- Kitty: [Final lines] I was reading a book the other day.
- Carlotta: [Nearly trips] Reading a book?
- Kitty: Yes. It's all about civilization or something. A nutty kind of a book. Do you know that the guy says that machinery is going to take the place of every profession?
- Carlotta: [Looking her over] Oh, my dear, that's something you need never worry about.
- Hattie Loomis: [responding to Millicent Jordans' upset about a dinner guest cancelling] I never could understand why it has to be just even, male and female. They're invited for dinner, not for mating.
- Carlotta Vance: And then I had a restful, nice luncheon... with four lawyers. On the 88th floor of the What's-its building. You know, the Sky Club. A cloud floated right into my soup plate.
- Millicent Jordan: Yes, it's terrible. But, we get used to it.
- Dan Packard: Remember what I told you last week?
- Kitty Packard: I don't remember what you told me a minute ago.
- Miss Copeland: You were wonderful!
- Carlotta Vance: Yes, that was the last thing I did.
- Miss Copeland: I remember it as plain as if it were yesterday.
- Carlotta Vance: Hmm.
- Miss Copeland: Though I was only a little girl at the time.
- Carlotta Vance: How extraordinary!
- Miss Copeland: Oh, it's wonderful, seeing you like this.
- Carlotta Vance: Yes, it 'tis. You know, we must have a long talk about the Civil War sometime. Just you and I.
- Kitty: I like it in New York in the summer! Gee, I've had some swell times on Penthouse parties.
- Hattie Loomis: All my life I've wanted to be a Penthouse girl.
- Ed Loomis: [Skeptically] Yeh, you'd be good at that.
- Paula Jordan: My poor Larry. He's dead, Carlotta.
- Carlotta Vance: And nothing can be done. That's the unfortunate thing about death. It's so terribly final. Even the young can't do anything about it.
- Millicent Jordan: You're joking! Ask that common little woman to my house and that noisy, vulgar man? He smells Oklahoma!
- Dan Packard: So, you'd make a sucker out of me?
- Kitty: Well, I certainly ain't tryin' to make a gentleman out of ya. But, I'm gonna be a lady if it kills me.
- Carlotta Vance: I've been in New York four days. The first time I've been back in ten years. And I'm lost already. No, everything's changed. I couldn't stand it here. I'd die. I belong to the Delmonico period. A table at the window, looking out on Fifth Avenue. Boxes with flowers in. Pink lampshades. String orchestra. And, I don't know, yes, yes, willow blooms. Inverness capes. Dry champagne. And snow on the ground.
- Carlotta Vance: Very same thing at my house in London. Everybody - popping in. Noel. Winston. And once in awhile, Wales. I didn't do so badly for a little girl from Quincy, Illinois, eh, Duckie?
- Kitty Packard: Politics? Ha! You couldn't get into politics. You couldn't get in anywhere. You couldn't even get in the mens' room at the Astor!
- Millicent Jordan: I don't know where I'm going to find someone to fit in with the Ferncliffes.
- Hattie Loomis: Only a rubber plant would fit in with the Ferncliffes.
- Larry Renault: Eight thousand a week - that's what I got. And I was going to get Ten until the talkies came in.
- Oliver Jordan: International star returns to stage...
- Carlotta Vance: Never! I'll have my double chins in privacy.
- Carlotta Vance: Oliver! Duckie! Oh, I'm never so glad to see anyone in all my life.
- Oliver Jordan: Carlotta, this is a surprise! Why, you look marvelous.
- Carlotta Vance: Do I? I do, don't I?
- Oliver Jordan: Divine!
- Carlotta Vance: Oh, Oliver, actually, you're looking handsomer than ever. Oh, Oliver.
- [runs her hand down through Oliver's hair]
- Carlotta Vance: Oliver.
- Oliver Jordan: A little gray.
- Carlotta Vance: Gray? Nonsense. Distinguished!
- Larry Renault: [Kane, his agent, is breaking the news to him that he's washed up] You're trying to throw a scare into me.
- Max Kane: Oh, no. l'm just telling you the truth... You know, you never were an actor. You did have looks, but they're gone now. You don't have to take my word for it. Just look in any mirror. They don't lie.
