Macaulay Connor Quotes in The Philadelphia Story (1940)

Librarian: What is thee wish?

Macaulay Connor: I'm looking for some local b - what'd you say?

Librarian: What is thee wish?

Macaulay Connor: Um, local biography or history.

Librarian: If thee will consult with my colleague in there.

Macaulay Connor: Mm-hm. Dost thou have a washroom?

[the librarian points]

Macaulay Connor: Thank thee.

Margaret Lord: The course of true love...

Macaulay Connor: ...gathers no moss.

Macaulay Connor: Tracy.

Tracy Lord: What do you want?

Macaulay Connor: You're wonderful. There's a magnificence in you, Tracy.

Tracy Lord: Now I'm getting self-conscious. It's funny. I - Mike? Let's...

Macaulay Connor: Yeah?

Tracy Lord: I don't know - go up, I guess, it's late.

Macaulay Connor: A magnificence that comes out of your eyes, in your voice, in the way you stand there, in the way you walk. You're lit from within, Tracy. You've got fires banked down in you, hearth-fires and holocausts.

Tracy Lord: I don't seem to you made of bronze?

Macaulay Connor: No, you're made out of flesh and blood. That's the blank, unholy surprise of it. You're the golden girl, Tracy. Full of life and warmth and delight. What goes on? You've got tears in your eyes.

Tracy Lord: Shut up, shut up. Oh, Mike. Keep talking, keep talking. Talk, will you?

Macaulay Connor: You've got all the arrogance of your class, haven't you?

Tracy Lord: What have classes to do with it? What do they matter except for the people in them? George comes from the so-called lower class, Dexter, the upper. Well?

Macaulay Connor: Well...

Tracy Lord: Mac the night watchman is a prince among men, Uncle Willie is a... pincher. Upper and lower my eye. I'll take the lower, thanks.

Macaulay Connor: If you can't get a drawing room.

Tracy Lord: What does that mean?

Macaulay Connor: My mistake.

Tracy Lord: Decidedly. You're insulting!

Macaulay Connor: Sorry.

Tracy Lord: Oh, don't apologize!

Macaulay Connor: Well, who's apologizing?

Tracy Lord: I never knew such a man.

Macaulay Connor: You wouldn't be likely to, from where you sit!

Tracy Lord: Talk about arrogance.

Macaulay Connor: Tracy.

Tracy Lord: What do you want?

Macaulay Connor: [pause] You're wonderful.

Macaulay Connor: Doggone it, C.K. Dexter Haven. Either I'm gonna sock you or you're gonna sock me.

C. K. Dexter Haven: Shall we toss a coin?

Macaulay Connor: I'm testing the air. I like it but it doesn't like me.

Macaulay Connor: I would sell my grandmother for a drink - and you know how I love my grandmother.

Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: What's this room? I've forgotten my compass.

Macaulay Connor: I'd say, south-by-southwest parlor-by-living-room.

Macaulay Connor: This is the Bridal Suite. Would you send up a couple of caviar sandwiches and a bottle of beer?

Margaret Lord: What? Who is this?

Macaulay Connor: This is the Voice of Doom calling. Your days are numbered, to the seventh son of the seventh son.

Margaret Lord: Hello? Hello?

Tracy Lord: What's the matter?

Margaret Lord: One of the servants has been at the sherry again.

Tracy Lord: [Tracy and Mike have almost kissed. Both are very drunk] Has your mind taken hold again, dear professor?

Macaulay Connor: Good thing, don't you agree?

Tracy Lord: No, professor.

Macaulay Connor: [angrily] Alright, lay off that "professor" stuff! Now, do you hear me?

Tracy Lord: Yes, professor...

C. K. Dexter Haven: Orange juice, certainly.

Tracy Lord: Don't tell me you've forsaken your beloved whisky and whiskies.

C. K. Dexter Haven: No-no-no-no. I've just changed their colour, that's all. I'm going for the pale pastel shades now. They're more becoming of me. How about you, Mr. Connor? You drink, don't you - alcohol, I mean?

Macaulay Connor: Oh, a little.

C. K. Dexter Haven: [Amused] A little? And you a writer? Tsk, tsk, tsk. I thought all writers drank to excess and beat their wives. You know, at one time I think I secretly wanted to be a writer.

[He and Tracy exchange scornful looks]

Macaulay Connor: [drunk, to driver] Well, this is where Cinderella gets off, now you hurry back to the ball before you turn into a pumpkin and six white mice, goodbye.

Macaulay Connor: [drunk] You going my way miss?

Tracy Lord: [drunk] That's "Miss Goddess" to you

Macaulay Connor: Okay, Miss Goddess To Me.

C. K. Dexter Haven: I'm sorry, but I thought I better hit you before he did. He's in better shape than I am.

Macaulay Connor: Well you'll do!

Macaulay Connor: [calling outside his house] C.K. Dexter Haven! Oh, C.K. Dexter Haven!

C. K. Dexter Haven: [coming to the door in his pajamas] What's up?

Macaulay Connor: You are.

C. K. Dexter Haven: I only hope it's worth it. Come in.

Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: There's a cousin, Joanna, who's definitely crazy.

Macaulay Connor: Who told you that.

Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: Dinah.

Macaulay Connor: Well Dinah would know.

Macaulay Connor: Oh Tracy darling...

Tracy Lord: Mike...

Macaulay Connor: What can I say to you? Tell me darling.

Tracy Lord: Not anything - don't say anything. And especially not "darling."

Macaulay Connor: Champagne's funny stuff. I'm used to whiskey. Whiskey is a slap on the back, and champagne's heavy mist before my eyes.

