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Sally: Who is Pearl Harbor?
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Narrator: For some miraculous reason, it's a wonderful feeling having a teacher you've seen dance naked in front of a mirror.
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Diction Student: Hark! I hear the cannons roar! Is it the King approaching?
Diction Student: Hark! I hear the cannons roar! Is it the King approaching?
Sally: [in a very thick New York accent] Hahk! I hear the cannon's raw! Is it the King approaching?
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[Last lines]
Narrator: I never forgot that New Year's Eve when Aunt Bea awakened me to watch 1944 come in. I've never forgotten any of those people or any of the voices we would hear on the radio. Though the truth is, with the passing of each New Year's Eve, those voices do seem to grow dimmer and dimmer.
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Narrator: Then there were my father and mother, two people who could find an argument in any subject.
Father: Wait, you think the Atlantic is a greater ocean than the Pacific?
Mother: No. Have it your way. The Pacific is greater.
Narrator: I mean, how many people argue over oceans?
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Narrator: Ceil adored a very prominent ventriloquist, and this always used to drive Abe crazy:
Abe: He's a ventriloquist on the radio - how do you know he's not moving his lips?
Ceil: Who cares? Leave me alone!
[bursts with laughter]
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Joe: [as he realizes the substitute teacher is the woman he and his friends saw dancing naked in the window] Oh God, we're all going straight to hell!
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Mother: [as she watches anti-aircraft searchlights with husband during a World War II black-out] It's so beautiful. Boy, what a world... it could be so wonderful, if it wasn't for certain people.
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Mother: I don't know what to do, Rabbi. Every night, he listens to the radio. I can't keep him away. I say, "Go to the beach. Play in the sun. Get some fresh air." No. "The Lone Ranger," "The Shadow," "The Masked Avenger."
Rabbi Baumel: This is not good. This boy needs discipline. Radio, it's all right once in a while. Otherwise, it tends to induce bad values false dreams, lazy habits. Listening to the radio these stories of foolishness and violence this is no way for a boy to grow up!
Joe: You speak the truth, my faithful Indian companion.
Rabbi Baumel: To a rabbi you say "my faithful Indian companion"?
[hits him in a head]
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Arnold: [presenting a condom to a class] I found this on my parents' night table.
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Rocco: It's nothin' personal. It's just bad luck you were a witness.
Sally: My whole life, I had bad luck.
Rocco: Me too.
[pause]
Sally: Where are you from?
Rocco: Brooklyn.
Sally: Yeah? Me too.
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Rocco: This is a coincidence. I meet nobody from the old neighbourhood in years. I finally do, and I gotta kill her.
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Narrator: Despite his bravado, Mr Manulis panicked and bolted out of the car. He was so frightened by the reports of interplanetary invasion that he ran off, leaving Aunt Bea to contend with the green monsters he expected to drop from the sky at any moment. She walked home. Six miles. When Mr Manulis called for a date the next week, she told my mother to say she couldn't see him. She had married a Martian.
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Father: [to mother] You're lucky I love you, you old douchebag.
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Narrator: [First Lines] Once upon a time, many years ago, two burglars broke into our neighbors house in Rockaway. Mr. and Mrs. Needleman had gone to a movie and the following events occurred.
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Narrator: My most vivid memory connected with an old radio song I associate with the time that Aunt Bea and her then-boyfriend Chester took me into New York to the movies. It was the first time I'd ever seen the Radio City Music Hall and it was like entering heaven. I just never saw anything so beautiful in my life.
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Mother: I think you have these qualities that you demand and when you meet a nice man you disqualify him for the smallest fault.
Bea: That's not true.
Mother: So, what was wrong with Nat Bernstein?
Bea: He wore white socks with a tuxedo!
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Bea: Fred, you must know I have a little crush on you.
Fred: Please, Bea.
Bea: What is it? What's wrong?
Fred: Nothing. It's just I...
[Fred bursts into tears]
Bea: What's wrong? Is it still your fiancée? It's been such a long period of grief. It's not fair to you.
Fred: [crying] I know. I know. It's just that every time I hear that song on the radio my memory goes back to Leonard. That was our song.
Bea: Leonard?
Fred: My beloved.
