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 #

Multiple Characters quotes

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 Bruce: Even ten minutes is a long time to be away from you.
Hildy: What did you say?
Bruce: What?
Hildy: Go on. [He laughs sheepishly] Well, go ahead.
Bruce: Well, I just said, 'Even ten minutes is a long time to be away from you.'
Hildy: I heard you the first time. I like it. That's why I asked you to say it again.
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.
View Quote Bruce: You know, Hildy, he's not such a bad fellow.
Hildy: No, he should make some girl real happy.
Bruce: Uh-huh.
Hildy: [To herself] Slap-happy.
Bruce: He's not the man for you. I can see that. But I sort of like him. He's got a lot of charm.
Hildy: Well, he comes by it naturally. His grandfather was a snake.
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 Bruce: How long would the interview take?
Walter: Oh, about an hour for the interview. Another hour to write it. That's about all.
Bruce: Hildy, we could take the six o'clock train if it'd save a man's life.
Hildy: No, Bruce. [To Walter] If you want to save Earl Williams' life, you write the interview yourself. You're still a good reporter.
Walter: Aw, Hildy. You know I can't write that kind of thing. It takes a woman's touch. It needs that heart, that...
Hildy: Now don't get poetic, Walter. Get Sweeney. He's the best man you've got on the paper for that sob-sister stuff.
Walter: [explaining that Sweeney is not to be found because he is out celebrating the birth of twins] So Sweeney has twins, and Earl Williams gets hanged tomorrow. [to Bruce] Well you argue with her. You argue with her. Otherwise, you're going on a honeymoon with blood on your hands. How can you have any happiness after that? All through the years, you'll remember that a man went to the gallows because she was too selfish to wait two hours. I tell ya, Bruce, Earl Williams' face will come between you on the train tonight and at the preacher's tomorrow, and all the rest of your lives.
Hildy: I just remembered. Sweeney was only married four months ago.
Walter: All right, Hildy, you win. I'm licked.
View Quote Walter: [to Bruce] You persuade Hildy to do the story and you can write out a nice fat insurance policy for me.
Bruce: I refuse to use my wife for business purposes.
Hildy: We could use that money, Bruce. How long would it take to get him examined?
Bruce: Well, I could get a company doctor here in twenty minutes.
Hildy: Alright Bruce, suppose you have Mr. Burns examined over in his office and see what they'll allow on that old carcass of his...
Walter: Say, I'm better than I ever was. How do ya like...
Hildy: There was never anything to brag about. Now look, Bruce. I'll go back and change and dress. And after you get the check, you phone me. I'll be in the press-room of the Criminal Courts Building. Oh Walter!
Walter: What?
Hildy: By the way, I think you'd better make that a certified check.
Walter: What do you think I am, a crook?
Hildy: Yes. No certified check, no story. Get me?
Walter: It'll be certified. Want my fingerprints?
Hildy: No thanks. I've still got those.
View Quote Roy Bensinger: A new lead on the hanging - This alienist from New York, Dr. Max J. Egelhoffer, Egelhoffer, yeah, he's gonna interview with him in about half an hour in the Sheriff's office...Here's the situation on the eve of the hanging...A double guard is being thrown around the jail, the Municipal Buildings, railroad terminals, and elevated stations to prepare for the expected general uprising of radicals at the hour of execution.
Murphy: The Sheriff has just put two hundred more relatives on the payroll to protect the city from the Red Army which is leaving Moscow in a couple of minutes.
View Quote Hildy: I have to do a yarn on Williams. Did he know what he was doing when he fired that gun?
Murphy: If you ask us, 'No.' If you ask the state alienist, the answer is 'Yes.'
Hildy: Who is he? What's he do?
Jake McCue: He was a bookkeeper. He starts out at twenty dollars a week and after fourteen years, he gradually works himself up to seventeen fifty...Plus the company goes out of business and Williams loses his job...
Ernie: So he starts hangin' around the park, listenin' to a lot of soapbox spellbinders makin' phony speeches and begins to believe 'em.
Endicott: And makes some of his own.
