- [Overheard talking to another salon patron while walking through the salon]
- Older Patron of Madame Sonia's Salon: You can't tell me she has to sit on my husband's lap to take dictation!
- [Regarding Burt, who has run out on his pregnant lover, but is the apple of his mother's eye]
- Carol Merrick: Oh, well - maternal pride. I bet even a baby skunk smells like a rosebud to its mother.
- [Overheard talking to one another while walking through the salon]
- Client of Madame Sonia's Salon: She said it was appendicitis...
- Second Client of Madame Sonia's Salon: [Incredulous] Appendicitis? Ha! I'd like to see the scar!
- Bill Merrick: Well, no harm will come to that as the drummer said when he looked at the cross-eyed old maid.
- Bill Merrick: Olive oil!
- Carol Merrick: Take care of yourself!
- Bill Merrick: Olive oil!
- Carol Merrick: Bye-bye!
- Bill Merrick: Olive oil!
- Bill Merrick: Hey Letty, how about you and me going down to Coney Island and shakin' a couple of legs?
- Letty Lawson: Not tonight, Bill. I feel kinda low.
- Bill Merrick: Aw, all you need is cheerin' up, babe, and I got just what the doctor ordered.
- Carol Merrick: Aw, Bill, can't you see she's all tired out? Why don't you park it in bed, kid?
- Bill Merrick: Shoot babe, I'm all ears.
- Letty Lawson: Well, as strange as it may be it's this way: I'm flat broke.
- Bill Merrick: Well that can be cured - as the man said when he looked at the ham.
- Burt Barton: Say, what is it so funny in being in love with a girl and wanting to make her happy?
- Carol Merrick: And you could make her happy if you go about it properly.
- Burt Barton: How?
- Carol Merrick: By marrying some other girl!
- Letty Lawson: Can you imagine? All that row just because I want to work in a beauty parlor?
- Carol Merrick: I can see his point though. You oughtin' have to work anywhere. Why, you been brought up like a Persian kitten.
- Letty Lawson: Well, even a Persian kitten's got kitten toenails if she has to use 'em.
- Letty Lawson: I got a living to earn for two and I can't do it in Kentucky. You got to take your spoon where the soup is.
- Carol Merrick: Well, the soup's hot in New York, kid. You're likely to get burned.
- Letty Lawson: Oh, I'm not afraid. I know they don't play the game here the way they do back home. It's rough and tumble and catch as catch can. But, I can play it.
- Letty Lawson: I'm not as dumb as you think. In the past six months, I've shed a lot of small town standards. I didn't make the world the way it is; but, I got to live in it.
- Madame Sonia Customer: I'm just simply a wreck. You know how divorces are.
- Hortense: I've never been married.
- Madame Sonia Customer: Not even once?
- Facial Client: And there he was, waving a pistol and threatening to shoot us both! Well, naturally, I *swore* that I loved him.
- Shampoo Client: At the point of a pistol, I'd go further than that!
- Carol Merrick: I'm very sorry I stayed the night with a friend and I just...
- Madame Sonia Barton: Your affairs are none of the slightest interests to me; except, when they interfere with mine. Out-of-business hours, my young ladies, they do what they please, where they please - so long as they report at nine: fresh, clear-skinned and bright eyed! In the future, when you plan spending the night - with a friend - I would advise the purchase of an alarm clock.
- Letty Lawson: What did she say?
- Carol Merrick: Not much; but, I felt as if I'd been stabbed with an icicle.
- Carol Merrick: Gee, you couldn't get an extra half hour for lunch in this place if you called an extra session of Congress! Well, that's what you get for pickin' a woman boss. I'm so fed up on women, I would almost take a job as chamber maid in the old men's home.
- Carol Merrick: Gee, that's certainly a swell lid! What a man! I'd like to meet him myself. If he gives you a hat like that after knowing you for an hour, think what he'd do in three weeks.
- Bill Merrick: I can't stand seeing you day-after-day like this without ever...
- Letty Lawson: Bill, let me go!
- Bill Merrick: Oh, don't be such a touch-me-not.
- Carol Merrick: Say, who's been throwing raw meat in your cage? Pipe down, will ya!
- Bill Merrick: And you've done it all right!
- Carol Merrick: Done what?
- Bill Merrick: [referring to Letty] Made her into a worthless little gold digger like yourself!
- Mrs. Merrick: Bill, where are you going?
- Bill Merrick: I'm going out and get drunk!
- Mrs. Merrick: Oh, dear! Oh, he shouldn't do that.
- Carol Merrick: Why not, he might wash out that dirty mouth of his.
- Mr. Sherwood: Won't you come in?
- Letty Lawson: Oh, if I only hadn't been so carefully brought up.
- Mr. Sherwood: Well, let's see. My cook is 120 years old, Chinese, deaf, dumb and blind. Doesn't that qualify him for a chaperone?
- Letty Lawson: No. No, I'm afraid not.
- Mr. Sherwood: Well, come in and think it over, won't you.
- [Letty comes in]
- Letty Lawson: I always used to have my birthday party under the Magnolia tree with a big, pink bow in my hair. And when bedtime came, I had to take it off - I always bawled.
- Mr. Sherwood: Let's see - Happy are we met...
- Letty Lawson: Oh, I know that one: Happy have we been. Happy may we part...