Bea: You never said your fiancé's name was Leonard.
Fred: How could I?
Bea: [pauses, slowly starts to understand] I see. Just calm yourself. Would you like a drink?
Fred: No.
Bea: Just relax.
[Fred continues to cry; Bea tries to comfort him]
Bea: It's a nice song.
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Narrator: [about a therapist's radio show] I found the show silly and always imagined my parents on it airing their standard complaints.
Mother: He's a business failure. He never finishes what he starts. We're forced to live with my relatives and thank God for them. And I should have married Sam Slotkin.
Father: Sam Slotkin's dead.
Mother: Yes, but while he was alive, he was working.
Father: She'd be lost without her whole family around her all the time, and you should see 'em. They're like some kind of tribe. They're like the Huns. Maybe if I had married a more encouraging woman, who knows?
Mother: So who do you think is right?
Mr. Abercrombie: I think you both deserve each other.
Mother: What does that mean?
Father: Look, we didn't come here to be insulted.
Mother: I love him, but what did I do to deserve him?
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Roger: I hope 1944 turns out well. They pass so quickly. Where do they all go?
Biff Baxter: So quickly. Then we get old. And we never knew what any of it was about.
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Masked Avenger: I wonder if future generations will ever even hear about us. It's not likely. After enough time, everything passes. I don't care how big we are or how important are our lives.
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Narrator: What Aunt Bea did with the rest of the money was treat us all to a Broadway dance palace. She and Sy seemed very much in love, and she seemed happy. But it was not to be, because after a week Sy did not leave his wife and children, nor did he after two weeks nor ever. And as the year came to a close, Aunt Bea would soon be back to her old dreams of finding a true love. Still, on this night, no one had any thoughts except what a wonderful time we were all having.
-
Sally: Boy, that was fast! Probably helped I had the hiccups.
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Ceil: Abe, have you seen mama's teeth. She left them in a glass of water yesterday, and she can't find them.
Abe: Kids were playing hockey with them.
Ceil: They were playing hockey with mama's teeth?
Abe: Yeah, the're about the same size as a puck.
-
Ceil: Don't you wanna hit the hot spots and drink Champagne from my slipper?
Abe: I can't take that much liquid.
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Abe: Only creeps and crazy people go out on new year's eve.
Ceil: Then you should definitely go out, Abe.
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Rabbi Baumel: My heart is filled with grief!
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Narrator: Mrs. Waldbaum had a steel plate in her head, and it was said she couldn't walk near magnets.
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Narrator: I love old radio stories. And I know a million of 'em. I've collected 'em down through the years, like a hobby. Anecdotes and gossip and inside stories about the stars. Plus, I recall so many personal experiences from when I grew up and listened to one show after another. This girl singing used to be a favorite at my house - one of many. Now, it's all gone, except for the memories.
-
Narrator: There was Grandpa and Grandma. Every single morning he spent a half-hour packing her into her corset.
Grandma: Pull tighter!
Grandpa: I'm pulling, I'm pulling!
Grandma: Tighter!
Grandpa: A woman in her 70s and her bosom is still growing.
-
Ceil: All right, all right. Don't get your bowels in an uproar.
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Bea: Tess, I can't decide if I should take my vacation on a cruise or go to the mountains. I mean, the men are richer on a cruise, but there's more of them in the resorts. What do you think, Tess?
Mother: Well, I met my husband at a mountain resort. So, I'd advise you to go on a cruise.
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Mother: Pay more attention to your schoolwork and less to the radio!
Joe: You always listen to the radio.
Mother: It's different. Our lives are ruined already. You still have a chance to grow up and be somebody.
-
Father: You think I want you working at the job I do?
Joe: I don't even know what your job is.
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Mother: You know, when we were younger, of the three sisters she used to be considered the pretty one.
Father: Some contest.
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Sally: Cigars. Cigarettes.
Roger: Oh, I'll have some Camels.
Sally: Hello, Mr. Daley.
Roger: Where have you been? You don't return my calls. I can never get ahold of you.
Sally: I told you it was over.
Roger: Please don't say that!
Sally: You call me all hours. I mean, I meet you in hotel rooms, in the back of cars, in stalled elevators, you're gonna lose your respect for me!