View Quote Walter: [after designating Hildy as the beneficiary of his life insurance policy] Well, by that time, you'll probably have made enough so that the money won't mean anything to you. But suppose you haven't made good Bruce? What about Hildy's old age? Think of Hildy. Ah - I can see her now. White-haired. Lavender and old lace. Can't you see her, Bruce?
Bruce: [dreamily] Yes. Yes I can.
Walter: She's old, isn't she? Now Bruce, don't you think that Hildy is entitled to spend her last remaining years without worries of money? Of course you do, Bruce.
Bruce: Of course, if you put it that way.
Walter: And remember, I love her too.
Bruce: Yes, I'm beginning to realize that.
Walter: And the beauty of it is, she'll never have to know until I've passed on. Oh well, maybe she'll think kindly of me after I'm gone.
Bruce: Gee! You make me feel like a heel comin' between ya.
Walter: No, no Bruce. You didn't come between us. It was all over for her before you came on the scene. For me...it'll never be.
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 Mollie: Aren't they inhuman?
Hildy: I know. They're newspapermen.
Mollie: All they've been doing is lying. All they've been doing is writing lies...Why won't they listen to me?
View Quote Murphy: Why can't you hang this guy at five o'clock instead of seven?
Bensinger: Sure, it won't hurt you, and we'd make the city edition.
Sheriff: Oh well now, that's, that's kind of raw, Roy. After all, I can't hang a man in his sleep just to please the newspaper.
Newsman: No, but you can reprieve him twice so the hanging's three days before election, can't ya?
Endicott: You can run on a law and order ticket. You can do that all right.
Sheriff: Honest boys, I had absolutely nothing to do with those reprieves. He's just as sane as I am.
View Quote Newsman: Well, I still say that anybody that can write like that ain't gonna give it up permanently and sew socks for a guy in the insurance business. Now I give that marriage three months and I'm layin' three to one. Any takers?
Hildy: [entering the room] I'll take that bet. Geez. It's getting so a girl can't leave the room without being discussed by a bunch of old ladies...
Newsman: Oh, don't get sore, Hildy. We were only saying a swell reporter like you wouldn't quit so easy...
Hildy: Oh, I can quit all right without a single quiver. I'm gonna live like a human being. Not like you chumps.
View Quote Walter: [describing Bruce] He looks like, uh, that fellow in the movies, you know, uh, Ralph Bellamy.
Benji: Oh him.
Walter: Can you handle it?
Benji: I've never flopped on you yet, have I?
View Quote Mayor: Have you seen Sheriff Hartwell?
Endicott: It's hard to tell, your Honor. You see, there's so many ****roaches around here.
View Quote Hildy: Mrs. Baldwin - Mother!
Mrs. Baldwin: Don't you 'Mother' me! Playing cat and mouse with my poor boy, keeping him locked up, making us miss two trains and you supposed to be married tomorrow.
Hildy: I'll be with you in five minutes.
Mrs. Baldwin: You don't have to go with me at all. Just give me Bruce's money and you can stay here forever as far as I'm concerned - you and that murderer you caught...Which one of these men is it? They all look like murderers to me.
Endicott: Wait a minute, Hildy. What murderer did you catch?...
Hildy: I don't know what she's talking about. I haven't said any such thing.
Mrs. Baldwin: I am quoting my son, and he has never lied to me.
Hildy: That's ridiculous. In the first place, I never said anything like that.
Mrs. Baldwin: Yes you did.
Hildy: No, I didn't. I said I was trying to find the murderer. [To the news-hungry reporters] She got it all balled up. Can't you see that?
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 Hildy: Walter? The mayor's first wife - what was her name?
Walter: You mean the one with the wart on her -
Hildy: Right.
Walter: Fanny.
View Quote Bruce: Remember, if you change your mind, I'm leaving on the nine o'clock train.
Hildy: If you want me, Bruce, you've gotta take me as I am instead of trying to change me into something else. I'm no suburban bridge player. I'm a newspaperman. Darn it.
View Quote Hildy: 'While hundreds of Sheriff Hartwell's paid gunmen stalked through the city shooting innocent bystanders, spreading their reign of terror, Earl Williams was lurking less than twenty yards from the Sheriff's Office where...'
Walter: Wait a minute, wait a minute, aren't you going to mention the Post? Doesn't the paper get any credit?
