Alfred Hitchcock Presents (TV Series)

The Cream of the Jest (1957)

Claude Rains: Charles Gresham

Photos 

Quotes 

• Charles Gresham : I'm dead when I'm not doing a job of acting. You know, sometimes when I'm in my room, I go to the mirror, and I... I look into it, trying to see who I am, who the "me" is. I talk to myself. And all the characters I've ever played pass in front of me. And I'm every one of them, but that's all I am. There's no real me, only the characters. Don't you see? Then I... then I go back and I sit and I wait. I wait for somebody, somebody like you, Wayne, to call me, to bring me back to life again. I'm only real when I'm acting. The rest of the time I'm nothing. That's why I drink. Don't you see?

• Charles Gresham : You're looking very sleek.

  Wayne Campbell : You're looking fairly sober, for a change.

• Wayne Campbell : [misquotes Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' slightly]  "Speak the speech, I pray you, As you have pronounced it, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth this as many of your players do, I will as lief the town crier spoke me lines." See, I can recite that Shakespeare too.

  Charles Gresham : Yes, we won't mention how.

• [first lines] 

  Jerry the Bartender : [to a customer]  Thank you.

  Charles Gresham : Hello, Jerry. How fresh and dewy you look.

• Charles Gresham : Jerry? Do you know what I wish? I wish you were Shakespeare. I wish you were just writing Macbeth. Beautiful thing, Macbeth. You know Jerry, that's what's the matter with these modern playwrights. Most of the time, they are "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

  [quotes Shakespeare's 'Macbeth'] 

  Charles Gresham : It's sad Jerry, it's real sad. I tell you Jerry, they're all phonies, all of them, pretending to be something they're not.