Laura (1944)

Clifton Webb: Waldo Lydecker

Photos 

21 more photos

Quotes 

• Waldo Lydecker : I don't use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom.

• Waldo Lydecker : My dear, either you were born on a extremely rustic community, where good manners are unknown, or you suffer from a common feminine delusion that the mere fact of being a woman exempts you from the rules of civilized conduct.

• Waldo Lydecker : In my case, self-absorption is completely justified. I have never discovered any other subject quite so worthy of my attention.

• Waldo Lydecker : I'm not kind, I'm vicious. It's the secret of my charm.

• Waldo Lydecker : You'd better watch out, McPherson, or you'll finish up in a psychiatric ward. I doubt they've ever had a patient who fell in love with a corpse.

• Waldo Lydecker : I cannot stand these morons any longer. If you don't come with me this instant, I shall run amok.

• Mark McPherson : Nice little place you have here, Mr. Lydecker.

  Waldo Lydecker : It's lavish, but I call it home.

• Waldo Lydecker : [Scene deleted from theater version and restored in 1990]  She was quick to seize upon anything that would improve her mind or her appearance. Laura had innate breeding, but she deferred to my judgment and taste. I selected a more attractive hairdress for her. I taught her what clothes were more becoming to her. Through me, she met everyone: The famous and the infamous. Her youth and beauty, her poise and charm of manner captivated them all. She had warmth, vitality. She had authentic magnetism. Wherever we went, she stood out. Men admired her; women envied her. She became as famous as Waldo Lydecker's walking stick and his white carnation.

• Waldo Lydecker : How singularly innocent I look this morning.

• Mark McPherson : When a dame gets killed, she doesn't worry about how she looks.

  Waldo Lydecker : Will you stop calling her a dame?

• Waldo Lydecker : I just dropped in to inquire about the state of your health? Insipid, I hope.

• Mark McPherson : [about the list of suspects]  You know you are on the list too.

  Waldo Lydecker : Good. It would insult me to be overlooked.

• [first lines] 

  Waldo Lydecker : [narrating off screen]  I shall never forget the weekend Laura died. A silver sun burned through the sky like a huge magnifying glass. It was the hottest Sunday in my recollection. I felt as if I were the only human being left in New York. For with Laura's horrible death, I was alone. I, Waldo Lydecker, was the only one who really knew her, and I had just begun to write Laura's story when another of those detectives came to see me. I had him wait. I could watch him through the half-open door.

  [clock chimes] 

  Waldo Lydecker : I noted that his attention was fixed upon my clock. There was only one other in existence, and that was in Laura's apartment, in the very room where she was murdered.

• Waldo Lydecker : I should be sincerely sorry to see my neighbor's children devoured by wolves.

• Waldo Lydecker : Let's not be psychiatric. But in a word, yes.

• Waldo Lydecker : If you come a little bit closer, my boy, I can just crack your skull with my stick.

• Waldo Lydecker : Murder is my favorite crime.

• Waldo Lydecker : [to McPherson after he walks through the door unannounced]  Haven't you heard of science's newest triumph, the doorbell?

• Waldo Lydecker : Love is eternal. It has been the strongest motivation for human actions throughout history. Love is stronger than life. It reaches beyond the dark shadow of death.

• Mark McPherson : Were you in love with Laura Hunt, Mr. Lydecker? Was she in love with you?

  Waldo Lydecker : Laura considered me the wisest, the wittiest, the most interesting man she'd ever met. I was in complete accord with her on that point. She thought me also the kindest, the gentlest, most sympathetic man in the world.

  Mark McPherson : Did you agree with her there, too?

  Waldo Lydecker : McPherson, you won't understand this, but I tried to become the kindest, gentlest, the most sympathetic man in the world.

  Mark McPherson : Have any luck?

  Waldo Lydecker : Let me put it this way: I should be sincerely sorry to see my neighbors' children devoured by wolves.

• Waldo Lydecker : Have you ever been in love?

  Mark McPherson : A doll in Washington Heights once got a fox fur outta me.

• [last lines] 

  Waldo Lydecker : Goodbye, Laura.

  Waldo Lydecker : [narrating off screen]  Goodbye, my love.

