New Orleans (1947)

Dorothy Patrick: Miralee Smith

Quotes 

• Endie : Welcome to New Orleans, Miss Miralee.

  Miralee Smith : Well, thank you.

  Endie : Oh, let me fix you a good, hot tub and it will melt away all your tiredness.

• Endie : [singing upstairs, off camera]  I dream about magnolias...

  Miralee Smith : Why who is that mother?

  Mrs. Rutledge Smith : That's Endie, your maid, and I've asked her *not* to sing those songs in this house.

  Miralee Smith : But, she sings like an angel.

  Mrs. Rutledge Smith : Well, there's more devil than angel in that music!

• Miralee Smith : And now I know the King of Basin Street. May I visit you?

  Mrs. Rutledge Smith : Miralee...

  Colonel McArdle : Young ladies of quality don't visit Basin Street.

  Nick Duquesne : Perhaps the Colonel will bring you along on one of his slumming parties.

• Miralee Smith : That music you were playing, what was it?

  Endie : I just can't seem to remember not to play it, Miss Miralee. It was a kind of little ol' blues tune.

  Miralee Smith : Blues? Do you play the blues only when you're blue?

  Endie : No, Ma'am. They just call it blues. We play it when we're blue or when we're happy, even when we're in love.

• Miralee Smith : I'm going with you.

  Endie : Yes, Ma'am. No, Ma'am! You can't do that, Miss Miralee.

  Miralee Smith : Oh, but, I can and you're going to take me.

  Endie : It ain't fittin' for a lady to go to Storyville, 'ceptin' she's on a slummin' party.

  Miralee Smith : All right, hand me my slumming clothes.

• Miralee Smith : They really love the music, don't they?

  Tommy Lake : They sure do. Satchmo says that playing ragtime is like talking from the heart. It doesn't lie.

• Miralee Smith : Basin Street! What a wonderful street to be King of.

  Nick Duquesne : But, there's an ugly and sordid side of Basin Street too.

  Miralee Smith : From who's point of view?

  Nick Duquesne : Sometimes, even from mine.

• Endie : It's a secret.

  Miralee Smith : What do you mean?

  Endie : Well, Miss Miralee, if I say one more word it won't be a secret anymore.

• Miralee Smith : Dinner here is a series of climaxes. Wonderful food. Charming companions. Exciting music.

• Miralee Smith : Why, they almost make their instruments talk. Where does such music come from?

  Nick Duquesne : Well, it came from - Miss Smith, you're going home.

  Miralee Smith : Not until you tell me.

  Nick Duquesne : Well, it comes from work song, Gold Coast of west Africa, little Christian churches, river boats.

  Miralee Smith : You want to make up words to it as you go along.

  Nick Duquesne : They made up the music as they went along.

  Miralee Smith : Mr. Duquesne, why don't we hear more of this kind of music?

  Nick Duquesne : There's a wall around it, Miss Smith. A big, invisible wall you can't climb over.

  Miralee Smith : But why? Because it's new? All the wonderful music I've been singing is so traditional now. It was new once too. Well, it sprang up in so many places that I've been learning to make it mine. But this! This music's mine already. Oh, Nick, I feel I'm exactly where I want to be and on my way to where I want to go, for the first time in my life.

• Miralee Smith : Men! You're much more complicated than women.

• Miralee Smith : Am I being - bounced?

  Nick Duquesne : Deported.

• Nick Duquesne : Don't let that music go to your head.

  Miralee Smith : Oh, it isn't only the music, Nick, and it doesn't go to my head.

• Nick Duquesne : Miralee, do you know why I took you on that little tour?

  Miralee Smith : You didn't want me to have any illusions about you. Well, I haven't.

  Nick Duquesne : Think it over carefully Miralee. From my point of view, I'm a reckless, unscrupulous, man. I'm older than you. Experienced.

  Miralee Smith : With women, I suppose. If you, a notorious Don Juan, were to snare an innocent little girl, the whole thing would look sordid.

  Nick Duquesne : Now, wouldn't it?

  Miralee Smith : But, if a rich, young heiress, talented, with the world at her feet, throws her life away on some society chump...

  Nick Duquesne : And it turned out that she was happy. And then lived like other people - only better.

  Miralee Smith : That ought to be sung to music from "La Tosca".

  [kiss] 

• Miralee Smith : Oh, Satchmo!

  Louis Armstrong : I feel so good! I gotta blow!

  Miralee Smith , Satchmo's horn : Ah-Ah-Ahhhhhhhhhhh!

• Louis Armstrong : Ain't you gonna inquire about Mr. Nick?

  Miralee Smith : How is he?

  Louis Armstrong : You askin' with your lips, not your heart.

  Miralee Smith : My heart isn't interested.

  Louis Armstrong : Miss Miralee, I seen Mr. Nick jes before I left the States. He's singin' the blues, even when he hates singin'. I mean the blues about you.