- Mr. Sherwood: And happy meet again.
- Carol Merrick: Can you do something for me, will ya? Give my face a good once over? I want to look my best tonight. The Big Moment and I are going to the mat over a very important deal.
- Letty Lawson: You know I will! Come on!
- Jane: Glory be, it's quitting time! I couldn't have stood another hour.
- Hortense: Jane, don't change your uniform yet. Go to Madame's office for a manicure.
- Carol Merrick: I thought the old cat sharpened her own claws.
- Letty Lawson: Meow!
- Madame Sonia Barton: Jane, you're not looking your best lately. What's the matter?
- Jane: Nothing, Madame.
- Madame Sonia Barton: What are you doing with your free time?
- Jane: Why, nothing in particular.
- Madame Sonia Barton: A worn, fagged operator's a very poor advertisement for the establishment. I'd be a little bit more careful if I were you.
- Carol Merrick: Do I look appealing?
- Letty Lawson: Oh, you look like a bouquet of baby's-breath. I hope you have good luck.
- Carol Merrick: I will or Freddy'll find his baby's-breathe is a snapdragon!
- Carol Merrick: I'd a known better. If I hadn't let myself get so wrapped up in you.
- Freddy Gordon: Sugar, Daddy only be gone two months.
- Carol Merrick: I just can't stand it! No, no, no! I-I can't stand it! I just can't stand it.
- Freddy Gordon: Oh, gorgeous, sweetheart, Daddy didn't know you'd take it so hard.
- Freddy Gordon: Why, what is it you see in me? I'm not young - and I ain't handsome?
- Carol Merrick: Oh, but darling, you're simply crawling with personality!
- Carol Merrick: Yesterday I saw a lovely summer urban coat, just the thing to travel in and a lot of other things I've got to have. Oh, maybe I oughtin'. But, I do like to look nice for you.
- Freddy Gordon: Sugerplum, you just write your own ticket!
- Jane: Lots of people get married and survive.
- Burt Barton: Yes, I know, but, not in a situation like this. Jane, I was going to tell you tonight I'm taking a job in Russia. Perhaps, when I get back?
- Jane: Oh, no, no. Burt, it'll be too late then. You've got to marry me now - before you go!
- Burt Barton: Hey, hey. Wait a minute. Put down that shotgun. Oh, Jane, this isn't like you.
- Jane: I know. You've been very fair. Never made any promises or anything. Burt, I wouldn't ask this now if - if I didn't have to!
- Letty Lawson: Well, I didn't know a ship was like this! I've never been on anything much bigger than a rowboat. Your own bathroom and a closet bigger than a bedroom in Brooklyn.
- Carol Merrick: [showing off her new fur coat] How's that for summer evenings on deck?
- Letty Lawson: I can just see you and Freddy in the moonlight.
- Carol Merrick: Not Freddy! He's chaperoned by his narrow-minded brother-in-law. Thank heaven! But, there'll be others on board that moonlight's just as becoming to!
- Letty Lawson: If you ever fall in love with a man that you can't marry...
- Carol Merrick: Oh, but I...
- Letty Lawson: I said if! If you do, run like a rabbit! For the best you'll get out of it is the worst of it. You don't want to have to hang around the back door of his life, begging for a handout. You don't want to have to sneak and hide and keep outta sight the way I do. And in the end, when he turns back to his wife and his home, you don't want to be kicked out in the sacred name of respectability - the way I was.
- [Letty stands up and kisses Carol on the lips]
- Letty Lawson: I've been rushing like mad, ever since I got home.
- Jane: Doing what?
- Letty Lawson: Washing my hair, for one thing.
- Jane: On Saturday night? Why you got all day tomorrow to do it.
- Letty Lawson: Going to bed early?
- Jane: As soon as I put a million miles of new ribbon in my lingerie.
- Bill Merrick: I don't see what you wanted to come this way for. There's not even a hot dog stand.
- Letty Lawson: Oh, but its so peaceful!
- Bill Merrick: Yeah, about as peaceful as being buried alive and pretty near as pleasant.
- Bill Merrick: Bottom's up - as the man said when he slipped on the banana peel.
- [laughs]
- Bill Merrick: Aw, that was a good one. I don't know how I think of 'em.
- Bill Merrick: Letty, you didn't do anything you'd be ashamed to tell me?
- Letty Lawson: No, Bill, I didn't do anything I'd be ashamed to tell you.
- [licks her ice cream cone]
- Bill Merrick: I guess I shouldn't have asked that; but, men are funny that way.
- [takes a bite from his ice cream cone]
- Letty Lawson: My next appointment, Mrs. Sherwood, I - I'd rather not go.
- Madame Sonia Barton: Why what's the matter? Is she so difficult?
- Letty Lawson: Oh, no, no. It's not that. It's a purely personal reason.
- Madame Sonia Barton: There's no room in business for personalities. You must leave those to my clients. My employees must disregard them - so long as they remain my employees.
- Mrs. Henrietta Sherwood: Oh, I'm utterly exhausted! But, I do feel my hips are a little undeveloped - not that curves are coming in. And men do love hips, don't you think?
- Mrs. Henrietta Sherwood: A man may pretend to admire you for your mentality; but, sooner or later, he's going to notice your figure. And, I think, you have to appeal to his physical side.