• Waldo Lydecker : Good evening.

  Shelby Carpenter : Hello, darling, I didn't expect to see you tonight.

  Waldo Lydecker : There you are, my dear. In a moment of supreme disaster, he's trite.

  Shelby Carpenter : You've been reading too many melodramas, Waldo.

• Waldo Lydecker : Look around. Is this the home of a dame? Look at her.

  Mark McPherson : Not bad.

  Waldo Lydecker : Jacoby was in love with her when he painted it... But he never captured her vibrance, her warmth.

• Waldo Lydecker : Will you please stop dawdling with that infernal puzzle? It's getting on my nerves.

  Mark McPherson : I know, but it keeps me calm.

• Waldo Lydecker : [about Laura]  I read my articles to her. The way she listened was more eloquent than speech.

• Waldo Lydecker : It was Jacoby, who had recently painted her portrait. I never liked the man. He was so obviously conscious of looking more like an athlete than an artist. I sat up the rest of the night writing a column about him. I demolished his affectations, exposed his camouflaged imitations of better painters, ridiculed his theories. I did it for her, knowing Jacoby was unworthy of her. It was a masterpiece because it was a labor of love.

• Mark McPherson : Why did you say they played Brahms's First and Beethoven's Ninth at the concert Friday night? They changed the program at the last minute and played nothing but Sibelius.

  Shelby Carpenter : I suppose I should have told you in the first place. You see, I'd been working on that advertising campaign with Laura. Well, we'd been working so hard, I just couldn't keep my eyes open. I didn't hear a note at the concert. I fell asleep.

  Waldo Lydecker : Next he'll produce photographic evidence of his dreams.

  Shelby Carpenter : I know it sounds suspicious, but I'm resigned to that by now. I'm a natural-born suspect just because I'm not the conventional type.

• Waldo Lydecker : [Music starts playing]  Would you mind turning that off?

  Mark McPherson : Why? Don't you like it?

  Shelby Carpenter : It was one of Laura's favorites. Not exactly classical, but sweet.

• Waldo Lydecker : [sitting next to McPherson]  This was our table, Laura's and mine. We spent many quiet evenings here together. I remember we dined here the night before her 22nd birthday. Just we two, happy, making plans for her future.

• Laura Hunt : But you write about people with such real understanding and sentiment. That's what makes your column so good.

  Waldo Lydecker : Sentiment comes easily at 50 cents a word.

• Waldo Lydecker : [to McPherson]  Have you sublet this apartment? You're here often enough to pay rent.

• Waldo Lydecker : It's a wonder you don't come here like a suitor, with roses and a box of candy; drugstore candy of course.

  Waldo Lydecker : Have you ever dreamed of Laura as your wife... by your side at the policeman's ball or in the bleachers... or listening to the heroic story of how you got a silver shinboneshinbone... from a gun battle with a gangster? I see you have.

• Waldo Lydecker : Haven't you any sense of privacy?

  Mark McPherson : Murder victims have no claim to privacy.

  Waldo Lydecker : Have detectives who buy portraits of murder victims a claim to privacy?

• Waldo Lydecker : I object to you prying into Laura's letters... especially those from me.

  Mark McPherson : Why? Yours are the best in the bunch.

  Waldo Lydecker : Thanks. But I didn't write them to you.

• Waldo Lydecker : Two or three things in here belong to me. This vase, for instance... and that clock, of course... and the antique fire screen. I only lent them to Laura, you know. This vase is the gem of my collection. I intend to have it back. And the clock and the screen too.

• Waldo Lydecker : You seem to be completely disregarding something more important than your career.

  Laura Hunt : What?

  Waldo Lydecker : My lunch.

• Mark McPherson : The doorbell rang. She opened the door. A shot was fired.

  Waldo Lydecker : And how do you deduce that?

  Mark McPherson : She fell backward. The body was there.

  Waldo Lydecker : I thought you hadn't been up here before.

  Mark McPherson : I saw the police photos.

  Waldo Lydecker : McPherson, tell me, why did they have to photograph her in that terrible condition?

  Mark McPherson : When a dame gets killed she doesn't worry about how she looks.