Philadelphia Story, The (1940) quotes

View Quote Tracy: [reading George's letter to Dexter, Mike, and Liz] My dear Tracy: I want you to know that you will always be my friend, but your conduct last night was so shocking to my ideals of womanhood...that my attitude toward you and the prospect of a happy and useful life together has been changed materially. Your breach of common decency...
[George enters, criticising her for reading his letter out loud]
Tracy: It's only a letter from a friend. They're my friends too. [continues to read] ...certainly entitles me to a full explanation before going through with our proposed marriage. In the light of day, I am sure that you will agree with me. Otherwise, with profound regrets and all best wishes, yours very sincerely...Yes, George, I quite agree with you - in the light of day and the dark of night, for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse, in sickness and in health - and thank you so very much for your good wishes at this time...I wish for your sake, as well as mine, I had an explanation, but unfortunately I've none. You'd better just say, 'Good riddance,' George.
George: On the very eve of your wedding, an affair with another man.
Mike: Kittredge, it may interest you to know that the so-called 'affair' consisted of exactly two kisses and a rather late swim...All of which I thoroughly enjoyed, and the memory of which I wouldn't part with for anything... After which I deposited Tracy on her bed in her room, and promptly returned down here to you two - which doubtless you'll remember.
Tracy: Why? Was I so unattractive, so distant, so forbidding, or something - that - ?
George: Well, this is fine talk, too.
Tracy: I'm asking a question.
Mike: You were extremely attractive, and as for distant and forbidding, on the contrary. But you also were a little the worse - or the better - for wine, and there are rules about that.
Tracy: Thank you, Mike. I think men are wonderful.
Liz: We all go haywire at times and if we don't, maybe we ought to.
George: A man expects his wife to ...
Tracy: ...behave herself, naturally.
Dexter: To behave herself naturally.
George: If it hadn't been for that drink last night, all this might not have happened.
Tracy: Apparently nothing did. What made you think it had?
George: Well, it didn't take much imagination!
Tracy: Not much, perhaps, but just of a certain kind.
George: It seems you didn't think anything too well of yourself.
Tracy: That's the odd thing, George. Somehow I would have hoped that you'd think better of me than I did.
George: I'm not going to quibble, Tracy. All the evidence was there!
Tracy: And I was guilty. Straight off. That is, until I was proved innocent.
George: Let's let bygones be bygones. What do ya say?
Tracy: Yes, and goodbye George...You're too good for me, George. You're a hundred times too good...And I'd make you most unhappy, most - That is, I'd do my best to.

View Quote Mike: The prettiest sight in this fine, pretty world is the privileged class enjoying its privileges.
Tracy: You're a snob, Connor.
Mike: No doubt, no doubt...Tracy. You can't marry that guy.
Tracy: George? I'm going to. Why, why not?
Mike: Well, I don't know. I thought I'd be for it at first, but you just don't seem to match up.
Tracy: Then the fault's with me.
Mike: Well, maybe so, but all the same now, you can't do it.
Tracy: No?
Mike: No.
Tracy: Come around about noon tomorrow. I mean today. Snob.
Mike: What do ya mean, snob?
Tracy: You're the worst kind there is. An intellectual snob. You made up your mind awfully young, it seems to me.
Mike: Well, thirty's about time to make up your mind. And I'm nothing of the sort, not Mr. Connor.
Tracy: The time to make up your mind about people - is never. Yes you are, and a complete one.
Mike: You're quite a girl, aren't you?
Tracy: You think?
Mike: Yeah, I know.
Tracy: Thank you, Professor. I don't think I'm exceptional.
Mike: You are though.
Tracy: I know any number like me. You ought to get around more.
Mike: In the upper class. No, no. No thank you.
Tracy: You're just a mass of prejudices, aren't you? You're so much thought and so little feeling, Professor.
Mike: Oh I am, am I?
Tracy: Yes you am, are you! Your intolerance infuriates me. I should think that of all people, a writer would need tolerance. The fact is, you'll never - you can't be a first-rate writer or a first-rate human being until you've learned to have some small regard for human fra...[Suddenly, she stops, her eyes widen, and she realizes that she is repeating Dexter's words. She turns] Aren't the geraniums pretty, Professor? Is it not a handsome day that begins, Professor?
Mike: All right, lay off that, Professor.
Tracy: Yes, Professor.
Mike: You've got all the arrogance of your class, all right, haven't you?
Tracy: Halt. What have classes to do with it? What do they matter except for the people in them? George comes from the so-called lower class. Dexter from the upper...Upper and lower, my eye. I'll take the lower, thanks.
Mike: If you can't get a drawing room.
Tracy: What do you mean by that?
Mike: My mistake.
Tracy: Decidedly. You're insulting.
Mike: I'm sorry.
Tracy: Oh, don't apologize.
Mike: Well, who's apologizing?
Tracy: I never knew such a man.
Mike: You wouldn't be likely to, dear, not from where you sit.
Tracy: Talk about arrogance.
Mike: Tracy.
Tracy: What do you want?
Mike: You're wonderful. [She laughs] There's a magnificence in you, Tracy.
Tracy: Now, I'm getting self-conscious. It's funny. I- Mike? Let's...
Mike: Yeah?
Tracy: I don't know - go up I guess, it's late.
Mike: A magnificence that comes out of your eyes, in your voice, in the way you stand there, in the way you walk. You're lit from within, Tracy. You've got fires banked down in you, hearth-fires and holocausts.
Tracy: I don't seem to you made of bronze?
Mike: [takes her in his arms] No, you're made out of flesh and blood. That's the blank, unholy surprise of it. You're the golden girl, Tracy. Full of life and warmth and delight. What goes on? You've got tears in your eyes.
Tracy: Shut up, shut up. Oh Mike. Keep talking, keep talking. Talk, will you?
Mike: No, no. I-I've stopped.
Tracy: Why? Has your mind taken hold again, dear Professor?
Mike: That's really all I am to you, is it?
Tracy: Of course, Professor.
Mike: Are you sure?
Tracy: Why, yes, yes, of course...
[Mike's forceful, passionate kiss stops her next word. She takes the melodramatic kiss and returns it]
Tracy: Golly. [She kisses him a second time] Golly Moses. All of a sudden, I got the shakes.
Mike: It can't be anything like love, can it?
Tracy: No! No! It mustn't be. It can't.
Mike: Would it be inconvenient?
Tracy: Terribly. Anyway, I know it isn't. Oh Mike, we're out of our minds.
Mike: And right into our hearts.
Tracy: That ought to have music.
Mike: It does, doesn't it? Tracy, you're so lovely.
Tracy: Oh, it's as if my insteps were melting away. What is it? Have I got feet of clay or something?
Mike: Tracy...
Tracy: It's not far to the pool. It's just over the lawn and in the birch-grove. It'll be lovely now.
Mike: Tracy, you're tremendous...
Tracy: Put me in your pocket, Mike.

