
I saw the 1947 noirish pot-boiler
The Lady from Shanghai recently. It contains the following soft-boiled dialogue between
Rita Hayworth (as Rosalie Bannister) and
Orson Welles (as Irishman Michael O’Hara).
Rosalie: [What if] I don’t know how to shoot?
O’Hara: It’s easy. You just pull the trigger.This brought to mind the genuinely hard-boiled dialogue from 1944’s
To Have and to Have Not wherein
Lauren Bacall elevates Humphrey Bogart’s heart rate:
You don’t have to say anything, and you don’t have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow.To complete the trifecta, I just read
here that during a 1939 visit to the U.S.,
Queen Elizabeth was presented with
a hot dog. Unsure of how to proceed, she asked
Franklin D. Roosevelt for directions.
Queen Elizabeth: How do you eat it?
FDR: Very simple. Push it into your mouth and keep pushing it until it is all gone.The queen chose to go with a knife and fork.
Photo of Queen Elizabeth and Eleanor Roosevelt from UPI.
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