Funny movie quotes from Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, starring Cary Grant , Myrna Loy , Melvyn Douglas
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): 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 (Myrna Loy): Would you prefer it the other way around?
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): 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!
Joan Blandings (Sharyn Moffett): Miss Stellwagon says advertising makes people who can’t afford it, buy things they don’t want, with money they haven’t got.
Gussie (Louise Beavers): If you ain’t eatin’ Wham, you ain’t eatin’ ham.
Muriel Blandings (Myrna Loy): I refuse to endanger the lives of my children in a house with less than four bathrooms.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): For thirteen hundred dollars they can live in a house with three bathrooms and rough it.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): 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 (Cary Grant): Well, has he got mine?
Simms: No, he seems to have the windows that belong to a Mr. Blandworth in Peekskill.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): 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 (Cary Grant): 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 (Myrna Loy): Well, maybe if you start earlier, you can leave the office earlier.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): To get home earlier, to get to bed earlier, to get up earlier, I suppose.
Bill Cole (Melvyn Douglas): 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.
Bill Cole (Melvyn Douglas): You’ve been taken to the cleaners, and you don’t even know your pants are off.
Betsy Blandings (Connie Marshall): 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 (Cary Grant): I wasn’t aware of the fact that our society *was* disintegrating.
Betsy Blandings (Connie Marshall): 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 (Cary Grant): 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 (Myrna Loy): Jim, you really must take more interest in your children’s education.
Joan Blandings (Sharyn Moffett): Can’t squeeze blood from a turnip.
Muriel Blandings (Myrna Loy): Darling, I’m going out to the place this afternoon. Bill’s driving me up to see about the landscaping.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): That’ll be nice… What do you mean Bill’s driving you?
Muriel Blandings (Myrna Loy): Why do you always say ‘what do you mean’ when you know perfectly well what I mean and you mean?
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): I mean the moment I turn my back, Bill Cole’s driving you someplace or something.
Muriel Blandings (Myrna Loy): He’s only being helpful.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): I thought he was a lawyer. Why isn’t he out suing somebody?
Muriel Blandings (Myrna Loy): Mr. Zucca explained he has to use dynamite to blast to get rid of the rock.
Mr. Zucca (Tito Vuolo): That’s no rock. That’s a ledge.
Bill Cole (Melvyn Douglas): What Mr. Blandings means is, what precisely is a ledge?
Mr. Zucca (Tito Vuolo): A ledge is like a big stone. Only it’s bigger.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): Like a boulder!
Mr. Zucca (Tito Vuolo): No, like a ledge.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): [reading eviction notice] Hmm! Well, we’ll just see about that!
Muriel Blandings (Myrna Loy): What is it? What’s the matter, Jim?
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): 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 (Myrna Loy): Well?
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): We’re moving in thirty days.
Bill Cole (Melvyn Douglas): [narrating] So came thirty days, and they moved. That is, we moved.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): 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.
Joan Blandings (Sharyn Moffett): Oh look. Mother’s diary. It’s slightly torrid.
Muriel Blandings (Myrna Loy): Why don’t you use an electric razor?
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): Can’t get used to them.
Muriel Blandings (Myrna Loy): Silly. Bill Cole’s been using one for years.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): He hasn’t got my beard.
Muriel Blandings (Myrna Loy): Bill’s beard is just as coarse and tough…
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): I am not interested in discussing the grain and texture of Bill Cole’s hair follicles before I’ve had my breakfast.
Muriel Blandings (Myrna Loy): You remember Bunny Funkhouser, dear, that clever young interior decorator that we met at the Collins’ cocktail party.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): You mean that young man with the open-toed sandals? What about him?
Muriel Blandings (Myrna Loy): 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 (Cary Grant): How much?
Muriel Blandings (Myrna Loy): What’s the point in asking how much until you know what you’re going to get?
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): I’ve seen Bunny Funkhouser. I know what I’m going to get.
