All About Eve (1950)

Gary Merrill: Bill Simpson

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Quotes 

• Bill Sampson : The theatre. The theatre. What book of rules say the theatre exists only within some ugly buildings crowded into one square mile of New York City? Or London? Paris or Vienna? Listen, Junior, and learn. Do you wanna know what the theatre is? A flea circus. Also opera. Also rodeos, carnivals, ballets, Indian tribal dances, Punch and Judy, a one-man band, all theatre. Wherever there's magic and make-believe and an audience, there's theatre. Donald Duck, Ibsen and The Lone Ranger. Sarah Bernhardt and Poodles Hanneford. Lunt and Fontanne, Betty Grable. Rex the Wild Horse, Eleonora Duse, all theatre. You don't understand them all. You don't like them all. Why should you? The theatre's for everybody, you included, but not exclusively. So, don't approve or disapprove. It may not be your theatre, but it's theatre for somebody, somewhere.

• Margo : As it happens, there are particular aspects of my life to which I would like to maintain sole and exclusive rights and privileges.

  Bill Sampson : For instance what?

  Margo : For instance: you!

• Bill Sampson : This is my cue to take you in my arms and reassure you. But I'm not going to - I'm too mad.

  Margo : Guilty!

  Bill Sampson : Mad! Darling, there are certain characteristics for which you are famous, on stage and off. I love you for some of them, in spite of others. I haven't let those become too important. They're part of your equipment for getting along in what is laughingly called our environment. You have to keep your teeth sharp - all right - but I will not have you sharpen them on me, or on Eve!

  Margo : What about her teeth? What about her fangs?

  Bill Sampson : She hasn't cut them yet, and you know it! So when you start judging an idealistic, dreamy-eyed kid by the barroom Benzedrine standards of this megalomaniac society, I won't have it! Eve Harrington has never, by word, look, thought, or suggestion indicated anything to me but her adoration for you and her happiness at our being in love. And to intimate anything else doesn't spell jealousy to me - it spells a paranoiac insecurity that you should be ashamed of!

  Margo : Cut! Print it! What happens in the next reel? Do I get dragged off screaming to the snake pits?

• Bill Sampson : We have to go to City Hall for the marriage license and blood test.

  Margo : I'd marry you if it turned out you had no blood at all.

• Margo : Thank you, Eve. I'd like a martini, very dry.

  Bill Sampson : I'll get it.

  [to Eve] 

  Bill Sampson : What'll you have?

  Margo : A milkshake?

  Eve : A martini, very dry, please.

• Bill Sampson : Have you no human consideration?

  Margo : Show me a human, and I might have!

• [Bill is saying goodbye to Birdie as he departs for Hollywood] 

  Bill Sampson : Any messages? What do you want me to tell Tyrone Power?

  Birdie : Just give him my phone number; I'll tell him myself.

• Bill Sampson : Outside of a beehive, Margo, your behavior would not be considered either queenly or motherly.

  Margo : You are in a beehive, pal. Didn't you know? We are all busy little bees, full of stings, making honey day and night. Aren't we honey?

• Bill Sampson : Don't cry. Just score it as an incomplete forward pass.

• Bill Sampson : You know, there isn't a playwright in the world who could make me believe this would happen between two adult people. Goodbye, Margo.

  Margo : Bill? Where are you going? To find Eve?

  Bill Sampson : That suddenly makes the whole thing believable.

• [Margo is getting drunk at the party] 

  Bill Sampson : Many of your guests have been wondering when they may be permitted to view the body. Where has it been laid out?

  Margo : It hasn't been laid out, we haven't finished with the embalming. As a matter of fact, you're looking at it - the remains of Margo Channing, sitting up. It is my last wish to be buried sitting up.

• Bill Sampson : Wherever there's magic and make-believe and an audience, there's theatre.

• Bill Sampson : You have every reason for happiness.

  Margo : Except happiness!