View Quote Tracy: You're a kind of, um, writer, aren't you, Mr. Connor?
Mike: Sort of.
Tracy: A book?
Mike: Yes.
Tracy: Under what name do you publish?
Mike: My own. Macauley Connor.
Tracy: What's the 'Macauley' for?
Mike: Well, my father taught English History. I'm, I'm Mike to my friends.
Tracy: Of whom you have many, I'm sure. English History - it's always fascinated me. Cromwell, Robin Hood, Jack the Ripper. Where did he teach? I mean your father -
Mike: In a little high school in South Bend, Indiana.
Tracy: South Bend! It sounds like dancing, doesn't it? You must have had a most happy childhood there.
Mike: Yeah, it was terrific.
Tracy: I'm so glad.
Mike: No, I didn't mean it that way.
Tracy: I'm so sorry. Why?
Mike: Uh, well, lack of where-with-all I guess.
Tracy: But that doesn't always cause unhappiness, does it? Not if you're the right kind of man. George Kittredge, my fiancee, never had anything either and he...

View Quote Dexter: Perhaps I'll go look for some eye-openers in the pantry.
Uncle Willie: That's the first sane remark I've heard today. Come along, Dexter. I know a formula that's said to pop the pennies off the eyelids of dead Irishmen.
Dexter: [to Dinah] If the conversation should lag, you might tell Tracy about your dream.

View Quote [Mike walks in, carrying a drunk Tracy]
Dexter: [To George] Now easy old man! [To Mike] She's not hurt?
Mike: No, no.
Tracy: Not wounded, sire, but dead.
Mike: It seems the minute she hit the water, the wine hit her.
George: Now look here, Connor.
Dexter: A likely story, Connor.
Tracy: Hello, Dexter. Hello, George. Hello, Mike. My feet are made of clay. Made of clay, did you know? Good niiiggghhhttt little man!
[Mike carries her upstairs]
Dexter: How are the mighty fallen! But if I know Tracy - and I know her well, she'll remember little of this. For the second time in her life, she'll draw quite a tidy blank.

