Action in the North Atlantic (1943)

Sam Levene: Abel 'Chips' Abrams

Photos 

Quotes 

• Johnnie Pulaski : If a torpedo ever connected with this ship, we'd go up like a match connected to cellophane. You ain't got a chance!

  Boats O'Hara : [Repeating]  You ain't got a chance.

  Johnnie Pulaski : And "Boom!" You're in the hero department!

  Boats O'Hara : Yeah.

  Johnnie Pulaski : Just like that and the next thing you know, you're pickin' a milky way outta your ears.

  Whitey Lara : Okay, okay, so what?

  Johnnie Pulaski : Whatta ya mean, "Okay?"

  Chips Abrams : Wait a minute! Wait a minute! I think you got the wromg angle. The way I see it if your ship's number is up, you're gonna get it.

  Whitey Lara : Yeah, and suppose my number ain't up?

  Chips Abrams : Then, brother, the torpedoes can connect right where yer sittin' and still nuthin' will happen.

  Boats O'Hara : Well, I want no torpedoes where I'm sittin'. I'm a sensitive man, I am.

  Johnnie Pulaski : [to Chips]  Whatta you know about it? You carpenters got sawdust for brains!

  Chips Abrams : Listen, I was shippin' out when your buttons was safety pins. I was in a tanker in the last war. I got torpedoed so much, I got water on the knee.

• Chips Abrams : I got faith in God, President Roosevelt, and the Brooklyn Dodgers in the order of their importance.

• Chips Abrams : So you want a safe job, hunh? Go ask the Czechs and the Poles and the Greeks. They were figuring on safe jobs. They're lined up in front of guns digging each other's graves. The trouble with you, Pulaski, is you think America is just a place to eat and sleep. You don't know what side your future's buttered on.

• Boats O'Hara : I'm thinking plenty. And I ought to make you smell knuckles for the duration.

  Chips Abrams : No, no, no. You got your brains in your fists.

  Boats O'Hara : But that's what he needs.

• Chips Abrams : It should have sound. I could tell him something.

• Chips Abrams : More than a hundred men must have shipped out today.