doing there? Haven't you even started?...Listen, it's a matter of life and death!...Well, you can't stop for a dame now! I don't care if you've been after her for six years. Butch - our whole lives are at stake! Are you going to let a woman come between us after all we've been through?...Butch, I'd put my arm in fire for you, up to here. Now you can't double-cross me...Put her on, I'll talk to her. Oh, good evening madam. Now listen, you ten-cent glamour girl. You can't keep Butch away from his duty!
View Quote [to a group of newspapermen] I came to tell ya what I think of ya, all of ya...You crumbs have been makin' a fool out of me long enough. I never said I loved Earl Williams and was willing to marry him on the gallows. You made that up, and about my being a soul-mate and having a love-nest with him...I met Mr. Williams just once in my life when he was wandering around in the rain without his hat and coat on like a sick dog the day before the shooting. I went up to him like any human being would and I asked him what was the matter. And - and he told me about being fired after being on the same job for fourteen years. And I brought him up to my room because it was warm there...Aw listen to me, please. I tell ya, he just sat there talking to me all night. He never once laid a hand on me. And - and in the morning, he went away. And I never saw him again till that day of the trial. Sure I was his witness!...That's why you're persecuting me, because Earl Williams treated me decent and not like an animal, and I said so!...It's a wonder a bolt of lightning don't come down and strike you all dead! A poor little fella that never meant nobody no harm. Sitting there this minute with the Angel of Death beside him, and you cracking jokes!
View Quote [to Bruce] You're getting a great little girl for yourself...You're getting something else too, Bruce, you're getting a great newspaperman ... One of the best I ever knew. Sorry to see her go. Darn sorry, Hildy.
View Quote [To Hildy] I don't know what they're gonna think up there in Albany. They had to send the money to the police station...Where's mother? She said she was coming up here...Where'd she go?...Hildy! Tell me where my mother was going?...Did she get the money from you?...I'll take that money, Hildy...I've decided I can handle things around here and I'll take that certified check too...This is my wallet. Say, there's something funny going on. [To Walter] Hey, what are you doing?...[To Hildy] Hildy, I'm taking the nine o'clock train...Hildy, I just want you to answer me one question - you don't want to come with me...answer me, Hildy, you don't, do you?...Hildy, tell me, please tell me the truth. If you ever loved me, Hildy -? [To Walter] You're doing all this to her, I know that. She wanted to get away from you and everything you stand for, but you were too smart. You caught her and changed her mind...[To Hildy] Come on, Hildy, you're coming with me right now...I see, I'll keep. I'm like something in the icebox, aren't I?...You just don't love me...The point is that you never intended to be decent and live like a human being...I see what you are now. You're just like him and all the rest...I understand all right, I understand...Oh Hildy, I don't think you ever loved me at all...