Muriel Blandings (Myrna Loy): The house and the lilac bush at the corner are just the same age, Bill. If a lilac bush can live and be so old, so can a house. It just needs someone to love it, that’s all.
Bill Cole (Melvyn Douglas): It’s a good thing there are two of you. One to love it and one to hold it up.
Bill Cole (Melvyn Douglas): Take it easy, Mac. Take it easy! The Republicans ain’t in yet, ya know!
Bill Cole (Melvyn Douglas): The next time you’re going to do anything or say anything or buy anything, think it over very carefully. When you’re sure you’re right, forget the whole thing.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): It just so happened that General… uh… Gates stopped right there at that very house to water his horses.
Bill Cole (Melvyn Douglas): I don’t care if General Grant dropped in for a scotch and soda. You’re still getting rooked.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): That was a different war!
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 (Cary Grant): The, uh, second floor lallies?
Carpenter Foreman: Second floor lintels between the lallies.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): Oh, the lintels between the lallies?
Carpenter Foreman: Yeah, from the blueprints you can’t tell. You want they should be rabbeted?
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): 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 (Cary Grant): It sounded less expensive to say, No!
Bill Cole (Melvyn Douglas): I kind of felt that he kind of felt that if I kind of told you that you’d know that he knew that you knew… or something.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): Nothing, Mary. Just a private joke between me and whoever’s going to be my analyst.
Bill Cole (Melvyn Douglas): Congress oughta pass a law. When a man buys a house in Lansdale County, there’s a prize. He gets 10 percent off if he can find it.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): Now, just a minute. I’m entitled to know what I did. This is America. A man is guilty until proven innocent.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): Water, Mr. Tesander.
Tesander: Yep.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): At six feet.
Tesander: Yep.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): And just over there, you had to go down 227 feet to hit the same water.
Tesander: Yep.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): 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 (Melvyn Douglas): Yep.
Muriel Blandings (Myrna Loy): Look, here’s how he sees our living room. Isn’t it charming?
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): What’s that? A shoe-shine stand?
Muriel Blandings (Myrna Loy): 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 (Cary Grant): And where do I keep my powdered wig?
Smith (Ian Wolfe): You’re buying a piece of American history.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): You don’t say. How’s that?
Smith (Ian Wolfe): Why, first year she was built, General Gates stopped right here to water his horses.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): Old General Gates, huh? Civil War.
Smith (Ian Wolfe): Huh? Revolutionary War.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): Oh, that General Gates.
Gussie (Louise Beavers): The children like Wham.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): Well, there must be other things that we…
Gussie (Louise Beavers): Mrs. Blandings likes it, too.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): Just the same…
Gussie (Louise Beavers): And I consider it very tasty!
Muriel Blandings (Myrna Loy): Jim, I wish you wouldn’t discuss money in front of the children.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): Why not? They spend enough of it.
Joan Blandings (Sharyn Moffett): Miss Stellwagon says the problems of the parents should be the problems of the children.
Muriel Blandings (Myrna Loy): Well, you keep that in mind dear. It’ll help prepare you for motherhood.
Muriel Blandings (Myrna Loy): Maybe you ought to go down and lock the doors.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): What for? The windows are all open anyway.
Bill Cole (Melvyn Douglas): Maybe there are some things you should buy with your heart and not with your head.
Workman: I don’t get this guy Blandings at all. If you gotta build on the windiest hill in Connecticut, why does he have to pick the windiest side of the hill?
Workman: You know these New York millionaires. Easy come, easy go!
Bill Cole (Melvyn Douglas): I kind of hate to leave this little place. Just four walls and a couple of nail kegs, but to me, it’ll always be home.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): Why did you marry me?
Muriel Blandings (Myrna Loy): 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.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): So you hit a spring, a bubbling spring… right here, in our cellar.
Joan Blandings (Sharyn Moffett): Miss Stellwagon says advertising is a basically parasitic profession.
Muriel Blandings (Myrna Loy): This is our home. Betsy was practically born in this apartment.
Jim Blandings (Cary Grant): That does not make it a national shrine.