Bill, don't get stuck on some glamour-puss.
Bill I'll try.
You're not much of a bargain, you know. You're conceited, and thoughtless and messy.
Bill Well, everybody can't be Gregory Peck.
You're a set-up for some gorgeous, wide-eyed young bait.
Bill How childish are you going to get before you stop it?
I don't want to be childish. I'll settle for a few years.
Bill Then cut that out right now.
Am I going to lose you, Bill? Am I?
Bill As of this moment, you're six years old.
Bill We started talking. She wanted to know about Hollywood. She seemed so interested.
She's a girl of so many interests.
Bill A pretty rare quality these days.
A girl of so many rare qualities.
Bill So she seems.
So you've pointed out so often. So many qualities so often. Her loyalty, efficiency, devotion, warmth, and affection, and so young. So young and so fair.
Bill I can't believe you're making this up...Of course it's funny. This is all too laughable to be anything else. You know what I feel about this age obsession of yours. And now this ridiculous attempt to whip yourself up into a jealous froth because I spent ten minutes with a stage-struck kid.
Bill Thirty minutes, forty minutes, what of it?
Stage-struck kid! She's a young lady of quality. And I'll have you know I'm fed up with both the young lady and her qualities. Studying me as if I were a play or a blueprint, how I walk, talk, think, act, sleep.
Bill Now, how can you take offense at a kid trying in every way to be as much like her ideal as possible?
Stop calling her a kid. As it happens, there are particular aspects of my life to which I would like to maintain sole and exclusive rights and privileges.
Bill For instance what?
Bill This is my cue to take you in my arms and reassure you. But I'm not going to. I'm too mad...
Bill ...Mad! Darling, there are certain characteristics for which you are famous onstage and off. I love you for some of them in spite of others. I haven't let those become too important. They're part of your equipment for getting along in what is laughingly called our environment. You have to keep your teeth sharp, all right. But I will not have you sharpen them on me - or on Eve.
What about her teeth? What about her fangs?
Bill She hasn't cut them yet, and you know it! So when you start judging an idealistic, dreamy-eyed kid by the barroom benzedrine standards of this megalomaniac society, I won't have it. Eve Harrington has never by a word, a look, or a suggestion indicated anything to me but her adoration for you and her happiness at our being in love. And to intimate anything else doesn't spell jealousy to me. It spells out paranoiac insecurity that you should be ashamed of.
Cut! Brilliant! What happens in the next reel? Do I get dragged off screaming to the snake pit?
Bill Many of your guests have been wondering when they may be permitted to view the body. Where has it been laid out?
It hasn't been laid out. We haven't finished with the embalming. As a matter of fact, you're looking at it - the remains of Margo Channing, sitting up. It is my last wish to be buried sitting up.
Bill Wouldn't it be more natural for you to be taking a bow?
Bill To be a good actor or actress or anything else in the theatre means wanting to be that more than anything else in the world.
[softly]
Yes, yes it does.
Bill It means concentration of desire or ambition, and sacrifice such as no other profession demands. And I'll agree that the man or woman who accepts those terms can't be ordinary, can't be just someone. To give so much for almost always so little.
So little. So little, did you say? Why, if there's nothing else, there's applause. I've listened backstage to people applaud. It's like, like waves of love coming over the footlights and wrapping you up. Imagine. To know, every night, that different hundreds of people love you. They smile, and their eyes shine. You've pleased them. They want you. You belong. Just that alone is worth anything.
[to Eve]
And please stop acting as if I were the Queen-Mother.
Bill Outside of a beehive, Margo, your behavior would hardly be considered either queenly or motherly.
You're in a beehive, pal. Didn't you know? We're all busy little bees, full of stings, making honey, day and night. [To Eve] Aren't we, honey?
Please don't play governess, Karen. I haven't your unyielding good taste. I wish I could have gone to Radcliffe too, but father wouldn't hear of it. He needed help behind the notions counter. I'm being rude now, aren't I? Or should I say, ain't I?
DW De Witt
You're maudlin and full of self-pity. You're magnificent.
How about calling it a night?
And you, posing as a playwright, a situation pregnant with possibilities and all you can think of is everybody go to sleep.
Bill The gong rang, the fight's over. Calm down.
Bill Don't calm down.
You're being terribly tolerant, aren't you?
Bill I'm trying terribly hard.
But you needn't be. I will not be tolerated and I will not be plotted against.
Bill Here we go.
Such nonsense. What do you all take me for - Little Nell from the country? Been my understudy for over a week without my knowing it, carefully hidden no doubt.
Bill I am sick and tired of these paranoiac outbursts...For the last time, I'll tell it to you. You've got to stop hurting yourself and me and the two of us by these paranoiac tantrums...You're a beautiful and an intelligent woman, and a great actress. A great actress at the peak of her career. You have every reason for happiness...but due to some strange, uncontrollable, unconscious drive, you permit the slightest action of...a kid like Eve to turn you into an hysterical, screaming harpy. Now, once and for all, stop it!
I'll admit I may have seen better days, but I'm still not to be had for the price of a cocktail, like a salted peanut.
Bill ...you did it. With work and patience, you'll be a good actress if that's what you want to be.
[purring]
Is that what you want me to be?
Bill I'm talking about you and what you want.
Bill What have I got to do with it?
Bill Names I've been called, but never Svengali. Good luck.
Bill From what would I be running?
You're always after truth on the stage. What about off?
Bill I'm for it.
Then face it. I have. Ever since that first night here in this dressing room.
Bill When I told you what every young actress should know?
When you told me that whatever I became it would be because of you...
Bill Makeup's a little heavy.
Bill You're quite a girl.
Bill I'm in love with Margo. Hadn't you heard?
You're all kinds of things.
Bill I'm only human, rumors to the contrary. And I'm as curious as the next man.
Bill The only thing - what I go after, I want to go after. I don't want it to come after me. Don't cry. Just score it as an incomplete forward pass.
