“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” “Here’s looking at you, kid.” “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.” “Schwing!” Where would Hollywood and its fans be without these and other timeless quotations? Well, back in the days of silent pictures, I guess (of course, even back then there were some notable phrases to be read on the title cards). Here’s another one; “It’s long been said that motion pictures are a visual medium, but true movie lovers know that there’s nothing like a memorable line of dialogue.” That quote comes from Movies Unlimited founder and president Jerry Frebowitz, by way of his introductory letter to the 2011 edition of the company’s DVD catalog (seen on the left and available here), which pays tribute on its cover and throughout its 800-plus pages to some of the best-loved film lines from the last eight decades or so.
Obviously there were more cinematic sayings–the good, the bad, and the unprintable–than there was room for in the book. And likewise, some of my personal favorites were probably a tad too esoteric to be considered cover material. Luckily, cyberspace is nigh infinite, so I’d like to use a bit of it to offer up 99 of my picks, most of which hold up minus context. The ground rules: one entry per movie/actor; don’t quote from more than 10 of the cover-featured films; skip lines taken from classic works of literature (Shakespeare, Dickens, Stan Lee, etc.); and try to keep the material at a PG-13 level (which meant ignoring any of R. Lee Ermey’s Full Metal Jacket quips and pretty much anything by Samuel L. Jackson). In rough chronological order, they are:
Lon Chaney, The Phantom of the Opera – “Feast your eyes! Glut your soul on my accursed ugliness!” (See, silent films had some good lines.)
Al Jolson, The Jazz Singer – “Wait a minute, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”
Groucho Marx, The Cocoanuts – “I’ll meet you tonight under the moon. Oh, I can see it now, you and the moon. You wear a necktie so I’ll know you.”
Greta Garbo, Anna Christie – “Gimme a whisky, ginger ale on the side. And don’t be stingy, baby.”
Charlie Chaplin, City Lights – “You can see now?” (On a title card, of course.)
Bela Lugosi, Dracula – “I never drink…wine.”
the sideshow performers, Freaks – “We accept her, one of us. Gooble gobble, gooble gobble.”
Paul Muni, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang – “I steal.”
Bramwell Fletcher, The Mummy – “He…he went for a little walk! You should have seen his face!”
Mae West, Night After Night – “Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.”
Marie Dressler, Dinner at Eight – “Oh, my dear, that’s something you need never worry about.”
unknown chorine, Flying Down to Rio – “I’ll do it, sounds like a new thrill.”
John Barrymore, Twentieth Century – “I close the iron door on you!”
Boris Karloff, Bride of Frankenstein – “We belong dead!”
Chico Marx, A Night at the Opera – “Ah, you can’t fool me! There ain’t no Sanity Claus!”
Curly Howard, Restless Knights – “I’m a victim of coicumstance!”
Cary Grant, Bringing Up Baby – “I just went GAY all of a sudden!”
Charles Laughton, The Hunchback of Notre Dame – “Why was I not made of stone like thee?”
W.C. Fields, My Little Chickadee – “I’d like to see Paris before I die…Philadelphia will do.”
Mel Blanc, A Wild Hare – “Eh, what’s up, Doc?”
Raymond Massey, Arsenic and Old Lace – “He said I looked like Boris Karloff.”
Orson Welles, Citizen Kane – “You know, Mr. Bernstein, if I hadn’t been very rich, I might have been a really great man.”
Peter Lorre, The Maltese Falcon – “You, you imbecile! You bloated idiot! You stupid fathead! You…(sobs)”
Evelyn Ankers, The Wolf Man – “Even a man who’s pure in heart, and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms, and the autumn moon is bright.”
Jack Benny, To Be or Not to Be – “So, they call me ‘Concentration Camp’ Earhardt.”
Humphrey Bogart, Casablanca – “There are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn’t advise you to try to invade.”
Sheldon Leonard, It’s a Wonderful Life – “That’s it! Out you two pixies go, through the door or out the window!”
Katharine Hepburn, The African Queen – “I never dreamed any mere physical experience could be so stimulating!”
Douglas Spencer, The Thing from Another World – “An intellectual carrot! The mind boggles.”
John Carradine, Johnny Guitar – “That’s a lot of man you’re carrying in those boots, stranger.”
Ernest Borgnine, Marty – “So you see, dogs like us, we ain’t such dogs as we think we are.”
Jack Lemmon, Mister Roberts – “Now, what’s all this crud about no movie tonight?”
James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause – “You’re tearing me apart!”
Kevin McCarthy, Invasion of the Body Snatchers – “You’re next! You’re next!”
David Hedison, The Fly – “Help me!”
Dudley Manlove, Plan 9 from Outer Space – “You see, you see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! STUPID!”
Elizabeth Taylor, Butterfield 8 – “Face it, Mama. I was the slut of all time.”
Audrey, Jr., The Little Shop of Horrors – “Feed me!”
Anthony Perkins, Psycho – “We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven’t you?”
Bette Davis, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? – “But ya are, Blanche! Ya are in that chair!”
Adam West, Batman – “Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb!”