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Roger: I look at you, and I'm aflame with longing.
Sally: Oh, what am I gonna do? I'm a single girl.
Roger: I want you, Sally. I crave you. I've already spoken to the head of the agency about you. He wants to meet you.
Sally: Really?
Roger: Yeah. I told him you were the most promising young actress I'd seen in years.
Sally: But you've never even seen me act.
Roger: I've got great intuition.
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Mother: Better be careful. The daughter believes in free love.
Father: Why do you say that?
Mother: You heard what happened to Mrs. Silverman? She couldn't sleep. She was up one night taking a cup of tea and she heard a car pull up 3:00 in the morning. So, you know Mrs. Silverman. She always likes to know what's going on. So, she's peeking out her front door and there's the girl across the street coming back from a folk-singing thing with a tall colored man. You're not gonna believe this, Ceil. She gives the guy a big, long kiss. Well, you can imagine how Rose Silverman reacted. She had a stroke on the spot.
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Ceil: French fries? You ate French fries? You won't eat my French fries but you'll eat the Russian's, the commie's French fries?
Mother: I'm gonna get him some bicarbonate.
Ceil: That's too good for him. He deserves an enema!
Abe: Oh, Ceil.
Ceil: Yeah, right.
-
Father: Why can't you be like that, huh? Why can't you be a genius? I'll tell you why. Because you're too busy listening to the radio all the time. That's why!
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Sally: [singing] Why'd you have to turn off, All that sunshine? Oh, baby, Please come back, Or you'll break my heart for me, 'Cause I, Don't want to walk without you, No, sirree...
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Young Joe's Friend #1: She was nothin' special. She was all right, but my favorite is Rita Hayworth.
Young Joe's Friend #2: I like Betty Grable.
Young Joe's Friend #3: I like Dana Andrews.
Young Joe's Friend #2: Are you kidding? Dana Andrews is a man.
Young Joe's Friend #3: She is?
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Father: What do they want, those Nazis? To slaughter everyone on the planet?
Mother: The Nazis, the Communists. The world would be better off without any of them, believe me. Come here. You know what W.C. Fields said, don't you? He said, to settle a war the leaders of the countries involved should meet in a stadium and fight it out with socks filled with horse manure.
-
Narrator: Sally hung around the Broadway area and tried to break into broadcasting but the only roles she ever seemed to wind up with were in the bedroom.
-
Ceil: Oh, Abe, how come you never take me to the Copacabana or El Morocco?
Abe: Take the gas pipe.
Ceil: I suppose you would have been happier married to Rita Hayworth.
Abe: You gotta ask?
Ceil: Believe me, Abe, those show business celebrities get divorced every six weeks, but we're together forever.
Abe: I may take the gas pipe.
-
Ceil: Just once, I'd like to eat at the Stork Club.
Abe: They don't take Jews in the Stork Club. No Jews, no colored.
Ceil: Abe, this is the United States of America.
-
Mother: If it's a girl, I thought we could name it Lola.
Father: Lola? What do you want her to be, a stripper?
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Mother: Martin, are you sure you want to call the baby Ellen?
Father: Sure. Sure. Why not? It's in memory of your cousin Eddie.
Mother: In memory? He's not dead yet.
Father: He should be.
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Mother: There are those who drink champagne at nightclubs and us who listen to them drink champagne on the radio.
-
Father: Roger and Irene are rich and famous. They have a radio show. They wear fancy clothes, they hobnob with their celebrity friends, they go to all the openings and nightclubs. What, you think they're happier than us?
Mother: How much time do I have to answer that question?
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New Year's Singer: You'd be so nice to come home to, You'd be so nice by the fire, While the breeze on high, Sings a lullaby, You'd be all that I could desire...
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Father: [to Aunt Bea on New Year's Eve] What, no date tonight? Well, it's okay. We're all together, you know.
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Latin singer 'Tico-Tico no Fubá': [singing] Oh tico-tico tick! Oh tico-tico tock! This tico-tico - he's the cuckoo in my clock, And when he says: "Cuckoo!" He means it's time to woo...
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Narrator: [an Affair comes to light] They were all so sophisticated about it that they just booked two Hotel Suites...
Radio Days Quotes
Extended Reading