- [Forces Renault to look at himself in a nearby mirror]
- Max Kane: Take a good look. Look at those pouches under your eyes. Look at those creases. You sag like an old woman! Get a load of yourself! Wait till you start tramping around the offices, looking for a job, because no agent's going to handle you. Sitting in those anterooms hour after hour, giving your name to office boys that never even heard of you. You're through, Renault! You're through in pictures and plays and vaudeville and radio and everything. You're a corpse, and you don't know it. Go get yourself buried!
- Max Kane: [entering Renault's room] Am I buttin' in?
- Paula Jordan: Not at all. I was just going. Goodbye.
- [Paula exits]
- Max Kane: Pearls in your oysters.
- Kitty: [stage whispers during the dinner] Go on, tell Jordan.
- Dan Packard: Shut up.
- Kitty: Go on and tell 'em.
- Dan Packard: Shut up.
- Kitty: If ya don't, you'll be sorry as long as you live.
- Dan Packard: Shut up, shut up, shut up. Sh - shut up.
- Paula Jordan: I'm all right now. Thank you.
- Carlotta Vance: Of course you are, my dear. Now Ernest won't notice a thing.
- Paula Jordan: I don't want to see Ernest. I don't want to see anybody.
- Carlotta Vance: Yes, you do, dear. But I want to tell you one thing. Don't ever let him know anything about this... 'cause if there's one thing I know, it's men. I ought to. It's been my life work.
- Paula Jordan: I can't ever love another man.
- Carlotta Vance: No, of course you can't, dear. But if you should, you know, someone like Ernest... he won't want to know anything about your past... as long as you keep it in the past.
- Millicent Jordan: [Talking on the phone] Don't you want to know the date?
- Kitty: Oh, sure, honey. Friday. A week from tonight. Dinner at Eight.
- Dr. Wayne Talbot: Oh, she's not really sick, you know, woman with a lot of time on her hands, I prescribed a sedative, but she doesn't really need anything.
- Mrs. Lucy Talbot: How about an apple a day?
- Dan Packard: How'd you like to be a Cabinet member's wife? Mingle with all the other Cabinet members' wives and the Ambassadors.
- Kitty: Nertz! You're not going to drag me down to that graveyard. I seen their pictures in the papers, those girlies. A lot of sour-faced frumps with last year's clothes on. Pinning medals on girl scouts and pouring tea for the DARs and rolling Easter eggs on the White House lawn.
- [Sarcastically]
- Kitty: A swell lot of fun I'd have. You go live in Washington! I can have a good time right here.
- Dan Packard: I'm the works around here and I'll give you orders what to do!
- Kitty: Who do you think you're talkin' to? That first wife of yours out in Montana?
- Dan Packard: Now you leave her out of this.
- Kitty: That poor mealy-faced thing, with her flat chest, that didn't have nerve enough to talk up to you?
- [last lines]
- Kitty: I was reading a book the other day.
- Carlotta: [shocked at the thought] Reading a book?
- Kitty: Yes. It's all about civilization or something. A nutty kind of a book. Do you know that the guy said that machinery is going to take the place of every profession?
- Carlotta: Oh, my dear, that's something you need never worry about.
- Larry Renault: Listen to me old-timer. I'm drunk, and I know I'm drunk but I know what I'm talking about.
- Millicent Jordan: [First lines] Darling, I've got Lord and Lady Ferncliffe! They'll come to dinner next Friday. I just had a radio from them on the boat! Wasn't that brilliant of me, getting the Ferncliffes?
- Oliver Jordan: [underwhelmed] Yes, that was very brilliant of you - if you want the Ferncliffes.
- Millicent Jordan: But I *do*! You remember them darling, they entertained us in London.
- Oliver Jordan: [sarcastically] I remember them well, and very dull it was too - Australian mutton; and a lot of people who had been buried for years, and got up just to eat that mutton.
- Millicent Jordan: You don't realize how important this is Oliver. *Everybody* will be after them. I thought you and Ferncliffe had lots in common. Isn't he interested in shipping too?
- Oliver Jordan: [reluctantly willing] Uh-huh, Mr. Oliver Jordan accepts.
- Millicent Jordan: Of course it's terribly short notice.
- Hattie Loomis: Ed hates anything that keeps him from going to the movies every night. I guess I'm what's called a Garbo widow.
- Kitty: Doctor Talbot says that you're an extrovert and I'm a introvert.
