Mary Clancy Quotes in The Trouble with Angels (1966)

Mary Clancy: I've got the most scathingly brilliant idea!

Rachel Devery: Couldn't we have uniforms, too, Reverend Mother?

Mother Superior: Most certainly not. The band will perform in their gym suits.

Rachel Devery: Our gym suits?

Mother Superior: Yes.

Mary Clancy: But, they're awful! I mean, it's not as if they were like Sacred Heart's. At Sacred Heart they wear short-shorts for gym.

Mother Superior: They're French.

[last lines]

Mary Clancy: Who knows, Reverend Mother, Maybe someday Rachel will come back and join the order.

Mother Superior: If she does, I quit!

[upon their first arrival at St. Francis]

Mary Clancy: Ohhh! It's positively medieval!

Rachel Devery: All that's missing is the dragon!

Mary Clancy: Hi, Marvel-Ann!

Marvel-Ann Clancy: Drop dead!

Rachel Devery: Who's that?

Mary Clancy: Marvel-Ann. My uncle George is her father. He's been sending her to the nuns since she was six. I told her she was illegitimate, so she hates me.

Rachel Devery: Is she?

Mary Clancy: Lord, no! Uncle George is very careful about that kind of thing.

Mary Clancy: Rache! I need something to stuff in the window. The snow's coming in.

[Rachel gives Mary a magazine]

Mary Clancy: I can't stuff His Holiness in the window!

Rachel Devery: Well, I'm not going to give you Burt Lancaster!

Exasperated Lady on Train: Really! A child your age smoking!

Mary Clancy: I'm not a child, madam; I'm a midget with bad habits.

Mother Superior: Evidently, Sister Ursula's German accent amuses you.

Mary Clancy: I didn't know she was German, Reverend Mother.

Mother Superior: Then surely you didn't know that during the war, Sister Ursula kept 34 Jewish children hidden for more than two years in the cellar of a destroyed convent outside of Munich. And that when this was finally discovered she was imprisoned. She suffered untold indignities, and she... she...

[choking up, then turning away]

Mary Clancy: Are we dismissed, Reverend Mother?

Mother Superior: [quietly] Yes.

Mary Clancy: [looking at the dress] Oh! It looks beautiful!

Mother Superior: [as she is taking the dress off of the dummy] It is nice, isn't it? I used to do a great deal a great deal of sewing when I was a girl. I'd always blessed my mother for insisting that I learn to how to handle a needle. When my parents died, I was sixteen then. My uncle, who'd lived in Paris...

Mary Clancy: Paris?

Mother Superior: Paris was my mother's home before she'd immigrated to Quebec and married my father. I'd lost my parents within three months of each other. The flu epidemic. Well, I went to live in Paris. My uncle arranged for my apprenticeship with a well known couterier. Of course, I was only a seamstress, but I had visions of creating my own designs and the house of Madeline Rousch challenging the great Channel. That was my name, Madeline Rousch. I remember standing behind the curtains with the fitters when the collections were shown. The buyers came from all over the world. Many times as I watched the models display the gowns, I'd think "Now I would have done that one differently. Used a different fabric. Something that had more movement, more mystery." Aw, I know it is vanity, of course but I think I could have made a success of it.

Mary Clancy: But how could you give it up?

Mother Superior: I found something better.

Rachel Devery: You going to St. Francis, too?

Mary Clancy: [indicating her school uniform] Would I be caught dead in this Dior creation otherwise?

Rachel Devery: That's a fact.

Mary Clancy: What's your name?

Rachel Devery: Rachel Devery.

Mary Clancy: No it's not!

Rachel Devery: Huh?

Mary Clancy: It's Fleur de Lis. You're half French.

Rachel Devery: How about that! What's your name?

Mary Clancy: Kim Novak?

Rachel Devery: I like it.

Mary Clancy: So do I. But I'm stuck with "Mary Clancy"!

Rachel Devery: I think I'm gonna kill myself!

Mary Clancy: Catholics aren't allowed to.