Trivia and Quotes
Quotes
 Jim Blandings: This little piggy went to market. A meek and as mild as a lamb. He smiled in his tracks. When they slipped him the axe. He KNEW he`d turn out to be Wham! Bill Cole: It may only be four walls and a nail keg, but it will always be home to me.
Muriel Blandings: Mr. Zucca explained he has to use dynamite to blast to get rid of the rock.
Mr. Zucca: That`s no rock. That`s a ledge.
Bill Cole: What Mr. Blandings means is, what precisely is a ledge?
Mr. Zucca: A ledge is like a big stone. Only it`s bigger.
Jim Blandings: Like a boulder!
Mr. Zucca: No, like a ledge.
Gussie: The children like Wham.
Jim Blandings: Well, there must be other things that we...
Gussie: Mrs. Blandings likes it, too.
Jim Blandings: Just the same...
Gussie: And I consider it very tasty!
Muriel Blandings: I want it to be a soft green, not as blue-green as a robin`s egg, but not as yellow-green as daffodil buds. Now, the only sample I could get is a little too yellow, but don`t let whoever does it go to the other extreme and get it too blue. It should just be a sort of grayish-yellow-green. Now, the dining room. I`d like yellow. Not just yellow; a very gay yellow. Something bright and sunshine-y. I tell you, Mr. PeDelford, if you`ll send one of your men to the grocer for a pound of their best butter, and match that exactly, you can`t go wrong! Now, this is the paper we`re going to use in the hall. It`s flowered, but I don`t want the ceiling to match any of the colors of the flowers. There`s some little dots in the background, and it`s these dots I want you to match. Not the little greenish dot near the hollyhock leaf, but the little bluish dot between the rosebud and the delphinium blossom. Is that clear? Now the kitchen is to be white. Not a cold, antiseptic hospital white. A little warmer, but still, not to suggest any other color but white. Now for the powder room - in here - I want you to match this thread, and don`t lose it. It`s the only spool I have and I had an awful time finding it! As you can see, it`s practically an apple red. Somewhere between a healthy winesap and an unripened Jonathan. Oh, excuse me...
Mr. PeDelford: You got that Charlie?
Charlie, Painter: Red, green, blue, yellow, white.
Mr. PeDelford: Check.
Jim Blandings: So you hit a spring, a bubbling spring... right here, in our cellar.
Jim Blandings: That`s fine. For the rest of my life, I`ll have to get up at 5 in the morning to catch the 6:15 train to get to my office at 8. It doesn`t even open until 9, and I never get there until 10!
Muriel Blandings: Well, maybe if you start earlier, you can leave the office earlier.
Jim Blandings: To get home earlier, to get to bed earlier, to get up earlier, I suppose.
Bill Cole: Maybe you can get the railroad to push the train up to 4:15. Then you won`t have to go to bed at all.
Jim Blandings: What about the windows?
Simms: I`m afraid there`s been a little slip up. These windows seem to belong to a Mr. Landing in Fishkill. I spoke to him on the phone this morning.
Jim Blandings: Well, has he got mine?
Simms: No, he seems to have the windows that belong to a Mr. Blandworth in Peekskill.
Jim Blandings: Where are *my* windows?
Simms: Well, near as we can find out, they`ve either been sent to a Mr. Banning in Danbury, or a Mr. Bamburger in Waterbury.
Muriel Blandings: Darling, I`m going out to the place this afternoon. Bill`s driving me up to see about the landscaping.
Jim Blandings: That`ll be nice... What do you mean Bill`s driving you?
Muriel Blandings: Why do you always say `what do you mean` when you know perfectly well what I mean and you mean?
Jim Blandings: I mean the moment I turn my back, Bill Cole`s driving you someplace or something.
Muriel Blandings: He`s only being helpful.
Jim Blandings: I thought he was a lawyer. Why isn`t he out suing somebody?
Muriel Blandings: The house and the lilac bush at the corner are just the same age, Bill. If a lilac bush can live and be so old, so can a house. It just needs someone to love it, that`s all.
Bill Cole: It`s a good thing there are two of you. One to love it and one to hold it up.
Jim Blandings: It just so happened that General... uh... Gates stopped right there at that very house to water his horses.
Bill Cole: I don`t care if General Grant dropped in for a scotch and soda. You`re still getting rooked.
Jim Blandings: That was a different war!
Smith: You`re buying a piece of American history.
Jim Blandings: You don`t say. How`s that?
Smith: Why, first year she was built, General Gates stopped right here to water his horses.
Jim Blandings: Old General Gates, huh? Civil War.