Hildy: Well, honey, I did that. Right there in the second paragraph.
Walter: Who's gonna read the second paragraph? Listen honey, for ten years, I've been telling ya how to write a newspaper story and that's all I get?
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 Mayor: Well, it looks like ten years apiece for you two birds.
Walter: Does it?
Hildy: Whenever you think you've got the Morning Post licked, it's time for you to get out of town.
Mayor: Whistling in the dark? Well that isn't gonna help you this time. You're through.
Walter: Listen. The last man who said that to me was Archie Leach just a week before he cut his throat. [Archie/Archibald Leach was Cary Grant's real name.]
Sheriff and the Mayor: Is that so?
Walter: We've been in worse jams than this, haven't we, Hildy?
Hildy: Nope.
View Quote Hildy: Remember the time we stole Old Lady Haggerty's stomach off the coroner's physician...We proved she'd been poisoned then, didn't we, Walter? We had to hide out for a week. Do you remember that?...That's where, I mean, how...
Walter: We could have gone to jail for that too, you know that.
Hildy: I guess so.
View Quote Walter: Aw yes, maybe you're right, Hildy. It's a bad business. Well, you're gonna be better off. Say, you better get going.
Hildy: Where would I go?
Walter: Well, to Bruce, of course.
Hildy: But you know, he's gone. He took the nine o'clock train.
Walter: Just send him a wire. He'll be waiting at the station when you get into Albany. Now go on.
Hildy: I don't know. I got so messed up, Walter. Maybe...
Walter: Get going, Hildy.
Hildy: Get going? What is that with you?
Walter: ...Now look, honey. Can't you understand? I'm trying to do something noble for once in my life. Now get out of here before I change my mind. Come on.
Hildy: But Walter, listen, just a minute...
Walter: ...Send the fellow a wire. He'll be waiting when you get in. Come on.
Hildy: Who'll write the story?
Walter: I'll do it myself. Won't be half as good as you can do it, but what's the difference?
Hildy: It's my story. I'd kinda like to think that it...I get it, Walter. The same old act, isn't it? Trying to push me out of here, thinking I'll be stupid enough to want to stay.
Walter: Now I know I deserve that, Hildy...but this is one time you're wrong. Look honey, when you walk out that door, part of me will go right with ya. But a whole new world's gonna open up for you. I made fun of Bruce and Albany and all that kind of thing, you know why?
Hildy: Why?
Walter: I was jealous. I was sore because he could offer you the kind of life I can't give ya. That's what you want, honey.
Hildy: I-I could stay and do the story, and take the train in the morning. Doesn't make that much difference.
Walter: Now forget it. Come on, come on. Goodbye dear, and good luck.
View Quote Hildy: I thought you were really sending me away with Bruce. I didn't know you had him locked up. I thought you were on the level for once. I think you were just standing by and letting me go off with him without doing a thing about it.
Walter: Oh come on, honey. What do you think I was? A chump?
Hildy: And I thought you didn't love me.
Walter: Oh, what were you thinking with?
Hildy: I don't know. Well, what are you standing there gawking for? We have to get him out of jail. Send Louie down with some honest money and send him back to Albany where he belongs.
Walter: Sure, sure.
View Quote Walter: [To Duffy on the phone] We're coming over to the office. No, don't worry about the story. Hildy's gonna write it. Course she's not quitting. She never intended to. We're gonna get married.
Hildy: Can we go on a honeymoon this time, Walter?
Walter: Sure. Hey Duffy, you can be managing editor. No, no, not permanently. Just for the two weeks we're away on a honeymoon...I don't know where we're going. [To Hildy] Where are we going?
Hildy: Niagara Falls.
Walter: [To Duffy] Niagara Falls, Duffy.
Hildy: Two whole weeks, Walter?
Walter: Sure. You've earned it. [To Duffy] What? What? Strike? What strike? Where? Albany? Well, I know it's on the way Duffy, but I can't ask Hildy to...
Hildy: All right, we'll plan on Albany.
Walter: ...Ha, ha, ha. Well, isn't that a coincidence? We're going to Albany. I wonder if Bruce can put us up?...
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