- Dan Packard: A what?
- Kitty: A introvert, you dummy! And that's why I gotta be quiet a good deal and have time to reflect in.
- Dan Packard: Reflect in? What have you got to reflect about? I have to think and act at the same time!
- Kitty: Once in our life we get asked to a classy house and I got a new dress that will knock their eye out and we're going!
- Dan Packard: We're not going!
- Kitty: We are so!
- Kitty: You never come and see me anymore unless I send for you.
- Dr. Wayne Talbot: Now, listen, Kitty, I've been very busy. You know how busy I've been.
- Kitty: But, I'm so lonely for you, Wayne. And you know how I need you! I don't do anything all day except just long for you.
- Dr. Wayne Talbot: Well, why don't ya - why don't ya try and read?
- Millicent Jordan: He knows Carlotta. We met him at her place in Antibes three years ago. He was simply a sensation! The girls fighting to get into his car. And on the beach, well, my dear, he wore even less than the girls.
- Larry Renault: Who's going to - play the part?
- Max Kane: This, eh, Cecil Bellamy.
- Larry Renault: That piffling little - why, he's English in the first place.
- Max Kane: Well, the part says, English explorer.
- Larry Renault: I can be English. English as anybody!
- Hattie Loomis: Now, Ed, it isn't going to be so terrible.
- Ed Loomis: Not so terrible? Getting into this uniform to meet a bunch of fatheads I don't want to know and miss that Greta Garbo picture I've been waiting for - for two months! It's your idea of terrible!
- Millicent Jordan: [On the phone] Lucy? How are you my dear? Listen, Lucy, Lord and Lady Ferncliffe arrive from London tomorrow. And I want you and Wayne, a week from tonight. Yes. Dinner at Eight.
- Dan Packard: Do you know why I'm going to Washington tonight? Because the President wants to consult me about the affairs of the nation. That's why.
- Kitty: What's the matter with them.
- Dan Packard: Everythings the matter with them. That's why he's sending for me.
- Dan Packard: I called on a fella this morning who can't handle one little business and I juggle fifty things at once and he doesn't handle one. Here's the blow off. He's got the layout that I've been looking for for two years and the sap lays it right in my lap!
- Millicent Jordan: Let's see. I'll put him between Carlotta and that Packard woman.
- Hattie Loomis: See if you can get him first and let nature take its course.
- Millicent Jordan: I do hope he's free for tonight.
- Hattie Loomis: Free, white and forty-five.
- Oliver Jordan: The thing that's troubling me the most, Millie, is that - well, I'm afraid the Jordan line is gone.
- Millicent Jordan: Gone?
- Oliver Jordan: We're broke.
- Millicent Jordan: Oh. Well, everybodies broke, darling! Don't let that worry you.
- Oliver Jordan: [Millicent is reaching her boiling point with stress] Millicent, darling, would you mind awfully if I didn't go to the theatre tonight? I'm feeling pretty rotten. If I could just go to bed...
- Millicent Jordan: [voice shaking in disbelief] What's that you're saying?
- Oliver Jordan: I said I'm feeling pretty rotten. I'm up against a business thing...
- Paula Jordan: Oh, daddy...
- Millicent Jordan: [explodes] Oh, a business thing! At a time like this, you talk to me about a business thing, and feeling rotten! This is a NICE TIME to say you're feeling rotten! You come to me with your--
- [to Paula]
- Millicent Jordan: And YOU, whimpering about Ernest; some little lovers' quarrel! I'm expected to listen to Ernest, and business and headaches, when I'm half out of my mind! Do you know what's happened to me? I've had the most ghastly day anybody ever had. No aspic for dinner, and Ricky in jail, and Gustave dying, for all I know! And a new butler tonight, and that Vance woman coming in, and having to send for crabmeat. Crabmeat! And now, on top of everything else... the Ferncliffes aren't coming for dinner! They call up at this hour, the miserable cockneys. They call up to say they've gone to Florida. FLORIDA! And who can I get at this hour? Nobody! I've got eight people for dinner; eight people isn't a dinner! Who can I get?
- [to Oliver]
- Millicent Jordan: And you come to me with your idiotic little-- *I'M* the one who ought to be in bed, *I'M* the one who's in trouble! You don't know what trouble is, either of you!
- [Millicent storms off]