View Quote Tracy: Of course, inasmuch as you let us in for it in the first place.
Mr. Lord: Oh, do keep that note out of your voice, Tracy. It's very unattractive.
Tracy: Oh? How does your dancer friend talk? Or does she purr?
Margaret: Tracy!
Mr. Lord: Oh, it's quite all right, Margaret.
Tracy: Sweet and low, I suppose. Dulcet, very lady-like. You've got a heck of a nerve to come back here in your best-head-of-the-family manner and make stands and strike attitudes and criticize my fiancee and give orders and mess things up generally...
Margaret: Stop it instantly!
Tracy: I can't help it. It's sickening. As if he'd done nothing at all!
Mr. Lord: Which happens to be the truth.
Margaret: Anyway, it's not your affair, Tracy, if it concerns anyone. Well actually, I don't know whom it concerns except your father.
Mr. Lord: That's very wise of you, Margaret. What most wives fail to realize is that their husband's philandering has nothing whatever to do with them.
Tracy: Oh? Then, what has it to do with?
Mr. Lord: A reluctance to grow old, I think. I suppose the best mainstay a man can have as he gets along in years is a daughter - the right kind of daughter.
Tracy: How sweet!
Mr. Lord: No, no. I'm talking seriously about something I've thought over thoroughly. I've had to. I think a devoted young girl gives a man the illusion that youth is still his.
Tracy: Very important, I suppose.
Mr. Lord: Oh, very, very. Because without her, he might be inclined to go out in search of his youth. And that's just as important to him as it is to any woman. But with a girl of his own full of warmth for him, full of foolish, unquestioning, uncritical affection -
Tracy: None of which I've got -
Mr. Lord: None. You have a good mind, a pretty face, a disciplined body that does what you tell it to. You have everything it takes to make a lovely woman except the one essential - an understanding heart. And without that, you might just as well be made of bronze.
Tracy: That's an awful thing to say to anyone.
Mr. Lord: Yes, it is indeed.
Tracy: So, I'm to blame for Tina Mara, am I?
Mr. Lord: To a certain extent, I expect you are.
Tracy: You coward.
Mr. Lord: No. But better that than a prig or a perennial spinster, however many marriages.
Margaret: Seth, that's too much.
Mr. Lord: I'm afraid it's not enough, Margaret. I'm afraid nothing is.
Tracy: What, what did you say I was?
Mr. Lord: Do you want me to repeat it?
Tracy: 'A prig and a...' You mean, you think I think I'm some kind of a goddess or something?
Mr. Lord: If your ego wants it that way, yes. Also, you've been talking like a jealous woman.
Tracy: 'A...' What's the matter with everyone all at once, anyhow?

View Quote Mike: [on the telephone] This is the Bridal Suite. Would you send up a couple of caviar sandwiches and a bottle of beer?
Margaret: What? Who is this?
Mike: This is the Voice of Doom calling. Your days are numbered, to the seventh son of the seventh son!
Margaret: Hello? Hello?
Tracy: What's the matter?
Margaret: I think one of the servants has been at the sherry again.

View Quote Tracy: [about Dexter's wedding gift] It was beautiful - and sweet, Dex.
Dexter: Yes, yes. She was quite a boat, the True Love, wasn't she?
Tracy: Was, and is.
Dexter: My, she was yar.
Tracy: She was yar alright. I wasn't, was I?
Dexter: Not very. Oh, you were good at the bright work, though.
Tracy: I made her shine. Where is she now?
Dexter: I'm gonna sell it to Ruth Watrous.
Tracy: You're gonna sell the True Love, for money?
Dexter: Sure...Oh well, what's it matter? When you're through with a boat, you're through. Besides, it was only comfortable for two people. Unless you want her.
Tracy: No, no I don't want her.
Dexter: Well, I'm designing another one anyway, along more practical lines.
Tracy: What'll you call her?
Dexter: I thought the True Love II. What do you think?
Tracy: Dexter, if you call any boat that, I promise you I'll blow you and it out of the water. I'll tell you what you can call her if you like...in fond remembrance of me, the Easy Virtue.
Dexter: Shut up, Red! I can't have you thinking things like that about yourself.
Tracy: Well, what am I supposed to think when I - Oh I don't know. I don't know anything any more.
Dexter: That sounds very hopeful, Red. That sounds just fine.

View Quote Mike: [drunk] Are you still in love with her?...Liz thinks you are...But of course, women like to romanticize [hiccup] about things...I don't know, I-I can't understand how you can have been married to her and still know so little about her?...You know, Tracy's no ordinary woman. And you said some things to her this afternoon I resented.
Dexter: Well, I apologize Mr. Connor.
Mike: That's quite all right. Quite all right. But when a girl is like Tracy, she's one in a million. She's, she's sort of like a, she's sort of like a...
Dexter: A goddess?
Mike: No, no, no. No, you said that word this afternoon. No. No, she's, she's sort of like a queen. A radiant glorious queen. And you can't treat her like other women.
Dexter: No, I suppose not. But then I imagine Kittredge appreciates all that.
Mike: Kittredge! Kittredge appreciates Kittredge. Ah, that fake man of the people. He isn't even smart.

View Quote Dinah: This stinks.
Margaret: Don't say 'stinks,' darling. If absolutely necessary, 'smells' - but only if absolutely necessary.

