Daily Dialogue — January 14, 2017

Ellie Andrews: And suppose nobody stops for us?
Peter Warne: They’ll stop all right. lt’s a matter of knowing how to handle them.
Ellie Andrews: And you’re an expert l suppose.
Peter Warne: Expert. And l’ll write a book about it. Call it ‘’The Hitchhiker’s Hail.’’
Ellie Andrews: There’s no end to your accomplishments, is there?
Peter Warne: You think it’s simple?
Ellie Andrews: No.
Peter Warne: Well, it is simple. lt’s all in that old thumb, see? Some people do it like this. Or like this. All wrong. Never get anywhere. The poor things. But that old thumb never fails. lt’s all a matter of how you do it, though. Now you take Number 1, for instance. That’s a short jerky movement, like this. That shows independence. You don’t care if they stop or not. You got money. Clever. Number 2, that’s a little wider movement. Smile goes with this one, like this. That means you got a brand-new story about the farmer’s daughter.
Ellie Andrews: You figured that out all by yourself?
Peter Warne: That’s nothing. Number 3, that’s a pip. That’s the pitiful one. When you’re broke and hungry, everything looks black. lt’s a long sweeping movement like this. Gotta follow through, though.
Ellie Andrews: That’s amazing.
Peter Warne: But it’s no good, if you haven’t got a long face to go with it.

— It Happened One Night (1934), screen play by Robert Riskin, based on the short story by Samuel Hopkins Adams

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Advice.

Trivia: Columbia Pictures was considered a “poverty row” studio at the time of the film’s release. Both MGM and Warner Bros. would lend out temperamental actors to Columbia as a punishment for real, or imagined, wrongdoings. Columbia boss ‘Harry Cohn’, who loathed paying for his own roster of contract stars during the early ’30s, would invariably assign them to work on Frank Capra’s films. Although the studio had received Oscar nominations prior to this picture, its success virtually singlehandedly lifted Columbia out of the ranks of “Poverty Row”.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Warne goes through much of the story lobbing advice Ellie’s way. And much of the time — as here — the advice blows up in his face.