Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)

George Bancroft: MacWade

Photos 

Quotes 

• [Mac, the newspaper editor, is chewing out his reporting staff for their inability to get a scoop on Deeds] 

  MacWade : He's been here three days and what have you numb-skulls brought in? Any halfwit novice could have done better. You imbecilic stoops. Now get out of here before I really tell you what I think of you. Go on, get out!

  [a reporter mumbles an unintelligible insult at Mac as he exits the office] 

  MacWade : What was that?

  Reporter : I said you were a... uh... I said you had dirty plaster.

• [reading Babe's first column about Deeds] 

  MacWade : "At two o'clock this morning, Mr. Deeds held up traffic while he fed a bagful of doughnuts to a horse. When asked why he was doing it, he replied, 'I just wanted to see how many doughnuts this horse would eat before he asked for a cup of coffee.'"

• MacWade : A corn-fed bohunk like that falling into the Semple fortune is hot copy! It's got to be personal. It's got to have an angle. What does he think about? How does it feel to be a millionaire? Is he going to get married? What does he think of New York? Is he smart? Is he dumb? A million angles!

• MacWade : [reading from the newspaper]  "'I play the tuba to help me think.' This is one of the many startling statements made by Longfellow Deeds, New York's new Cinderella Man, who went out last night to prove that his uncle, M. W. Semple, from whom he inherited 20 million dollars, was a rank amateur in the art of standing the town on its cauliflower ear." Cinderella Man! That's sensational, Babe. Sensational!

  Babe Bennett : High-powered acting, believe me.

  MacWade : Get it?

  Babe Bennett : I was the world's sweetest ingenue.

  MacWade : Is he really that big a sap?

  Babe Bennett : He's the original. There're no carbon copies of that one.

  MacWade : Cinderella Man - Babe, you've stuck a title on that hick that will stick to him the rest of his life!