- Georgie Elgin: Let's say I try my small way to help.
- Bernie Dodd: That's what my ex-wife used to keep me reminding of, cheerfully. She had a theory that behind every great man there was a great woman. She also was thoroughly convinced that she was great and all I needed to qualify was guidance on her part.
- Georgie Elgin: Still does not prove that the theory is completely wrong. I imagine one can go through history and find a few good examples.
- Bernie Dodd: It's a pity that Leonardo da Vinci never had a wife to guide him, he might have really gotten somewhere.
- Bernie Dodd: Does your wife really want you to play this part?
- Frank Elgin: Yeah, she's all for it.
- Bernie Dodd: I was just wondering. The day I met her, she seemed a little difficult about terms and rather domineering, I thought.
- Frank Elgin: She wasn't always like that.
- Bernie Dodd: Oh I know, I know. They all start out as Juliets and wind up as Lady Macbeths.
- Georgie Elgin: Frank's on stage.
- Bernie Dodd: I know. I want to talk to you.
- Georgie Elgin: The last time we talked, Mr. Dodd, you reduced me to tears. I promise you, it won't happen again.
- Georgie Elgin: Mr. Cook seems to be almost what the bad fairy promised Frank at his cradle.
- Bernie Dodd: Oh, he's not too bad. Gruff, but with a heart of stone.
- Georgie Elgin: Mr. Dodd, when I was a child, we had a town idiot who kept insisting that elephant tusks came from piano keys, but he had nothing on you.
- Frank Elgin: I faced a crisis up there in Boston, and I got away with it. Just about anybody can face a crisis. It's that everyday living that's rough. I'm not sure I can lick it, but I think I got a chance.
- Georgie Elgin: How's Frank?
- Bernie Dodd: Okay. How's it been back here?
- Georgie Elgin: He was a little uneasy with the curtain going up so late.
- Bernie Dodd: If only the first few rows had the balcony's manners, what a wonderful world this would be.
- Bernie Dodd: This isn't "Student Prince" or "Blossom Time". The guy who plays this part has to act while he's singing and sing while he's acting.
- Frank Elgin: Instead of selling a patent of medicine or something like that, I was selling a philosophy. You know, a sort of a sunshine salesman.
- Philip Cook: He's too old for the part.
- Bernie Dodd: Get a couple of hairpieces. It will make him look ten years younger.
- Bernie Dodd: I'm just trying to find out if you were ever an actress?
- Georgie Elgin: Oh, no. Not me. Thank you. I'm just a girl from the country. The theatre and its people have always been a complete mystery to me. They still are.
- Bernie Dodd: Touché. In French, that means...
- Georgie Elgin: Oh, come on, everybody knows what touché means.
- Bernie Dodd: Dreiser, Balzac, Montaigne. Who reads these books?
- Georgie Elgin: I do.
- Bernie Dodd: I'm afraid to ask you if you enjoy them. You'd bite my head off. Montaigne's too polite for me.
- Georgie Elgin: That doesn't surprise me.
- Georgie Elgin: You're even younger than I thought.
- Bernie Dodd: And you try to look like an old lady. You're not. You shouldn't wear your hair like that. There are two kinds of women: those who pay too much attention to themselves and those who don't pay enough.
- Georgie Elgin: [sarcastically] Say, that's quite a pearl of wisdom. May I quote you?
- Bernie Dodd: What is this? I come up here with the best intentions in the world and suddenly I find I'm victimizing you.
- Frank Elgin: Can I get a word in?
- Bernie Dodd: What did I bring you? A basket of snakes?
- Bernie Dodd: They can get awful bent out of shape, can't they? You know, my wife was so twisted, she once said to me, "I hope your next play's a flop, so the world can see how much I love you even though you're a failure."
- Bernie Dodd: Frank? Having trouble at home?
- Frank Elgin: No, nothing like that. What's the matter? Don't you believe me?
- Bernie Dodd: Everyone has trouble at home. The only ones who deny it are those that have too much of it.
- Georgie Elgin: You're sure I'm not in the way?
- Bernie Dodd: No, no. We're just closing up shop, giving it back to the theatre ghosts.
- Georgie Elgin: There's nothing quite so mysterious and silent as a dark theatre. A night without a star.
