When actor Tony Curtis died at age 85, in September 2010, many obituaries and tributes mentioned what is widely believed to be one of his most famous movie lines. In…
Category: Movie Quotes
“They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!”
On May 24, 1995, five days after its official premiere in Los Angeles, Braveheart was released to theaters nationwide in the USA. The movie stars Mel Gibson as the 13th…
“I coulda been a contender!”
When On the Waterfront was first released to American movie theaters on July 28, 1954, the film’s director, Elia Kazan, was worried about how well it would do on opening…
“When you call me that, SMILE!”
When the groundbreaking Western novel The Virginian by Owen Wister was first published on May 28, 1902, no one could have known that it would become so famous — or…
“Your eyes are full of hate, Forty-one.” … In Ben-Hur, that's good.
Screenwriter, playwright and novelist Gore Vidal is linked to two famous quotations about whipping. One is a funny quip about the old form of corporal punishment called “birching” (whipping someone…
“Back in the Saddle Again”
The idiom “back in the saddle again” was already in use before it was immortalized in song by the singing cowboy star Gene Autry. It was originally applied to cowboys…
“A boy’s best friend is his mother.”
When Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho was first released to movie theaters on June 16, 1960, it wasn’t immediately embraced by critics. For example, in a review published the next day…
The origin of the movie cliché “We have ways of making you talk!”
The threatening words “We have ways of making you talk” are now a familiar cliché in movies. It’s usually said for comedic effect, often with a heavy foreign accent, like:…
Mae West was very good at being bad…
Mae West (1893-1980) was like Marilyn Monroe, Madonna and Dorothy Parker all combined in one package. She was sensuous, smart and funny. She was a singer, actor, playwright and screenwriter…
A little tea and sympathy (and sex and censorship)…
Back in my college days, I tended to snigger at drug references in rock songs. So, I probably sniggered when I first heard Mick Jagger sing the lines in the…