View Quote Tracy: Are either of you married?
Mike: No.
Liz: Uh, no.
Tracy: You mean you were, but now you're divorced...Well, come now Miss Imbrie, surely you're not ashamed of it.
Liz: Well, of course I'm not ashamed of it.
Mike: WHAT!?
Liz: Well, it was years ago. I was only a kid in Duluth.
Mike: Well, good heavens Liz! You never told me anything...
Liz: You never asked me.
Mike: Well, I know, but you...
Liz: Joe Smith. Hardware.
Mike: You're the darnedest girl, Liz.
Liz: I think I'm sweet.
Tracy: Duluth. That must be a lovely spot. It's west of here, isn't it?...And this is your first visit in Philadelphia? It's a quaint old place, don't you think, filled with relics. And how old are you, Mr. Connor?
Mike: Thirty.
Tracy: One book isn't much for a man of thirty. Well, I don't mean to criticize. You probably have other interests outside your work.
Mike: None, I mean unless... [He gestures to acknowledge his friendship with Liz]
Tracy: How sweet. Are you going together?
Liz: Well, that is an odd question I must say.
Tracy: Well, I don't see why. I think it's very interesting. Miss Imbrie. Don't you agree that if a man says he loves a girl, he ought to marry her?
Mike: Can she be human?
Tracy: Please, Mr. Connor! I asked Miss Imbrie a question.
Liz: That depends. I-
Tracy: I'll see what's keeping Mama. [she leaves the room]

View Quote Dexter: [about marrying George] How in the world could you even think of it?
Tracy: Because he is everything you're not. He's been poor. He's had to work and he's had to fight for everything. And I love him, as I never even began to love you.
Dexter: Maybe so, but I doubt it. I think he's just a swing from me. But it's too violent a swing. Kittredge is no great tower of strength, you know, Tracy. He's just a tower.
Tracy: You hardly know him.
Dexter: To hardly know him is to know him well. And perhaps it offends my vanity to have anyone who is even remotely my wife re-marry so obviously beneath her.
Tracy: How dare you! Any of you in this day and age use such an idiotic...
Dexter: I'm talking about the difference in mind and spirit...Kittredge is not for you.
Tracy: You bet he's for me. He's a great man and a good man. Already, he's of national importance.
Dexter: You sound like Spy Magazine talking. But whatever he is, toots, you'll have to stick. He'll give you no out as I did.
Tracy: I won't require one.
Dexter: I suppose you'd still be attractive to any man of spirit, though. There's something engaging about it, this goddess business. There's something more challenging to the male than the, uh, more obvious charms.
Tracy: Really?
Dexter: Really. We're very vain, you know - 'This citadel can and shall be taken, and I'm the boy to do it.'
Tracy: You seem quite contemptuous of me all of a sudden.
Dexter: No, Red, not of you, never of you. Red, you could be the finest woman on this earth. I'm contemptuous of something inside of you you either can't help, or make no attempt to; your so-called 'strength' - your prejudice against weakness - your blank intolerance.
Tracy: Is that all?
Dexter: That's the gist of it; because you'll never be a first-class human being or a first-class woman, until you've learned to have some regard for human frailty. It's a pity your own foot can't slip a little sometime - but your sense of inner divinity wouldn't allow that. This goddess must and shall remain intact. There are more of you than people realize - a special class of the American Female. The Married Maidens.
Tracy: So help me, Dexter, if you say another word, I'll...
Dexter: I'm through, Red. For the moment, I've had my say.

View Quote Dexter: I always thought Kidd himself was the five-cent Kidd.
Mike: And what's that make you worth, C. K. Dexter Haven? Bringing us down here.
Dexter: But you know why I did that. To get even with my ex-bride. You told me so yourself...
Mike: Kidd's just using you like he uses everybody else. You don't know Kidd like I know him. The guy's colossal, he's terrific, he's got everybody fooled.
Dexter: No mean Machiavelli is smiling, cynical Sidney Kidd.

View Quote [about a sailboat] My, she was yar...It means, uh...easy to handle, quick to the helm, fast, bright. Everything a boat should be, until she develops dry rot.

View Quote Dinah: She's so mean about Dexter.
Margaret: He was rather mean to her, my dear.
Dinah: Did he really sock her?
Margaret: Please, Dinah.
Dinah: Did he really?
Margaret: Darling. You go out and wait in the car.
Dinah: The papers were full of 'innundo.'
Margaret: Of what?
Dinah: Of 'innundo.' 'Cruelty and drunkenness,' it said. She's sort of, well you know, hard, isn't she?
Margaret: Certainly not. Tracy sets exceptionally high standards for herself, that's all. And other people aren't always quite apt to live up to them.
Dinah: But don't you think it's stinking not at least to want father?
Margaret: Yes, darling. Between ourselves, I think it's good and stinking.