Lady with Red Hair (1940)

Miriam Hopkins: Caroline Carter aka Mrs. Leslie Carter

Photos 

Quotes 

• Mrs. Leslie Carter : Why must they make some harmless weekend seem like a vulgar, obscene escapade? What kind of minds have these women got? Oh, whatever I've done, I've done to myself! Not the baby!

• Mrs. Leslie Carter : I'm going to be an actress.

  Mrs. Dudley : Oh, now you start that again! You don't know what you're talking about. It takes years of training to become a successful actress.

  Mrs. Leslie Carter : I can walk and talk and shout as well as any other!

• Mrs. Leslie Carter : Actors aren't supposed to be human beings, are they? They're strange animals always on exhibition.

  David Belasco : Caroline!

  Mrs. Leslie Carter : Why people love to admire them as they would a good bit of horseflesh, or a brilliant peacock spreading its feathers.

• Mrs. Brooks : Your Honor, must I answer?

  Divorce Judge : Yes.

  Mrs. Brooks : Well, if I must - she was smoking a cigarette.

  Divorce Judge : Is that all she was doing?

  Mrs. Brooks : For the moment, yes. A little while later she rouged her lips right out in public.

  Mrs. Leslie Carter : This is absurd!

  Defense Assistant : Please be quiet Mrs. Carter.

  Mrs. Leslie Carter : They make smoking a cigarette sound as if...

  Defense Attorney Graham : Please, please Mrs. Carter you must control yourself.

• Mrs. Leslie Carter : What a nice room!

  Mrs. 'Ma' Frazier : Best room in the house. Lots of fine actors and actresses have slept here. Don't misunderstand me. I run a very respectable house. I don't stand for any monkey business and don't forget it.

• Mrs. Leslie Carter : I should be best in comedy; but, that remains with you. You see, Mr. Fairchild's sufficiently interested to finance the whole arrangement.

  David Belasco : Has he seen you act?

  Mrs. Leslie Carter : Oh, I never have! But, I have the one great essential.

  David Belasco : Genius.

  Mrs. Leslie Carter : Determination!

• David Belasco : Stop it! Stop it! You're just a clumsy clothes horse with a million elbows.

  Mrs. Leslie Carter : What's wrong with my elbows?

  David Belasco : Everything! You act with them, think with them, talk with them. Pretty soon you'll be sticking them in the eyes of the audience.

• David Belasco : Why can't you relax?

  Mrs. Leslie Carter : Well, how can anyone relax with you?

  David Belasco : You could relax in an earthquake if you'd only do what I tell you.

• David Belasco : Where are you going?

  Mrs. Leslie Carter : To get married and then to Scranton with my husband.

  David Belasco : Married? Husband? Scranton? Scranton! I might have expected this. Good-bye!

• David Belasco : Did you imagine, my dear child, that you are pleading with your lover?

  Mrs. Leslie Carter : I was trying to.

  David Belasco : I beg to contradict you, Mrs. Carter. You were trying to render she is only a bird in a gilded cage and you are doing that atrociously!

  Mrs. Leslie Carter : Oh, I don't know what I'm doing now!

  David Belasco : Well, so long as we're honest about it, there's hope!

• London Party Guest : What do you think?

  Mrs. Leslie Carter : Oh, I think champagne goes flat almost as quickly as most conversations.

• Mrs. Leslie Carter : May I have a cigarette please?

  Wealthy London Host : I beg your pardon?

  Mrs. Leslie Carter : Oh, don't worry. I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to smoke it.

• Mrs. Leslie Carter : Tell me about yourself.

  Lou Payne : Oh, I just plogged along. Now I'm a ham leading man in a cheap stock company.

• David Belasco : When I found you on my doorstep like a drowned puppy in the rain, what landed you there? Genius? Or, was it cheap emotionalism? Unbridled temper? And the assurance of a foolish young woman. I took these very qualities that had made your life a failure. I gave them discipline, balance, purpose, and turned them into an art - until the whole world could see the *genius* that I had built up in you. And now you're flaunting it in my face.

  Mrs. Leslie Carter : So, I was just part of your puppet show, was I? And you pulled the strings.

  David Belasco : Yes. I pulled the strings.

• Mrs. Leslie Carter : [on stage, as "Mrs. Hartley"]  Time does lots of things, John. It makes you old, slows down your reflexes, and it gives you sudden aches in unexpected places. But, somehow, it doesn't seem to stop the tears you shed on lonely nights - for the loves that might have been. So, we live our years. We laugh and we cry and there's one moment's happiness in an hour of sorrow and then we grow old. And there's only one joy left for us: the joy of reunion.