Quotes about Show Biz

Karen Richards: Nothing is forever in the Theatre. Whatever it is, it's here, it flares up, burns hot and then its gone.

- Celeste Holm (as Karen) in All About Eve (1950)

Margo Channing: Lloyd, honey, be a playwright with guts. Write me one about a nice normal woman who just shoots her husband.

- Bette Davis (as Margo) in All About Eve (1950)

Llyod Richards: You knew when you came in that the audition was over, that Eve was your understudy, playing that childish little game of cat and mouse.
Margo Channing: Not mouse, never mouse. If anything *rat*!

- Bette Davis (as Margo) in All About Eve (1950)

Bill Sampson: Darling, there are certain characteristics for which you are famous, on stage and off. I love you for some of them, in spite of others. I haven't let those become too important. They're part of your equipment for getting along in what is laughingly called our environment. You have to keep your teeth sharp - all right - but I will not have you sharpen them on me, or on Eve!
Margo Channing: What about her teeth? What about her fangs?
Bill Sampson: She hasn't cut them yet, and you know it! So when you start judging an idealistic, dreamy-eyed kid by the barroom Benzedrine standards of this megalomaniac society, I won't have it! Eve Harrington has never, by word, look, thought, or suggestion indicated anything to me but her adoration for you and her happiness at our being in love. And to intimate anything else doesn't spell jealousy to me - it spells a paranoiac insecurity that you should be ashamed of!
Margo Channing: Cut! Print it! What happens in the next reel? Do I get dragged off screaming to the snake pits?

- Bette Davis (as Margo) in All About Eve (1950)

Karen Richards: A part in a play. You'd do all that just for a part in a play?
Eve Harrington: I'd do much more for a part that good.

- Anne Baxter (as Eve) in All About Eve (1950)

Addison DeWitt: And what's your name?
Phoebe: Phoebe.
Addison DeWitt: Phoebe?
Phoebe: I call myself Phoebe.
Addison DeWitt: And why not? Tell me, Phoebe, do you want someday to have an award like that of your own?
Phoebe: More than anything else in the world.
Addison DeWitt: Then you must ask Miss Harrington how to get one. Miss Harrington knows all about it.

- George Sanders (as Addison DeWitt) in All About Eve (1950)

Eddie Kearns: Those men aren't going to pay ten bucks to look at your face; this is Broadway!
Hank Mahoney: Yeah, "Broad's way!"

- Bessie Love (as Hank Mahoney) in The Broadway Melody (1929)

Sampson: This is about talent.
Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.: Something good and cheap no doubt?
Sampson: Exactly! It's a young girl named Brice... Fanny... Fanny Brice. She;s working in burlesque.
Gene Buck: Say, I've seen that girl, Flo!
Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.: Pretty?
Gene Buck: Well, yes and no. Shut your eyes and listen - yes! Open 'em and look - no, but a great performer!
Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.: We shall have a look at her at once - tonight!

- William Powell (as Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.) in The Great Ziegfeld (1936)

Norma Desmond: Without me, there wouldn't be any Paramount studio.

- Gloria Swanson (as Norma Desmond) in Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Margo Channing: Margo Channing is ageless - spoken like a press agent.
Lloyd Richards: I know what I'm talking about. After all, they're my plays.
Margo Channing: Spoken like an author. Lloyd, I'm not twenty-ish, I'm not thirty-ish. Three months ago I was forty years old. Forty. Four O. That slipped out. I hadn't quite made up my mind to admit it. Now I suddenly feel as if I've taken all my clothes off.

- Bette Davis (as Margo) in All About Eve (1950)