Dogs like us

Now I'm watching Marty on what is apparently "wallflowers night" on TCM. Marty is so well-written that I find new stuff to quote every five minutes or so, such as:

Marty's cousin Tommy: Well, there's the Stardust Ballroom, that's kind of a big dance hall. Every Saturday night it's loaded with girls. It's a nice place to go. Pay 77 cents... well, it used to be 77 cents, prob'ly a dollar and a half now. You go in there, and you ask some girl to dance with you. It's a nice, respectable... listen, that's where I met Virginia. You tell Marty, Aunt Teresa, you tell him to go to the Stardust Ballroom, it's loaded with tomatahs.
Marty's mother: The Stardusta Ballrooma... loaded with tomatahs.
Tommy: Right.

Okay. About the Stardust Ballroom. What a depressing-looking place. Not any worse than a modern club, I suppose, and certainly the music is a lot better. Although you did have to actually know how to dance, which could be a problem these days. It is indeed loaded with tomatahs. But even the tackiest tomatah isn't as poorly dressed as some of the Wellesley girls at the wedding in the movie I watched last night.

You don't get to be good-hearted by accident. You get kicked around long enough, you get to be a real professor of pain.

Why, oh why, didn't I see this movie in high school? I not only knew all the lyrics to "At Seventeen," I transposed it to a different key to make it easier to play on the guitar and arranged the instrumental interlude too. Not to mention "I Am A Rock." I could quote large chunks of The Rainmaker. I was the queen of wallflower quotes. But I never saw Marty until a few months ago.

Oh boy, here comes the world's weirdest courtship speech:

Marty: You see, you're not such a dog as you think you are.

Just what every girl wants to hear.

Marty: So there you are, so I guess I'm not such a dog as I think I am.
Clara: No, you're a very nice guy. I don't know why some girl hasn't grabbed you up long ago.
Marty: I don't know either. I think I'm a very nice guy. I also think I'm a pretty smart guy, in my own way. You know how I figure, two people get married and they're going to live together for forty or fifty years, so it's gotta be more than whether they're just good-lookin' or not. Now you tell me you think you're not so good-lookin', well, my father was a real ugly man, but my mother adored him. She told me how she used to get so miserable sometimes, like everybody, you know? And she says my father always tried to understand. I used to see them sometimes when I was a kid, sittin' in the livin' room, talkin' and talkin', and I used to adore my old man, because he was always so kind. That's one of the most beautiful things I have in my life, the way my father and mother were. And my father was a real ugly man. So it doesn't matter if you look like a gorilla. See, dogs like us, we ain't such dogs as we think we are.

They just don't write romantic stuff like that anymore!

I'm really tired, but there's one scene I just must transcribe. A few more minutes. Aha, here it is:

Woman at bar: She told me, at the risk of her life...
Other woman at bar: ...she was always a little thin in the hips...
First woman: Well, she told me that the doctor told her if she had any more babies, she'd do it at the risk of her life. When she told me that she already had six. Every time I saw her she was either going to the hospital or coming from it. She was hatching 'em out like eggs.
Second woman: That husband of hers is a skinny little fella, isn't he?
First woman: Well, I bumped into her on the street, and she was as big as a barrel.
Second woman: No!
First woman: I said to her, 'Maeve! Maeve, for heaven's sake, didn't you tell me that if you had another one it'd kill you?'
Second woman: And her husband's a little bit of a man, isn't he?
First woman: Well, last week on Tuesday, she gave birth to her baby in St. Elizabeth's hospital. Fine, healthy boy. Nine pounds!
Second woman: Oh, that's fine! So the doctor was wrong, wasn't he?
First woman: Oh, no, she died. Right there in the hospital.
Second woman: Ah, that's a sad story. And her husband's that little fella, works in [??].
First woman: That's the one.
Second woman: That's a sad story.