When Ladies Meet (1933)

Ann Harding: Clare Woodruf

Photos 

Quotes 

• Clare : You are a darling.

  Bridget Drake : And here's the nightie and the kimono.

  Clare : Of course, I shan't be able to sleep a wink for admiring them.

  Mary Howard : Bridgie's things are so alluring, they're indecent!

  Bridget Drake : Well, why not? I believe in keeping up your standards - at night.

• Bridget Drake : Good night, Clara.

  Clare : Good night.

  Bridget Drake : I'm awfully glad you're here. You know, I like you. I like you because most women who know anything always treat me as though I didn't. And you don't.

• Jimmie : Where do you sleep, Walt?

  Walter : Down at the end of the hall.

  Jimmie : Oh.

  Mary Howard : And that's my room in there. That's where I sleep. And here I am.

  Clare : And that's where I sleep. In case you want to know.

  Jimmie : I certainly do. I was in a house once that caught fire in the middle of the night, and people came out of the strangest places.

• Mary Howard : Can't a man fall as deeply and honestly in love as a woman?

  Clare : Of course! And if he does honestly love this other woman and if the wife still loves him, I think that's the most tragic thing in the world for all three of them.

• Mary Howard : You're so interesting and so contradictory.

  Clare : Oh, why?

  Mary Howard : Oh, you're so full of everything worthwhile. You simply vibrate with it.

  Clare : Well, my vibrations have been just a little on the subdued side of late. You and Jimmie have keyed them up some.

  Mary Howard : Jimmie certainly is good at keying people up.

• Mary Howard : You know, I'd like awfully to know what you'd think of my book.

  Clare : I want very much to read it.

  Mary Howard : Two men have told me two different things, but I care a lot more about what women think. That is, my own kind of women.

  Clare : Oh, yes. Socialize our writing. Women can't fool women - about women.

• Mary Howard : You have the best looking feet. Thoroughbred.

  Clare : Thank you. I'm really grateful! I haven't heard that about my feet for a long time.

• Clare : Surely you must know that even a - plain woman resents being cast aside.

• Mary Howard : Well, now, in my book, the girl is perfectly straight, and she doesn't want to marry him.

  Clare : Why?

  Mary Howard : He's married already.

  Clare : Can't he get a divorce?

  Mary Howard : She doesn't want him to.

  Clare : Oh, the wife doesn't?

  Mary Howard : Oh, no. No, the one he's in love with. She wants to be sure she loves him enough to marry him. She wants to be sure he isn't making another mistake before she lets him give up the wife. So, she lives with him first. That's perfectly natural and believable, isn't it?

  Clare : Oh, if she loves him terrifically, certainly. But...

  Mary Howard : Don't you think what she does is right? Do you think it's moral or immoral?

  Clare : If she honestly believes its right, its perfectly moral - for her. But...

  Mary Howard : Go on.

  Clare : Well, the hard thing for me to believe is that she'd believe this man.

  Mary Howard : Good heavens, why? A woman knows when a man's in love.

  Clare : Perhaps, I suppose any married woman would think that this other woman ought to know enough not to believe a married man if he's making love to her.

• Clare : This is more fun than I've had in a blue moon!

• Clare : Oh, this is the funniest thing that ever happened to me. Why me? Why didn't you pick some beautiful, sweet young thing that she'd be jealous of?

  Jimmie : Oh, she'd know I wouldn't fall for anything like that. I - oh, I mean, that you're the kind that she would be jealous of.

  Clare : That's better.

• Clare : Oh, have you my hanky, Jimmie Dimmie?

• Bridget Drake : I'll just get you a nightie and toothbrush and things.

  Clare : Oh, I am being a lot of trouble.

  Bridget Drake : Not at all. I'm tickled to death to have someone to use one of them. I've had them on hand for years, and nobody ever needs them.

• Clare : Men are so proper and conventional about their own good women, aren't they.

  Mary Howard : Yes.

  Clare : So much more so than the women themselves.

• Mary Howard : Oh, I adore Bridgie. She's the most intelligent fool I've ever known.

  Clare : Well, it's refreshing to run into somebody who doesn't think they know everything.

• Mary Howard : Do you think most men think someone else wants them?

  Clare : Of course, and, um, somebody usually does.

• Clare : You still think the wife should have the intelligence to give him up?

  Mary Howard : Is that what you're going to do?

  Clare : Is that what you expect me to do?

  Mary Howard : Well, it isn't just as I thought it was going to be. I thought you were different somehow. I don't know why, but I did.

  Clare : Surely, you must know that even a plain woman resents being cast aside.

• Rogers : Just a minute, Clare. Are you a bit hysterical?

  Clare : Not a bit. You've been worried about this book of Mary's. And you've been giving her a lot of augments, as to how these two women could meet and talk together. Well, here's your answer, Rog. She's right. I'm going to give you up. I'm going to give you my blessing. And that's that.

• Clare : It's a Godsend I came, Rogers.

  Rogers : I just found out how you got here.

  Clare : Oh, no you didn't. It's straight from heaven. Don't blame Jimmie.

• Mary Howard : But what if he did?

  Clare : Love somebody else?

  Mary Howard : Yes. And she came to you honestly and told you how much she loved him, what would you do?

  Clare : I'd loathe her with a deadly hate that would shrivel her up. I'd call her a vile, brazen... but I don't think she'd come.

• Clare : I'd say, of course I can understand his loving you. But are you prepared to stand up to the job of loving him? Most of the things you find so irresistible in him are very hard to live with. You've got to love him so abjectly that you're glad to play second fiddle just to keep the music going for him.

  Mary Howard : But don't you think that love makes it easy?

  Clare : No, I don't. I think it makes everything very difficult.

• Clare : You can't hope to hold him with just yourself. I don't care how beautiful or clever or wonderful you are. He has to have something in him that will make him stick. Nothing else can pull a man and a woman through the ghastly job of living together.

• Clare : But there's something so brutal in the way you've treated this girl. She wasn't playing any cheap game with you, Rogers - as some of the others were. And you're not worth a minute of one anxious hour that either one of us has given you. You'll never cost me another one. Never.

• Clare : This has been a lot of fun. A real adventure.

  Mary Howard : I love unexpected things, don't you?

• Mary Howard : Will you have a cigarette?

  Clare : I'd love one. Oh! This does feel so good.

• Mary Howard : Oh, what a pity Jimmie's meddling should slam us in the face like this.

  Clare : Oh, no, no... No! It's providential. It had to come. I'm quite all right now.

• Clare : Oh, but those two women could never talk to each other. I mean, I, I couldn't. No wife could.