Tom Chambers Quotes in Design for Living (1933)

Max Plunkett: I've come here to speak to you man to man.

Tom Chambers: My favorite type of conversation.

Max Plunkett: I wish to broach a rather delicate subject.

Tom Chambers: Oh, now don't let's be delicate, Mr. Plunkett. Let's be crude and objectionable, both of us. One of the greatest handicaps of civilization, and I may say to progress, is that people speak with ribbons on their tongues. Delicacy, as the philosophers point out, is the banana peel under the feet of truth.

George Curtis: I haven't got a clean shirt to my name.

Tom Chambers: Why a clean shirt? What's up? A romance?

George Curtis: I'm not talking pajamas, just a clean shirt.

Tom Chambers: It's amazing how a few insults can bring people together in three hours.

Gilda Farrell: It was certainly good to hear all the names you called me. I haven't heard them since I left father and mother.

Tom Chambers: George betrayed me for you. Without wishing to flatter you, I understood that. I can still understand it. But you betrayed me for George. An incredible choice!

Tom Chambers: That's one way of meeting the situation. Shipping clerk comes home, finds missus with boarder. He breaks dishes. It's pure burlesque. Then there's another way. Intelligent artist returns unexpectedly, finds treacherous friends, both discuss the pros and cons of the situation in grownup dialogue. High-class comedy, enjoyed by everybody.

George Curtis: There's a third way. I'll kick your teeth out and tear your head off and beat some decency into you!

Tom Chambers: Cheap melodrama. Very dull.

Tom Chambers: May I refer you to a letter, sent to you from London, in a similar crisis?

George Curtis: You're a very high class...

Tom Chambers: I could have enclosed some smallpox germs, easily.

George Curtis: But you didn't. Very considerate. Let's drink to that...

[proposing a toast]

George Curtis: To smallpox germs.

Tom Chambers: In Latin, variola caca.