A character in Stage Door (1937)

Powell quotes from Stage Door (1937)

Adolphe Menjou

Scenes with Powell

3 scenes
Terry

By what right do you barricade yourself behind closed doors and refuse to see people?

Powell

That happens to be none of your business.

Terry

Do you know a girl just fainted in your outer office because you broke an appointment with her?

Powell

I'm sorry, I didn't know.

Terry

As long as you keep that door closed, you'll never know anything. You're a producer. You ought to see people. Why, the greatest actress in the world might be living out there fifteen feet away from you and you'd never even give her a chance!

Powell

Are you the greatest actress in the world?

Terry

Never mind about me, I don't need you, but those other girls do. They sweat and slave and go without food and decent clothes in the hope that someday, someone like you will come out of his office and notice them.

Powell

Do you realize that if I saw all of the girls that came up here that I wouldn't have time for anything else?...Every year, about fifty thousand girls decide that they want to go on the stage for one reason or another. Well, forty-nine thousand, five hundred of them are wrong! They'd be much better off home washing dishes...They'd be so much better off at home raising families.

Powell

Now, whether you were acting in my office or no, you did show fire and emotion and that's what I need in this part.

Terry

But I'm not an emotional person.

Powell

You will be when I get through with you. I'll mold you into one.

Terry

I don't want to be molded. I believe in acting with my brain.

Terry
[about Jean]

In the first place, I like her.

Powell

She won't like you very much after this.

Terry

Oh, she'll see the light in time.

Powell

You mean you'd jeopardize your own reputation. Aren't you a kind of a Girl Scout?

Terry

Just a girl who uses her brain. Anyway, I wanted to show you that I can act.

Powell

You are a faker.

Terry

Oh, we're both fakers. Isn't faking the essence of acting?

Powell

Well, it may apply to actors, but it does not apply to me.

Terry

You - you're a bigger faker than I am.

Powell

That's libel.

Terry

Not if I can prove it.

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