• Bill Sampson : [to Eve]  "Don't let it worry you", said the camera man, "Even DeMille couldn't see anything looking through the wrong end!" So that was the first and last...

  Margo : [entering]  Don't let me kill the point. Or isn't it a story for grownups?

  Bill Sampson : You've heard it - about the time I looked into the wrong end of the camera finder.

  Margo : Remind me to tell you about the time I looked into the heart of an artichoke.

  Eve : I'd like to hear it.

  Margo : Some snowy night, in front of the fire.

• Bill Sampson : Looks like I'm going to have a very fancy party...

  Margo : I thought you were going to be late.

  Bill Sampson : When I'm guest of honor?

  Margo : I had no idea you were even here.

  Bill Sampson : I ran into Eve on my way upstairs; she told me you were dressing.

  Margo : That never stopped you before.

  Bill Sampson : Well, we started talking, she wanted to know all about Hollywood, she seemed so interested...

  Margo : She's a girl of so many interests.

  Bill Sampson : It's a pretty rare quality these days.

  Margo : She's a girl of so many rare qualities.

  Bill Sampson : So she seems.

  Margo : So you've pointed out, so often. So many qualities, so often. Her loyalty, efficiency, devotion, warmth, affection - and so young! So young and so fair...

• Bill Sampson : I start shooting a week from Monday. Zanuck is impatient. He wants me, he needs me.

  Margo : Zanuck, Zanuck, Zanuck. What are you two, lovers?

• Llyod Richards : I understand that your understudy, Miss Harrington, has given her notice.

  Margo : Too bad.

  Bill Sampson : I'm broken up about it.

• Bill Sampson : I can't believe you're making this up. It sounds like something out of an old Clyde Fitch play!

  Margo : Clyde Fitch, though you may not think so, was well before my time.

  Bill Sampson : I've always denied the legend that you were in "Our American Cousin" the night Lincoln was shot.

  Margo : I *don't* think that's funny!

• Bill Sampson : [to Eve]  What I go after, I want to go after. I don't want it to come after me.

• Bill Sampson : Real diamonds in a wig, the world we live in.

• Margo : It's obvious you're not a woman.

  Bill Sampson : I've been aware of that for some time.

• Margo : He can't take his eyes off my legs.

  Bill Sampson : Like a nylon lemon peel.

  Margo : Byron couldn't have said it more graciously.

• Margo : Heartburn? It's that Miss Casswell. I don't see why she hasn't given Addison heartburn.

  Bill Sampson : No heart to burn!

  Margo : Everybody has a heart - except some people.

• Bill Sampson : I don't agree, Addison.

  Addison DeWitt : That happens to be your particular abnormality.

• Bill Sampson : Nothing personal, Junior. No offense. It's just that there's so much bourgeois in this ivory greenroom they call the theatre, sometimes it gets up around my chin.

• Karen : Good luck, genius.

  Bill Sampson : Geniuses don't need good luck. I do.

• Margo : Did she tell you about the theatre and what it meant?

  Bill Sampson : No, I told her. I sounded off.

  Margo : All the religions in the world rolled into one, and we're gods and goddesses.

• Margo : Bill, don't get stuck on some glamour puss.

  Bill Sampson : I'll try.

• Margo : You're not much of a bargain, you know. You're conceited and thoughtless and messy.

  Bill Sampson : Well, everybody can't be Gregory Peck.

• Bill Sampson : Hey, Junior! Keep your eye on her. Don't let her get lonely. She's a loose lamb in a jungle.

• Miss Casswell : Now there's something a girl could make sacrifices for!

  Bill Sampson : And probably has.

  Miss Casswell : Sable!

  Max Fabian : Sable? Did she say sable or Gable?

  Miss Casswell : Either one.

• Karen : I guess at this point I'm what the French call "de trop."

  Bill Sampson : Maybe just a little around the edges.

• Bill Sampson : Knit me a muffler?

• Bill Sampson : Karen, you're a Gibson girl.