Susumu Korobe (with Mickey Rose’s voice), What’s Up, Tiger Lily? – “The last time I made love on a ship was the Titanic. Unfortunately, we never finished.”
Phil Silvers, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum – “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times; do not fan the girls when they’re wet! But you’ll never learn, you’ll be a eunuch all your life.”
George Kosana, Night of the Living Dead – “Yeah, they’re dead. They’re…all messed up.”
Charlton Heston, Planet of the Apes – “Damn you! Damn you all to Hell!”
Zero Mostel, The Producers – “That’s our Hitler!”
Dean Jones, The Love Bug – “We all prisoners, chicky baby. We all locked in.”
John Wayne, True Grit – “Fill your hands, you sonofabitch!”
Malcolm McDowell, A Clockwork Orange – “Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou!”
Richard Castellano, The Godfather – “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.”
Phillip Avenetti, Night of the Lepus – “Ladies and gentlemen, attention! There is a herd of killer rabbits headed this way!”
Edith Massey, Pink Flamingos – “EGGS! EGGS! EGGS!”
Woody Allen, Sleeper – “That’s a big chicken.”
Alex Karras, Blazing Saddles – “Mongo only pawn in game of life.”
Graham Chapman, Monty Python and the Holy Grail – “On second thought, let’s not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.”
Barry Bostwick, The Rocky Horror Picture Show – “Say, do any of you guys know how to Madison?”
Marcel Marceau, Silent Movie – “No.”
Shelley Duvall, Annie Hall – “Sex with you is really a Kafkaesque experience.”
Jeremy Black, The Boys from Brazil – “You freaked-out maniac!”
John Vernon, National Lampoon’s Animal House – “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”
Mariel Hemingway, Manhattan – “You have to have a little faith in people.”
Mary Woronov, Rock ‘N’ Roll High School – “Do your parents know that you’re Ramones?”
Roger Hill, The Warriors – “Can you dig it?”
Stephen Stucker, Airplane! – “And Leon’s getting lar-r-r-ger!”
Dan Aykroyd, The Blues Brothers – “This is glue. Strong stuff.”
Rodney Dangerfield, Caddyshack – “When you buy a hat like this I bet you get a free bowl of soup, huh? Oh, it looks good on you, though.”
Kathleen Turner, Body Heat – “You aren’t too bright. I like that in a man.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Conan the Barbarian – “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.”
Peter O’Toole, My Favorite Year – “I’m not an actor, I’m a movie star!”
Jeff Goldblum, The Big Chill – “That’s the great thing about the outdoors, it’s one giant toilet.”
John Candy, National Lampoon’s Vacation– “Sorry, folks, park’s closed. Moose out front shoulda told you.”
Albert Finney, The Dresser – “STOP THAT TRAIN!”
Peter Weller, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai – “Remember, no matter where you go…there you are.”
Christopher Guest, This Is Spinal Tap – “These go to 11.”
Judd Nelson, The Breakfast Club – “Does Barry Manilow know that you raid his wardrobe?”
Jan Rubes, Witness – “You never had your hands on a teat before?”
Sigourney Weaver, Aliens – “Get away from her, you bitch!”
Dennis Hopper, Blue Velvet – “Don’t you look at me!”
Max Von Sydow, Hannah and Her Sisters – “Can you imagine the level of a mind that watches wrestling?”
Jesse Ventura, Predator – “I ain’t got time to bleed.”
Mandy Patinkin, The Princess Bride – “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Roddy Piper, They Live – “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubblegum.”
Jack Nicholson, Batman – “Wait ’til they get a load of me.”
Kevin Costner, Field of Dreams – “Hey, Dad? You wanna have a catch?”
Lawrence Tierney, Reservoir Dogs – “All right, ramblers, let’s get to rambling.”
Johnny Depp, Ed Wood – “This is the one. This is the one I’ll be remembered for.”
Samuel L. Jackson, Pulp Fiction – “This is a tasty burger!” (Hey, I found one!)
Tim Allen, Toy Story – “You are a sad, strange little man.”
Frances McDormand, Fargo – “There’s more to life than a little money, you know. Don’cha know that? And here ya are, and it’s a beautiful day.”
the Martians, Mars Attacks! – “Ack! Ack, ack, ack!”
Peter Mullan, Trainspotting – “He knows a lot about Sean Connery.”
Alyson Hannigan, American Pie – “This one time, at band camp…”
Jennifer Lopez, Gigli – “It’s turkey time. Gobble, gobble.”
Jewel Staite, Serenity – “Goin’ on a year now I ain’t had nothin’ twixt my nethers weren’t run on batteries!”
Vinnie Jones, X-Men: The Last Stand – “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!”
Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight – “Why so serious?”
Robert Downey, Jr., Tropic Thunder – “I know who I am! I’m a dude playin’ a dude disguised as another dude!”
Danny Trejo, Machete – “Machete don’t text.”
Timothy Dalton, Toy Story 3 – “Sunnyside is a place of ruin and despair, ruled by an evil bear who smells of strawberries.”
If my abacus is correct, that’s 99 quotes. Looks like we have just enough room for one more to make it an even hundred. Any suggestions?