Celeste Holm credited as playing...
Karen
- Margo: So many people know me. I wish I did. I wish someone would tell me about me.
- Karen: You're Margo, just Margo.
- Margo: And what is that, besides something spelled out in light bulbs, I mean - besides something called a temperament, which consists mostly of swooping about on a broomstick and screaming at the top of my voice? Infants behave the way I do, you know. They carry on and misbehave - they'd get drunk if they knew how - when they can't have what they want, when they feel unwanted or insecure or unloved.
- Lloyd Richards: That bitter cynicism of yours is something you've acquired since you left Radcliffe!
- Karen: The cynicism you refer to, I acquired the day I discovered I was different from little boys!
- Lloyd Richards: Karen, let me tell you about Eve. She's got everything - a born actress. Sensitive, understanding, young, exciting, vibrant...
- Karen: Don't run out of adjectives, dear.
- Llyod Richards: Eve did mention the play, but in passing. She'd never ask to play a part like Cora. She'd never have the nerve.
- Karen: Eve would ask Abbott to give her Costello.
- Karen: Nothing is forever in the Theatre. Whatever it is, it's here, it flares up, burns hot and then it's gone.
- Karen: Where were we going that night, Lloyd and I? Funny, the things you remember and the things you don't.
- Karen: [Eve walks in, carrying the fur coat of a new arrival to Margo's party] Who'd show up at this hour? It's time people went home. Hold that coat up.
- Karen: [Eve holds up a luxurious full-length fur coat, Karen lets out a whistle] Whose is it?
- Eve: Some Hollywood movie star's. Her plane got in late.
- Karen: Discouraging, isn't it? Women with furs like that where it never even gets cold.
- Eve: Hollywood.
- [tosses the fur coat on the bed]
- Karen: [narrating] Newton, they say, thought of gravity by getting hit on the head by an apple. And the man who invented the steam-engine, he was watching a teakettle. But not me. My big idea came to me just sitting on a couch. That boot in the rear to Margo. Heaven knows, she had one coming. From me, from Lloyd, from Eve, Bill, Max and so on. We'd all felt those size fives of hers often enough. But how? The answer was buzzing around me like a fly. I had it. But I let it go. Screaming and calling names is one thing, but this could mean...
- Karen: [continues] Why not? "Why," I said to myself, "not?" It would all seem perfectly legitimate. And only two people in the world would know. Also, the boot would land where it would do the most good for all concerned. After all, it was no more than a harmless joke which Margo herself would be the first to enjoy. And no reason why she shouldn't be told about it... in time.
- Karen: [on the phone, calling Eve to let her in on her little "joke"] Hello. Will you please call Miss Eve Harrington to the phone?
- Karen: [voiceover] It seems a lifetime ago. Lloyd always said that in the theatre a lifetime was a season and a season a lifetime.