Harrington Quotes

Addison DeWitt: And what's your name?
Phoebe: Phoebe.
Addison DeWitt: Phoebe?
Phoebe: I call myself Phoebe.
Addison DeWitt: And why not? Tell me, Phoebe, do you want someday to have an award like that of your own?
Phoebe: More than anything else in the world.

Addison DeWitt: Then you must ask Miss Harrington how to get one. Miss Harrington knows all about it.

Bill Sampson: This is my cue to take you in my arms and reassure you. But I'm not going to - I'm too mad.
Margo: Guilty!
Bill Sampson: Mad! Darling, there are certain characteristics for which you are famous, on stage 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!
Margo: What about her teeth? What about her fangs?
Bill Sampson: 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 word, look, thought, or 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 a paranoiac insecurity that you should be ashamed of!
Margo: Cut! Print

it! What happens in the next reel? Do I get dragged off screaming to the snake pits?

Karen: [narrating] Newton, they say, thought of gravity by getting hit on the head by an apple. And the man who invented the steam-engine, he was watching a teakettle. But not me. My big idea came to me just sitting on a couch. That boot in the rear to Margo. Heaven knows, she had one coming. From me, from Lloyd, from Eve, Bill, Max and so on. We'd all felt those size fives of

hers often enough. But how? The answer was buzzing around me like a fly. I had it. But I let it go. Screaming and calling names is one thing, but this could mean...
Karen: [continues] Why not? "Why," I said to myself, "not?" It would all seem perfectly legitimate. And only two people in the world would know. Also, the boot would land where it would do the most good for all

concerned. After all, it was no more than a harmless joke which Margo herself would be the first to enjoy. And no reason why she shouldn't be told about it... in time.
Karen: [on the phone, calling Eve to let her in on her little "joke"] Hello. Will you please call Miss Eve Harrington to the phone?

Addison DeWitt: Hello. Who are you?
Phoebe: Miss Harrington's resting, Mr. Dewitt. She asked me to see who it is.
Addison DeWitt: Oh well, we won't disturb her rest. It seems Miss Harrington left her award in the taxicab. Will you give it to her? Tell me, how did you know my name?
Phoebe: [coquettishly] It's a

very famous name, Mr. DeWitt.
Addison DeWitt: And what's your name?
Phoebe: Phoebe.
Addison DeWitt: [incredulously] Phoebe?
Phoebe: [bristling] I call myself Phoebe!
Addison DeWitt: And why not? Tell me, Phoebe, do you want some day to have an award like that of your own?

[noticing how enviously Phoebe holds and admires the trophy]
Phoebe: More than anything else in the world.
Addison DeWitt: Then you must ask Miss Harrington how to get one. Miss Harrington knows all about it.

Addison DeWitt: Margo, I have lived in the theatre as a Trappist monk lives in his faith. I have no other world, no other life. And once in a great while, I experience that moment of revelation for which all true believers wait and pray. You were one. Jeanne Eagels another, Paula Wessely, Hayes. There are others, three or four. Eve Harrington will be among them.

Margo: I take it she read well.