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The Philadelphia Story

1940 film by George Cukor

The Philadelphia Story is a 1940 film about a bride-to-be whose plans are complicated by the simultaneous arrival into her life of two cynical but romantic men: her ex-husband, and a journalist.

Directed by George Cukor. Written by Philip Barry (play), Donald Ogden Stewart and Waldo Salt.
Uncle Leo's bedtime story for you older tots! The things they do among the playful rich - Oh, boy! taglines

Dinah Lord

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  • Oh, I wish something would happen! Nothing ever possibly in the least ever happens here!
  • [watching the wedding, triumphant] I did it. I did it all!

Dialogue

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Tracy: If you just face the facts squarely as I did.
Margaret: We both might face the fact that neither of us have proved to be a very great success as a wife.
Tracy: We just picked the wrong first husbands, that's all.
Kidd: Your assignment will be Spy's most sensational achievement - Tracy Lord. Big game hunting in Africa, fox hunting in Pennsylvania. Married on impulse and divorced in a rage. And always unapproachable by the press. 'The Unapproachable Miss Lord.' 'The Philadelphia Story'...quote 'A Wedding Day Inside Mainline Society.'
Mike: Or: 'What the Kitchen Maid Saw Through the Keyhole.' unquote...quote 'No hunter of buckshot in the rear is Cagey Crafty Connor' unquote, close paragraph.
Liz: Close job, close bank account. But Mr. Kidd, how can you possibly get inside the Lord estate, let alone the house?
Mike: Now we're not gonna do it, Liz, dawgonnit, it's degrading. It's undignified.
Liz: And so is an empty stomach. How do we get in?
Dexter: Orange juice, certainly.
Tracy: Don't tell me you've forsaken your beloved whiskey and whiskeys.
Dexter: No, no, no, no. I've just changed their color, that's all. I'm going for the pale pastel shades now. They're more becoming to me. How about you, Mr. Connor? You drink, don't you? Alcohol, I mean.
Mike: Oh, a little.
Dexter: A little, 'little.' And you a writer? I thought all writers drank to excess and beat their wives. You know one time, I think I secretly wanted to be a writer.
Dexter: I never saw you looking better, Red. You're getting that fine, tawny look.
Tracy: Oh, we're going to talk about me, are we? Goody.
Dexter: It's astonishing what money can do for people, don't you agree, Mr. Connor? Not too much, you know - just more than enough. Now take Tracy for example. Never a blow that hasn't been softened for her. Never a blow that won't be softened. As a matter of fact, she's even changed her shape - she was a dumpy little thing at one time.
Tracy: Only as it happens, I'm not interested in myself, for the moment.
Dexter: Not interested in yourself! You're fascinated, Red. You're far and away your favorite person in the world.
Tracy: Dexter, in case you don't know it -
Dexter: Of course, Mr. Connor, she's a girl who's generous to a fault.
Tracy: To a fault, Mr. Connor.
Dexter: Except to other people's faults. For instance, she never had any understanding of my deep and gorgeous thirst.
Tracy: That was your problem.
Dexter: Granted. But you took on that problem with me when you took me, Red. You were no help-mate there. You were a scold.
Tracy: It was disgusting. It made you so unattractive.
Dexter: A weakness, sure, and strength is her religion, Mr. Connor. She finds human imperfection unforgiveable. And when I gradually discovered that my relationship to her was supposed to be not that of a loving husband and a good companion, but - [He turns away from her] Oh, never mind.
Tracy: Say it.
Dexter: But that of a kind of high priest to a virgin goddess, then my drinks grew deeper and more frequent, that's all. [Mike slides off his chair and leaves them.]
Tracy: I never considered you as that, nor myself.
Dexter: You did without knowing it. Oh, and the night that you got drunk on champagne and climbed out on the roof and stood there, NAKED, with your arms out to the moon, wailing like a banshee - [Dexter laughs at the thought.]
Tracy: I told you I never had the slightest recollection of doing any such thing.
Dexter: I know. You drew a blank. You wanted to. Mr. Connor, what would you... [He turns and notices Mike has gone] Oh.
Tracy: A nice story for spies, incidentally.
Dexter: Too bad we can't supply photographs of you on the roof.
Dexter: [about marrying George] How in the world could you even think of it?
Tracy: Because he is everything you're not. He's been poor. He's had to work and he's had to fight for everything. And I love him, as I never even began to love you.
Dexter: Maybe so, but I doubt it. I think he's just a swing from me. But it's too violent a swing. Kittredge is no great tower of strength, you know, Tracy. He's just a tower.
