Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison Quotes in The Americanization of Emily (1964)

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: You American-haters bore me to tears, Ms. Barham. I've dealt with Europeans all my life. I know all about us parvenus from the States who come over here and race around your old cathedral towns with our cameras and Coca-Cola bottles... Brawl in your pubs, paw at your women, and act like we own the world. We overtip, we talk too loud, we think we can buy anything with a Hershey bar. I've had Germans and Italians tell me how politically ingenuous we are, and perhaps so. But we haven't managed a Hitler or a Mussolini yet. I've had Frenchmen call me a savage because I only took half an hour for lunch. Hell, Ms. Barham, the only reason the French take two hours for lunch is because the service in their restaurants is lousy. The most tedious lot are you British. We crass Americans didn't introduce war into your little island. This war, Ms. Barham to which we Americans are so insensitive, is the result of 2,000 years of European greed, barbarism, superstition, and stupidity. Don't blame it on our Coca-Cola bottles. Europe was a going brothel long before we came to town.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: War isn't hell at all. It's man at his best; the highest morality he's capable of. It's not war that's insane, you see. It's the morality of it. It's not greed or ambition that makes war: it's goodness. Wars are always fought for the best of reasons: for liberation or manifest destiny. Always against tyranny and always in the interest of humanity. So far this war, we've managed to butcher some ten million humans in the interest of humanity. Next war it seems we'll have to destroy all of man in order to preserve his damn dignity. It's not war that's unnatural to us, it's virtue. As long as valor remains a virtue, we shall have soldiers. So, I preach cowardice. Through cowardice, we shall all be saved.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: I don't want to know what's good, or bad, or true. I let God worry about the truth. I just want to know the momentary fact about things. Life isn't good, or bad, or true. It's merely factual, it's sensual, it's alive. My idea of living sensual facts are you, a home, a country, a world, a universe. In that order. I want to know what I am, not what I should be.

Emily Barham: I believe in honor, service, courage, and fair play, and cricket, and all the other symbols of British character. Which have only civilized half the world!

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: You British plundered half the world for your own profit, let's not pass it off as the age of enlightenment.

Emily Barham: Well, where have you been? We expected you back a week ago yesterday.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: Oh, I'm sorry. I had to go to France for a few days. It's out of season this time of year.

Emily Barham: No one worth knowing was there, I'm sure.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: A very rough element going to France these days.

Emily Barham: Then why do it?

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: Because it's the right thing to do.

Emily Barham: I can't believe it. Is this the Charlie Madison who once said "God save us from all the people who do the right thing, it's the rest of us who get our backs broken"?

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: I don't trust people who make bitter reflections about war, Mrs. Barham. It's always the general with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a hell it is. It's always the war widows who lead the Memorial Day parades.

Emily Barham: That was unkind, Charlie, and very rude.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: We shall never end wars, Mrs. Barham, by blaming it on the ministers and generals, or warmongering imperialists, or all the other banal bogeys. It's the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers. The rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields. We wear our widow's weeds like nuns, Mrs. Barham, and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices.

Emily Barham: You brought me some chocolates.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: Two boxes of Hershey's.

Emily Barham: Well, that's very American of you, Charlie. You just had to bring along some small token of opulence. Well, I don't want them. You Yanks can't even show affection without buying something.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: Well don't get into a state over it. I thought you liked chocolates.

Emily Barham: I do, but my country's at war and we're doing without chocolates for a while. And I don't want oranges or eggs or soap flakes, either. Don't show me how profitable it will be to fall in love with you, Charlie. Don't Americanize me.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: I'm not sentimental about war. I see nothing noble in widows.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: Emily, I want the world to know what a fraud war is.

