Foreign Correspondent (1940)
Joel McCrea: John Jones
Photos
Quotes
-
John Jones : I'm in love with you, and I want to marry you.
Carol Fisher : I'm in love with you, and I want to marry you.
John Jones : Hmm... that cuts down our love scene quite a bit, doesn't it?
-
Carol Fisher : This is Scott ffolliott, newspaperman same as you. Foreign correspondent. Mr. Haverstock, Mr. ffolliott.
Scott ffolliott : With a double 'F'.
John Jones : How do you do?
Scott ffolliott : How do you do?
John Jones : I don't get the double 'F'.
Scott ffolliott : They're at the beginning. Both small 'F's
John Jones : They can't be at the beginning.
Scott ffolliott : One of my ancestors was beheaded by Henry VIII. His wife dropped the capital letter to commemorate it. There it is.
John Jones : How do you say it, like a stutter?
Scott ffolliott : No, just a straight 'fuh'.
-
[last lines]
[radio broadcast from London]
John Jones : Hello, America. I've been watching a part of the world being blown to pieces. A part of the world as nice as Vermont, and Ohio
[siren sounds]
John Jones : , and Virginia, and California, and Illinois lies ripped up and bleeding like a steer in a slaughterhouse, and I've seen things that make the history of the savages read like Pollyanna legends. I've seen women...
[bombs begin exploding]
English Announcer : It's a raid; we shall have to postpone the broadcast.
John Jones : Oh, postpone, nothing! Let's go on as long as we can.
English Announcer : Madam, we have a shelter downstairs.
John Jones : How about it, Carol?
Carol Fisher : They're listening in America, Johnny.
John Jones : Okay, we'll tell 'em, then. I can't read the rest of the speech I had, because the lights have gone out, so I'll just have to talk off the cuff. All that noise you hear isn't static - it's death, coming to London. Yes, they're coming here now. You can hear the bombs falling on the streets and the homes. Don't tune me out, hang on a while - this is a big story, and you're part of it. It's too late to do anything here now except stand in the dark and let them come... as if the lights were all out everywhere, except in America. Keep those lights burning, cover them with steel, ring them with guns, build a canopy of battleships and bombing planes around them. Hello, America, hang on to your lights: they're the only lights left in the world!
-
John Jones : I'm in love with a girl, and I'm going to help hang her father.
-
Stebbins : Oh, Miss, please... A Scotch and soda, and a glass of milk.
John Jones : A glass of milk?
Stebbins : Yeah, I'm on the wagon. I went to the doctor today to see about these jitters I got, and he said it was the wagon for a month, or a whole new set of organs. I can't afford a whole new set of organs.
John Jones : Well, if I'd known you were on the wagon, I could've got along all right without this, but as long as it's here...
[toasts]
John Jones : Good luck!
Stebbins : [watches him drink] Good?
John Jones : Yes, it's just like any other Scotch and soda.
Stebbins : [morosely] That's what I thought.
[sips milk]
Stebbins : Doesn't taste the same as when I was a baby...
-
Scott ffolliott : Ring Mayfair 24574...
Stebbins : [gets out notebook] Let me write that...
Scott ffolliott : Mayfair 24574. That's my cousin. He's the director of the airline. Tell him we need two seats on tomorrow's clipper for America. Then go to Hilton Nursing Home and stick by Van Meer. Then phone Miss Edith Armbruster, Kensington 66255. Tell her I'm off to America. Will she dine with me next Monday instead of tomorrow?
Stebbins : Sure.
Scott ffolliott : Then call up Stevens at The Post, tell him I'm off to America.
John Jones : Cable New York, tell them I'm off to America!
Scott ffolliott : [as they run off] Ring up Crescent Dancing Academy and cancel my rhumba lesson!
Stebbins : [reads it back to himself] Two ham sandwiches on rye.
-
John Jones : If you knew how much I love you, you'd faint.
-
John Jones : I came 4,000 miles to get a story. I get shot at like a duck in a shooting gallery, I get pushed off buildings, I *get* the story, and then I've got to shut up!
-
Mr. Powers : How would you like to cover the biggest story in the world today?
John Jones : Give me and expense account and I'll cover anything.
Mr. Powers : I'll give you an expense account.
John Jones : Okay, What's the story?
Mr. Powers : Europe.
John Jones : Well, I'm afraid I'm not exactly equipped, sir, but I can do some reading up.
Mr. Powers : No no, no reading up. I like you just as you are, Mr. Jones. What Europe needs is a fresh, unused mind.
John Jones : Foreign correspondent, huh?
Mr. Powers : No, reporter. I don't want correspondence, I want news.
-
Scott ffolliott : Who has he shot?
John Jones : Van Meer assassinated.
Scott ffolliott : Dead?
John Jones : Looked like it.
Scott ffolliott : Bad show.
John Jones : Couldn't be much worse from his point of view.
-
John Jones : [on the phone] Operator? Operator, send a waiter up to 537. That's right and ask the chambermaid to bring up some clean sheets. I've set mine on fire.
-
Captain John Mark : Mr. Haverstock, I want a talk with you.
John Jones : Yes sir?
Captain John Mark : I just found out you're a newspaperman.
John Jones : I guess that's right.