Smith: Huh? Revolutionary War.
Jim Blandings: Oh, *that* General Gates.
Muriel Blandings: Look, here`s how he sees our living room. Isn`t it charming?
Jim Blandings: What`s that? A shoe-shine stand?
Muriel Blandings: It`s a cobbler`s bench, dear. The room`s Colonial. Breakfront. Hooked rug. Student`s lamp. Pie Cooler. And over here is a Martha Washington desk.
Jim Blandings: And where do I keep my powdered wig?
Muriel Blandings: You remember Bunny Funkhouser, dear, that clever young interior decorator that we met at the Collins` cocktail party.
Jim Blandings: You mean that young man with the open-toed sandals? What about him?
Muriel Blandings: Well, you know how long we`ve said we`ve got to do something about fixing up this apartment. Well, a couple of weeks ago, he called, and I asked him to come over, and he had some simply wonderful ideas, and I didn`t want to bother you with sketches and estimates until I knew whether we could afford it. So I sent them over to Bill.
Jim Blandings: How much?
Muriel Blandings: What`s the point in asking how much until you know what you`re going to get?
Jim Blandings: I`ve seen Bunny Funkhouser. I *know* what I`m going to get.
Betsy Blandings: Ms. Stellwagon has assigned each of us to take a classified ad and write a human-interest theme about it. I found one typical of the disintegration of our present society.
Jim Blandings: I wasn`t aware of the fact that our society *was* disintegrating.
Betsy Blandings: I wouldn`t expect you to be, Father. Ms. Stellwagon says that middle class people like us are all too prone to overlook...
Jim Blandings: Muriel, I know this is asking a lot, but just one morning I would like to sit down and have breakfast without social significance.
Muriel Blandings: Jim, you really must take more interest in your children`s education.
Joan: Can`t squeeze blood from a turnip.
Muriel Blandings: Why don`t you use an electric razor?
Jim Blandings: Can`t get used to them.
Muriel Blandings: Silly. Bill Cole`s been using one for years.
Jim Blandings: He hasn`t got my beard.
Muriel Blandings: Bill`s beard is just as coarse and tough...
Jim Blandings: I am not interested in discussing the grain and texture of Bill Cole`s hair follicles before I`ve had my breakfast.
Bill Cole: I kind of felt that he kind of felt that if I kind of told you that you`d know that he knew that you knew... or something.
Bill Cole: The next time you`re going to do anything or say anything or buy anything, think it over very carefully. When you`re sure you`re right, forget the whole thing.
Jim Blandings: Nothing, Mary. Just a private joke between me and whoever my analyst is going to be.
Jim Blandings: What`s with this kissing all of a sudden? I don`t like it. Every time he goes out of this house, he shakes my hand and kisses you.
Muriel Blandings: Would you prefer it the other way around?
Joan: Oh look. Mother`s diary. It`s slightly torrid.
Muriel Blandings: I refuse to endanger the lives of my children in a house with less than four bathrooms.
Jim Blandings: For 1,300 dollars they can live in a house with three bathrooms and ROUGH IT.
Gussie: If you ain`t eatin` Wham, you ain`t eatin` ham.
Bill Cole: You`ve been taken to the cleaners, and you don`t even know your pants are off.
Jim Blandings: It`s a conspiracy, I tell you. The minute you start they put you on the all-American sucker list. You start out to build a home and wind up in the poorhouse. And if it can happen to me, what about the guys who aren`t making $15,000 a year? The ones who want a home of their own. It`s a conspiracy, I tell you - -against every boy and girl who were ever in love.
Trivia
The house "Blandings` Way" really exists on Indian Hill Road in New Milford, Connecticut. It`s a beautiful huge white art deco/colonial house that has many of the actual rooms discussed in the movie--such as a room to cut flowers. Also less than a mile away on Long Mountain Road is executive producer of the movie and MGM head Dore Schary`s old country home.
Although this film was from the novel of the same name, much of the story is autobiographical. Eric Hodgins and his wife built the actual house in the rural Litchfield County, Connecticut town of New Milford. Located in the bucolic Merryall section of town, the house recently sold for $1.2 million.
Grand total for the house and property was $38,000 according to Mrs. Blandings in their first night in the house. Assuming the factor used to arrive at the 2004 value show above is correct, the total cost of the house and property would be $298,000.
The pairing of Irene Dunne and Cary Grant was a consistent box office winner and director H.C. Potter wanted Dunne for the role of Muriel Blandings. Unfortunately, she was already working on another RKO film, I Remember Mama (1948), and wasn`t available for this production.
|
Super Star Sites
Comments
Submit a Comment