Emily Barham: But war isn't a fraud, Charlie, it's very real. At least that's what you always tried to tell me, isn't it? That we shall never get rid of war by pretending it's unreal? It's the virtue of war that's the fraud, not war itself. It's the valor and the self-sacrifice and the goodness of war that needs the exposing. And here you are being brave and self-sacrificing, positively clanking with moral fervor, perpetuating the very things you detest merely to do "the right thing". Honestly, Charlie, your conversion to morality is really quite funny. All this time I've been terrified of becoming Americanized, and you, you silly ass, have turned into a bloody Englishman.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: [to Emily] Lay off, Mrs. Miniver. If you don't like our Hershey bars don't take them. Pick yourself a frock or get out. It's not my job to listen to your sentimental contempt.

Emily Barham: You lack principles, Charlie. Isn't there anything you would die for?

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: Sure. I'd die for you, if it ever came to that.

Emily Barham: I really believe you would.

[kiss]

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: There's lots of things I'd die for, Emily; my home, my family, my country. But that's love, not principle.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: Easy, tiger, that's a tailored shirt.

Emily Barham: Oh, shut up and let me kiss you.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: [while horizontal with Emily] I'm not your type, you know.

Emily Barham: Like hell, you're not!

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: I only thought you fancied heroes. I'm yellow, honey, clear through.

Emily Barham: That's your most attractive quality. Oh,I've had it with heroes! Every man I've loved has died in this war. You'll never get caught in the shooting - that's one thing I;m sure of. You can't imagine how attractive that makes you to me.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: [to an overenthusiastic 'Bus' Cummings] Will you quit giving me these comradely pokes?

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: No one gets moral unless they're trying to get something or get out of something.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: [to Emily] Well, you're a good woman. You've done the morally right thing. God save us all from people who do the morally right thing. It's always the rest of us who get broken in half.

Adm. William Jessup: It seems I cracked up, Charlie.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: That's the price a sane man makes, sir.

[first lines]

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: Hi, Harry. It'll only be a few moments, sir. Put that hand luggage in the automobile. Paul? Paul!

Chief Petty Officer Paul Adams: Yeah.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: Put the footlocker in the jeep. Everything else goes in the two-and-a-half. Unloading shouldn't take long, so you won't be more than a few minutes behind us. I'll see you back at the hotel. Harry. Is everything set at the hotel?

[Slaps driver on butt]

Female driver, unidentified: Hiya, Charlie.

[last lines]

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: And what do you get out of it?

Emily Barham: I'll settle for a Hershey bar.

[kiss]

Petty Officer Enright: Hey Bus, there's - there's a million of 'em there. There's correspondents all over the place. Hi Charlie.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: All right, fink, how do you want me to play it? Modest and self-effacing?

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: You know, I never realized what a sensual satisfaction grieving is for women.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: You're forever falling for men on their last nights on furlough. That's about the limit of your commitments, one night, a day, a month. You prefer lovers to husbands, hotels to homes. You'd rather grieve than live.

Emily Barham: You're not only cowardly and selfish; you're remarkably cruel as well.

Old Sailor: Oh, well now, I'll tell you one thing. You gotta put film in this camera.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: Are you sure of that?

Old Sailor: Well for the love of Mike - I mean - What's the matter with you? If you're gonna make a movie you gotta put film in the camera. Even I know that.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: No, no no. No. We're gonna make this movie without film. This movie, sailor, cannot be made, has no reason for being made, and none of us know how to make a movie anyway. So what's the sense in using film?

Old Sailor: Makes sense!

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: I want you to remember that the last time you saw me, I was unregenerately eating a Hershey bar.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: [after explaining the movie plan] What do you think of that.

Old Sailor: Commander, I think you're out of your everloving mind.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: You can say that again.

Old Sailor: Hey, Commander.

[Charlie grunts]

Old Sailor: You see that little kid on the floor?

[Charlie grunts]

Old Sailor: Well him and me have been stoned for two days! We started out with three bottles of vanilla extract. Then we got in with some submarine fellas and we finished off a number 10 can of topedo alcohol. You gotta be pretty stoned after that, right?

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: I would think so.

Old Sailor: Well, Commander, we ain't that stoned. We're not that stoned if we're gonna go out onto that beach and take pictures of the dead bodies floating in with no film in the camera!

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: Well then, what'd ya say we don't make this movie? Huh!

Old Sailor: Hey, that's swell!