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His Girl Friday

His Girl Friday quotes

54 total quotes

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




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 Now you want me to talk...Oh ain't that funny. You wouldn't listen to me before. Not even for a minute. And now you want me to talk...What do ya want to know for? So you can write some more lies, so you can sell some more papers. I'll give you a wonderful story - only this time it'll be true!
View Quote Mayor: Do you realize there are two hundred thousand votes at stake? And if Earl Williams don't hang, we're gonna lose 'em?
View Quote Mayor: A guy who's done nothing for the last forty years but play pinochle gets elected Governor and right away, he thinks he's a Tarzan.
View Quote Diamond Louie: Down Western Avenue, we was going sixty-five miles an hour...We run smack into a police patrol. you know what I mean? We busted it in half!...Can you imagine bumping into a load of cops? They come rolling out like oranges!...When I come to, I was running down Thirty-fourth Street...The driver got knocked cold...I don't think she's [Bruce's mother] squawking much, you know what I mean?...Say listen, me with a gun on the hip and a kidnapped old lady on my hands, I'm gonna stick around askin' questions from a lot of cops?
View Quote Hildy: I spent six weeks in Reno, then Bermuda, oh, about four months, I guess. It seems like yesterday to me.
Walter: Maybe it was yesterday, Hildy. Been seeing me in your dreams?
Hildy: Oh, no, Mama doesn't dream about you anymore, Walter. You wouldn't know the old girl now.
Walter: I'd know you anytime, anyplace, anywhere.
View Quote Hildy: A big fat lummox like you - hiring an airplane to write: 'Hildy, don't be hasty, remember my dimple.' Walter. It delayed our divorce twenty minutes while the judge went out to watch it.
Walter: I've still got the dimple and in the same place.
View Quote Hildy: All I know is that instead of two weeks in Atlantic City with my bridegroom, I spent two weeks in a coal mine with John Krupsky. You don't deny that, do you Walter?
Walter: Deny it? I'm proud of it. We beat the whole country on that story.
Hildy: Well, I suppose we did. That isn't what I got married for!
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 Walter: And I still claim I was tight the night I proposed to you. If you had been a gentleman, you would have forgotten all about it. But not you.
[Hildy throws her pocketbook at the back of his head, but he ducks]
Walter: You're losing your eye. You used to be able to pitch better than that.
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 Hildy: Listen to me, you great big bumble-headed baboon.
Walter: I'll make it thirty-five bucks and not a cent more.
Hildy: Walter, are you gonna listen?
Walter: But good grief, how much is that other paper gonna pay you?
Hildy: There isn't any other paper.
Walter: Oh! Well in that case, the raise is off. You go back to your old salary...
Hildy: Walter, I want to show you something. It's here. It's a ring. Take a good look at it. Do you know what it is? It's an engagement ring. I tried to tell you right away, but you would start reminiscing. I'm getting married, Walter, and I'm also getting as far away from the newspaper business as I can get.
Walter: What?
Hildy: I am through.
Walter: You can marry all you want to, Hildy, but you can't quit the newspaper business.
Hildy: Oh! Why not?
Walter: I know you, Hildy. I know what quitting would mean to you.
Hildy: And what would it mean?
Walter: It would kill ya.
Hildy: You can't sell me that, Walter Burns.
Walter: Who says I can't? You're a newspaperman.
Hildy: That's why I'm quitting. I want to go someplace where I can be a woman.
Walter: You mean be a traitor.
Hildy: A traitor? A traitor to what?
Walter: A traitor to journalism. You're a journalist, Hildy.
Hildy: A journalist? Hell, what does that mean? Peeking through keyholes? Chasing after fire engines? Waking people up in the middle of the night to ask them if Hitler's gonna start another war? Stealing pictures off old ladies? I know all about reporters, Walter. A lot of daffy buttinskis running around without a nickel in their pockets and for what? So a million hired girls and motormen's wives'll know what's going on. Why-... Golly, what's the use? Walter, you-you wouldn't know what it means to want to be respectable and live a half-way normal life. The point is, I-I'm through.
View Quote Hildy: He's an insurance salesman. That's a good, honest business, isn't it?
Walter: Oh certainly, it's honest. It's also adventurous, it's romantic. Listen, Hildy, I can't picture you being surrounded by policies, policies...
Hildy: I can, I can, and I like it, what's more. Besides, he forgets the office when he's with me...He doesn't treat me like an errand boy either, Walter. He treats me like a woman.
Walter: He does, does he? How did I treat ya, like a water buffalo?
Hildy: I don't know from water buffalos, but I do know about him. He's kind and he's sweet and he's considerate. He wants a home and children.
Walter: Sounds more like a guy I ought to marry. What's his name?
Hildy: Uh, Baldwin. Bruce Baldwin.
Walter: Baldwin, Baldwin. Oh, I knew a Baldwin once. A horse thief in Mississippi. Couldn't be the same fella, could it?
Hildy: You're now talking about the man I'm marrying tomorrow.
Walter: Tomorrow? As soon as that?
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: 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.