Captain John Mark : Oh, it is, eh? Why didn't you tell me that when I questioned you? You lied to me, sir!
John Jones : My dear captain, when you've been shot down in a British plane by a German destroyer, 300 miles off the coast of England, latitude 45, and have been hanging on to a half-submerged wing for hours, waiting to drown, with half a dozen other stricken human beings, you're liable to forget you're a newspaperman for a moment or two!
-
John Jones : [Powers is giving Jones instructions on whom he should interview in Europe] Anyone else?
Mr. Powers : No.
John Jones : Well how about Hitler? Don't you think it would be a good idea to pump him? He must have something on his mind.
-
John Jones : Look, I'm in love with you. I can't hit you over the head with a scandal as a wedding present.
-
Mr. Powers : Well, speak up, young man. You don't mind being Huntley Haverstock do you?
John Jones : No. A rose by any name, sir.
-
John Jones : I have a rather rare banknote here which you might be interested in - as a memento, that is if you collect rare banknotes at all.
Purser : It's no use, sir. I'd do it if I could, but there just isn't a place left.
John Jones : That's the problem on an English ships, you come up against such an air of incorruptibility.
-
Stephen Fisher : I don't like you dashing about like this without some protection.
John Jones : Oh, forget it.
Stephen Fisher : If what you say is true, you need protection.
John Jones : Listen, Mr. Fisher, I've covered beer mob killings and race riots since I was a tot without even carrying a rabbit's foot.
Stephen Fisher : These people are criminal, more dangerous than your rumrunners and house-breakers. They're fanatics! They combine a mad love of country with an equally mad indifference to life - their own, as well as others'. They're cunning, unscrupulous - and - inspired.
-
Carol Fisher : You've turned European on me overnight, Johnny.
John Jones : Now, that's unfair. I'm just as big a jackass as I ever was. Bigger.
-
Fake Dutch Detective : We simply want you to come with us if you will and tell your story to our chief of police here.
John Jones : Well, let me get this straight. Does this chief of police speak English? Because I'm a very busy man.
Fake Dutch Detective : It will take no more than half an hour, Sir. We all speak English.
John Jones : All speak English? Well, that's marvelous. That's more than I can say for my country.
-
John Jones : They'll stick to me like a couple of tattoo marks.
-
John Jones : If you speak English, will you give me a hand with the laughing Latvian. What's his racket? What's he talking?
Carol Fisher : Latvian.
John Jones : No kidding? I didn't know the Lats had a language. I thought they just rubbed noses.
-
John Jones : I was trying to find out what you know about the possibility of a general war. How do you really feel about it?
Van Meer : My boy, I feel very old and sad - and helpless.
-
Carol Fisher : Well, you've made quite a day of it, haven't you?
John Jones : Now, listen...
Carol Fisher : Making fools of Scott Ffolliott and me in front of the local police, broken into my bedroom and disgraced me before a very important friend of my father's. What are your plans now, may I ask?
John Jones : I'll tell you if you wait just a...
Carol Fisher : You might at least have had your clothes on.
-
John Jones : Listen, I know I look a fool, but there's something fishy going on around here. There's a big story in this. I can smell it. I can feel it and I'm going to get to the bottom of it, if it's the last thing I do. And nothing's going to stop me.
-
Carol Fisher : Mr. Haverstock, don't you think you've been talking through your hat long enough?
John Jones : But, I'm not talking through my hat!
-
Carol Fisher : Now for the last time, please go.
John Jones : Okay. But I want you to know exactly what's going to happen when I do go. I'll go back to my room and get dressed. I'll try and shake those two fellows off, but I won't succeed. They'll stick to me like a couple of tattoo marks until they get me. They'll stop at nothing. I seem to know too much. And you're right. I don't know the ins and outs of your crackpot peace movement. And I don't know what's wrong with Europe. But I do know a story when I see one. And I'll keep after it until either I get it or it gets me.
-
Carol Fisher : One cabin isn't going to do us much good, is it? We just can't...
John Jones : Oh, well, I fully intended to sleep in the lounge. I hope you didn't think I...
Carol Fisher : No, of course not. It's very kind of you.
-
John Jones : [on the phone with the Operator] Get me Mr. Ffolliott's room, please. Left the hotel?
[hangs up]
Carol Fisher : That's strange. We were to dine together tonight.
John Jones : I guess he realized how much I meant to you.
Carol Fisher : You'd mean more with your clothes on.
John Jones : Oh, you like the intellectual type.
-
Stebbins : When are you going to send the story in to the esteemed gazette?
John Jones : When I get ready.
Stebbins : Well, there goes another one of my illusions. I thought you were one of the journalists nothing could stop. Floods, smallpox, love: the story must go on.
John Jones : It'll go on.
-
John Jones : This is a story with facts in it. This is the kind of story I was sent over here to get. This is the kind America's waiting for!
-
Carol Fisher : Were you really going to tip that man 5 pounds?
John Jones : Why, of course! I charge all my traveling expenses to the office. Corrupting an official, 5 pounds.
Carol Fisher : You're just a wee bit unscrupulous, aren't you?
-
John Jones : I thought you were cold on this story.
Scott ffolliott : On the contrary, I've been doing what you might call a bit of noticing.