Tracy: You hardly know him.
Dexter: To hardly know him is to know him well. And perhaps it offends my vanity to have anyone who is even remotely my wife re-marry so obviously beneath her.
Tracy: How dare you! Any of you in this day and age use such an idiotic...
Dexter: I'm talking about the difference in mind and spirit...Kittredge is not for you.
Tracy: You bet he's for me. He's a great man and a good man. Already, he's of national importance.
Dexter: You sound like Spy Magazine talking. But whatever he is, toots, you'll have to stick. He'll give you no out as I did.
Tracy: I won't require one.
Dexter: I suppose you'd still be attractive to any man of spirit, though. There's something engaging about it, this goddess business. There's something more challenging to the male than the, uh, more obvious charms.
Tracy: Really?
Dexter: Really. We're very vain, you know - 'This citadel can and shall be taken, and I'm the boy to do it.'
Tracy: You seem quite contemptuous of me all of a sudden.
Dexter: No, Red, not of you, never of you. Red, you could be the finest woman on this earth. I'm contemptuous of something inside of you you either can't help, or make no attempt to; your so-called 'strength' - your prejudice against weakness - your blank intolerance.
Tracy: Is that all?
Dexter: That's the gist of it; because you'll never be a first-class human being or a first-class woman, until you've learned to have some regard for human frailty. It's a pity your own foot can't slip a little sometime - but your sense of inner divinity wouldn't allow that. This goddess must and shall remain intact. There are more of you than people realize - a special class of the American Female. The Married Maidens.
Tracy: So help me, Dexter, if you say another word, I'll...
Dexter: I'm through, Red. For the moment, I've had my say.
George: You know, we're gonna represent something, Tracy, you and I in our home, something straight, sound, and fine. Then perhaps your friend Mr. Haven will be somewhat less condescending.
Tracy: George, you, you don't really mind him, do you? I mean, the fact of him...I mean...that he ever was my lord and master. That we ever were...
George: I don't believe he ever was, Tracy, not really. I don't believe that anyone ever was - or ever will be. That's the wonderful thing about you, Tracy.
Tracy: What? How?
George: Well, you're like some marvelous, distant, well, queen, I guess. You're so cool and fine and - and always so much your own. There's a kind of beautiful purity about you, Tracy, like, like a statue...
Tracy: George -
George: Oh, it's grand, Tracy. It's what everybody feels about you. It's what I first worshiped you for from afar.
Tracy: George, listen -
George: First, now, and always! Only from a little nearer now, eh, darling!
Tracy: I-I don't want to be worshiped. I want to be loved!
George: Well, you're that too, Tracy. Oh, you're that all right.
Tracy: I mean really loved.
George: But that goes without saying, Tracy.
Tracy: No. No, now it's you who doesn't see what I mean.
Mike: The prettiest sight in this fine, pretty world is the privileged class enjoying its privileges.
Tracy: You're a snob, Connor.
Mike: No doubt, no doubt...Tracy. You can't marry that guy.
Tracy: George? I'm going to. Why, why not?
Mike: Well, I don't know. I thought I'd be for it at first, but you just don't seem to match up.
Tracy: Then the fault's with me.
Mike: Well, maybe so, but all the same now, you can't do it.
Tracy: No?
Mike: No.
Tracy: Come around about noon tomorrow. I mean today. Snob.
Mike: What do ya mean, snob?
Tracy: You're the worst kind there is. An intellectual snob. You made up your mind awfully young, it seems to me.
Mike: Well, thirty's about time to make up your mind. And I'm nothing of the sort, not Mr. Connor.
Tracy: The time to make up your mind about people - is never.
Tracy: [after Dexter has proposed] Dexter, are you sure?
Dexter: Not in the least. But I'll risk it. Will you?
Tracy: You bet! You didn't do it just to soften the blow?
Dexter: No.
Tracy: Nor to save my face?
Dexter: Oh, it's a nice little face.
Tracy: Oh Dexter, I'll be yar now, I promise to be yar.
Dexter: Be whatever you like, you're my redhead.
Tracy: How do I look?
Mr. Lord: Like a queen - like a goddess.
Tracy: And do you know how I feel?
Mr. Lord: How?
Tracy: Like a human. Like a human being.
Mr. Lord: Do you know how I feel?
Tracy: How?
Mr. Lord: Proud.

Taglines

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  • Uncle Leo's bedtime story for you older tots! The things they do among the playful rich - Oh, boy!
  • Broadway's howling year-run comedy hit of the snooty society beauty who slipped and fell - IN LOVE!

Cast

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