- Frank Elgin: If the show doesn't pan out, I certainly don't want to come in to New York in a turkey.
- Philip Cook: Bernie, every time you nod your head like that, it costs us a couple a hundred dollars. You're going to nod us right out of business.
- Georgie Elgin: After every first dress rehearsal, I always sit in a draft hoping to catch pneumonia. It never works. Oh, for the peaceful quiet of an oxygen tent.
- Georgie Elgin: Certain men are very strange. Business couldn't be better, wife and kiddies are fine, jokes with the boys at the club. And the next day you read he's hung himself from the chandelier.
- Georgie Elgin: I try to be careful, Mr. Dodd, but being an actor's wife is not the easiest of jobs. If I tell him he's magnificent, he says I'm not honest. If I tell him he's not magnificent, he says I don't love him.
- Bernie Dodd: Why don't you tell him he's good but can be better.
- Georgie Elgin: Is that what the critics will tell him?
- Bernie Dodd: Are you a critic or a wife?
- Georgie Elgin: Frank's weak. He's a leaner! I happen to be the one he leans on.
- Bernie Dodd: The good, strong helpmate. Did it ever occur to you that you and your strength might be the very reason he is weak. I don't like strong women, Mrs. Elgin.
- Philip Cook: The dame in this paper puts her finger on it. Right on it. She says, "Elgin lacks authority in a role that cries for it." No authority. That's it.
- Bernie Dodd: You know why he lacks authority? Because his wife has too much of it.
- Georgie Elgin: For your edification, he's heading for a bender.
- Bernie Dodd: Why is it that women always think they understand men better than men do?
- Georgie Elgin: Maybe because they live with them.
- Georgie Elgin: If you're not careful you're going to have him full of whisky before morning. He's getting a cold and that's a respectable surface reason for any drinker to jump down the well.
- Bernie Dodd: You make him tense and uneasy. You never stop handling him and now you're trying to handle me too!
- Georgie Elgin: And don't think I couldn't, after handling a cunning drunkard for 10 years.
- Bernie Dodd: If you had any compassion or love whatsoever for this man, you could never call him a cunning drunkard.
- Georgie Elgin: Maybe I have a greater love for the truth. That's what he is and I'm a drunkard's wife. That's the truth, too. And I think it's high time you stop looking at everything as if it were a musical comedy!
- Georgie Elgin: Have you got the key to the room? Well, keep it. I'll get another one from the hotel. And don't wake me up when you come in. Who knows, I may be having a happy dream!
- Bernie Dodd: We've got a lot of hard work ahead of us and I haven't time to outmaneuver frustrated females.
- Jackie: All right, all right, simmer down. It's my turn to holler.
- [singing]
- Jackie: Love and learn, Love and learn, It's a breeze, Then a burn, You retreat, Then return, You may have climbed the tree of knowledge, But when you love you really learn, Love and learn, Learn a lot, It's the be-and-end all, Then its not, It's a dream, It's a plot, It's something out of seventh heaven, Or something misbegot, Each morning when I count my blessings, They tally up to none, I've arrived at this
- Frank Elgin: The state of bliss is somewhat overdone
- Jackie: Well, go Daddy, go.
- Frank Elgin: Live and learn, weep and sing, Till the final day of reckoning
- Jackie: What about this guy?
- Frank Elgin: But when arms start to cling, With the thrills kisses bring, What you have learned is, Is you haven't learned a thing
- Jackie: Take me home, Dad...
- Jackie: Hey, aren't you Frank Elgin?
- Frank Elgin: I used to be. Not a word or I'll tell them you're Harpo Marx.
- Bernie Dodd: May I smoke?
- Georgie Elgin: May you smoke? What is that supposed to be? Homage to a lady?
- Georgie Elgin: He hates himself. Consequently, he'll do or say anything to be liked by others. People like Frank ought to have two votes. Then they could mark their ballot: Democrat and Republican. That way, everybody would love them.
- Bernie Dodd: I don't know where to begin to apologize, Mrs. Elgin.
- Georgie Elgin: You can begin by not calling me Mrs. Elgin.
- Georgie Elgin: How could you be so angry at someone you didn't even know?
- Bernie Dodd: Maybe I really wasn't. Maybe I screamed at you to keep myself at an angry distance.