Tracy Lord: These stories are beautiful. Why, Mike, they're almost poetry.

Macaulay Connor: Don't kid yourself, they are.

Macaulay Connor: [speaking of Tracy] What are her leading characteristics?

C. K. Dexter Haven: She has a horror of men who wear their hats in the house.

Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: Leading characteristics to be filled in later.

Macaulay Connor: I can fill them in right now: the rich, rapacious, American female. There's no other country where she exists.

Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: And would I change places with Tracy Samantha Lord for all her wealth and beauty? Oh boy just ask me.

Sidney Kidd: You really hate me, don't you Connor?

Macaulay Connor: Oh no!

[pause]

Macaulay Connor: I don't like you very much though.

Sidney Kidd: Anyway, presented for the first time, quote: A wedding day inside mainline society.

Macaulay Connor: Or what the kitchen maid saw through the keyhole. Unquote.

Macaulay Connor: It can't be anything like love, can it?

Tracy Lord: No, no, it can't be.

Macaulay Connor: Would it be inconvenient?

Tracy Lord: Terribly.

Tracy Lord: I never knew such a man.

Macaulay Connor: You're not likely to dear. Not from where you sit.

Macaulay Connor: Tell four footmen to call me in time for lunch will you?

Macaulay Connor: [telling off Sidney Kidd, his boss] Quote: No hunter of buckshot in the rear is cagey, crafty Connor. Un-quote. Close paragraph.

Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: Close job. Close bank account.

[Liz screams as Uncle Willie pinches her on the rear]

Macaulay Connor: Don't DO that!

Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: I... I feel exactly as though I'd been pinched.

Seth Lord: Don't you think you weren't.

Margaret Lord: Are you one of the musicians?

Macaulay Connor: No!

Margaret Lord: Oh of course, you're Junius's friend. Only you're not. Do you have any violin strings?

Macaulay Connor: [digs in his pocket] I have an aspirin. Will that work?

Margaret Lord: I don't think so! It's for a violin. Oh well, no matter!

Macaulay Connor: [to the butler] The Queen will have bread and honey at the usual time.

[Mike discovers the intercom in the Lords' house]

Macaulay Connor: Uh-oh, Liz, what did I tell you? Look, how do you like this - living room, sitting room, terrace, pool, stables.

Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: That's probably so they can talk to the horses without having them in the house.

Macaulay Connor: Look, who's doing the interviewing here?

Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: Do you think she caught on somehow?

Macaulay Connor: No, she was born like that, don't let her throw you.

Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: Do you want to take over?

Macaulay Connor: I want to go home!

Macaulay Connor: What's this? Is it my book?

C. K. Dexter Haven: Yes.

Macaulay Connor: C. K. Dexter Haven you have unsuspected depth!

C. K. Dexter Haven: Thanks, old chap.

Macaulay Connor: But have you read it?

C. K. Dexter Haven: When I was trying to stop drinking, I read anything.

Macaulay Connor: And did you stop drinking?

C. K. Dexter Haven: Yes. Your book didn't do it though.

Tracy Lord: I can't make you out at all now.

Macaulay Connor: I thought I was easy.

Tracy Lord: So did I. But you're not. You talk so big and tough and then you write like this. Which is which?

Macaulay Connor: Both. I guess.

Tracy Lord: No. No, I believe you put the toughness down to save your skin.

Macaulay Connor: You think so?

Tracy Lord: Yes. I know a little about that.

Macaulay Connor: You do?

Tracy Lord: Quite a lot.

Macaulay Connor: C.K. Dexter Haven, I would like to talk to you.

C. K. Dexter Haven: Well, let's go in the talking room.

Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: [referring to Dinah] What's this?

Macaulay Connor: Idiot, probably.

Macaulay Connor: [drunk] I bring you greetings and Cinderella's slipper, champagne. Champagne is a great leveleler... leveleler. It makes you my equal.

C. K. Dexter Haven: Not quite.

Macaulay Connor: Well, almost my equal.

Macaulay Connor: [after Tracy has declined his last-minute marriage proposal] But they're in there! They're waiting!

Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: Don't get too conventional all at once, will you? There'll be a reaction.

Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: I remember your honeymoon quite well. You and she on a little sail boat, the "True Love", wasn't it?

C. K. Dexter Haven: Yes it was. How did you know?

Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: I was the only photographer whose camera you didn't smash. You were terribly nice about it. You threw it in the ocean.

Macaulay Connor: Oh, one of those.

C. K. Dexter Haven: Yes I had the strange notion that our honeymoon was our own.

Macaulay Connor: [after learning that Dexter is Tracy's ex-husband and is going to help with introducing him and Liz] Holy mackerel. What goes on here?

Macaulay Connor: C.K. Dexter Haven! What a name tag!

Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: Macauly Connor is no homespun tag either, my pet.

Macaulay Connor: Yeah, well you just try calling him Macauly!

Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: I knew a plain Joe Smith once. Worst rat I ever met.

Macaulay Connor: The prettiest sight in this fine pretty world is the privileged class enjoying its privileges.

Tracy Lord: Hello you.

Macaulay Connor: Hello.

Tracy Lord: You look fine.

Macaulay Connor: I feel fine.

Macaulay Connor: I don't think you're being fair to me, Mr. Kidd.

Sidney Kidd: No?

Macaulay Connor: No. You're treating me like you treat all your other writers.

Tracy Lord: [Turns towards Liz] Maid of honour?

Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: Matron.

Macaulay Connor: [Looks at Liz, puzzled]

Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: Joe Smith, hardware department.