Jim Blandings Quotes in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)

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?

Muriel Blandings: I refuse to endanger the lives of my children in a house with less than four bathrooms.

Jim Blandings: For thirteen hundred dollars they can live in a house with three bathrooms and rough it.

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.

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: 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!

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 Blandings: Can't squeeze blood from a turnip.

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: 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.

Jim Blandings: [reading eviction notice] Hmm! Well, we'll just see about that!

Muriel Blandings: What is it? What's the matter, Jim?

Jim Blandings: Mr. William Cole, please. Hello, Bill. They can't get away with this! I know my rights as a citizen. Why, this notice from the owner of this building. He wants our apartment. He's ordering us to move in thirty days. Well, that's ridiculous! How can I move into a house that isn't even finished? There are no windows, no plaster, no paint. Now you listen to me: I have no intention of moving in thirty days. This is not legal! I'm going to fight this thing and I don't care if it takes every penny I've got! Yeah. Yeah. Yeah!

Muriel Blandings: Well?

Jim Blandings: We're moving in thirty days.

Bill Cole: [narrating] So came thirty days, and they moved. That is, we moved.

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.

Jim Blandings: Nothing, Mary. Just a private joke between me and whoever my analyst is going to be.

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.

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.

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.

Carpenter Foreman: On them second floor lintels between the lally columns, do you want we should rabbet them or not?

[Long pause as Jim and Muriel look at him with puzzled frowns on their faces]

Jim Blandings: The, uh, second floor lallies?

Carpenter Foreman: Second floor lintels between the lallies.

Jim Blandings: Oh, the lintels between the lallies?

Carpenter Foreman: Yeah, from the blueprints you can't tell. You want they should be rabbeted?

Jim Blandings: No, no. I guess not.

Carpenter Foreman: Okay. You're the doctor.

[He calls out to his workers]

Carpenter Foreman: Hey fellas. If you got any of them rabbeted lintels set, rip 'em out.

[Sound of nails being pried out, and scene of pieces of wood dropping onto the floor around Jim and Muriel]

Jim Blandings: It sounded less expensive to say, No!

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?

Jim Blandings: So you hit a spring, a bubbling spring... right here, in our cellar.

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!

Jim Blandings: I am not interested in discussing the grain and texture of Bill Cole's hair follicles before I've had my breakfast.

Muriel Blandings: Jim, I wish you wouldn't discuss money in front of the children.

Jim Blandings: Why not? They spend enough of it.

Jim Blandings: Nothing, Mary. Just a private joke between me and whoever's going to be my analyst.

Muriel Blandings: This is our home. Betsy was practically born in this apartment.

Jim Blandings: That does not make it a national shrine.

Jim Blandings: Now, just a minute. I'm entitled to know what I did. This is America. A man is guilty until proven innocent.

Jim Blandings: I thought he was a lawyer. Why isn't he out suing somebody?

Jim Blandings: Why did you marry me?

Muriel Blandings: I'm beginning to wonder. Maye it was those big wow eyes of yours, or that ridiculous hole in your chin. Maybe I knew you were going to bring me to this $38,000 icebox with a dried up trout stream and no windows. Maybe I happened to fall in love with you, but for goodness sake, don't ask me why.

Muriel Blandings: Maybe you ought to go down and lock the doors.

Jim Blandings: What for? The windows are all open anyway.

Jim Blandings: Water, Mr. Tesander.

Tesander: Yep.

Jim Blandings: At six feet.

Tesander: Yep.

Jim Blandings: And just over there, you had to go down 227 feet to hit the same water.

Tesander: Yep.

Jim Blandings: Now, how do you account for that, Mr. Tesander?

Tesander: Well, the way it appears to me, Mr. Blandings... over here the water is down around six feet. And over there it's down around 227 feet.

[Bill Cole repeats the last line in unison with Tesander who looks over his should at Cole]

Bill Cole: Yep.