Daily Dialogue — September 14, 2013
MED. CLOSE SHOT BURNS AND HILDY
HILDY: May I have a cigarette, please?
Burns reaches into his pocket, extracts a cigarette and tosses it on the desk. Hildy reaches for it.
HILDY: Thanks. A match?
Burns delves into pockets again, comes up with matchbox, tosses it to Hildy, who catches it deftly, and strikes the match.
BURNS: How long is it?
Hildy finishes lighting her cigarette, takes a puff, and fans out the match.
HILDY: How long is what?
BURNS: You know what. How long since we’ve seen each other?
HILDY: Let’s see. I was in Reno six weeks — then Bermuda… Oh, about four months, I guess. Seems like yesterday to me.
CLOSEUP BURNS
BURNS: (slyly) Maybe it was yesterday. Been seeing me in your dreams?
MEDIUM CLOSE SHOT THE TWO
HILDY: (casually) No — Mama doesn’t dream about you any more, Walter. You wouldn’t know the old girl now.
BURNS: (with conviction) Oh, yes I would. I’d know you any time –
He grows lyrical and, rising from his seat, is about to start toward her, as he continues:
BURNS AND HILDY: (together) — any place, anywhere –
He sits.
HILDY: (half-pityingly) You’re repeating yourself! That’s the speech you made the night you proposed. (she burlesques his fervor) “– any time — any place — anywhere!”
CLOSE SHOT HILDY AND BURNS
BURNS: (growling) I notice you still remember it.
HILDY: I’ll always remember it. If I hadn’t remembered it, I wouldn’t have divorced you.
BURNS: You know, Hildy, I sort of wish you hadn’t done it.
HILDY: Done what?
BURNS: Divorced me. It sort of makes a fellow lose faith in himself. It almost gives him a feeling he wasn’t wanted.
HILDY: Holy mackerel! Look, Walter, that’s what divorces are for.
BURNS: Nonsense. You’ve got the old-fashioned idea that divorces are something that last forever — till ‘death us do part’. Why, a divorce doesn’t mean anything today. It’s only a few words mumbled over you by a judge. We’ve got something between us nothing can change.
HILDY: I suppose that’s true in a way. I am fond of you, Walter. I often wish you weren’t such a stinker.
BURNS: Now, that’s a nice thing to say.
HILDY: Well, why did you promise me you wouldn’t fight the divorce and then try and gum up the whole works?
BURNS: Well, I meant to let you go — but, you know, you never miss the water till the well runs dry.
ANOTHER ANGLE
HILDY: A fellow your age, hiring an airplane to write: (she gestures above to indicate sky- writing) ‘Hildy: Don’t be hasty — remember my dimple. Walter.! It held things up twenty minutes while the Judge ran out to watch it.
BURNS: Well, I don’t want to brag, but I’ve still got the dimple — and in the same place — I just acted like any husband who doesn’t want to see his home broken up.
HILDY: What home?
WALTER: What home? Don’t you remember the home I promised you?
HILDY: Oh, yes — we were to have it right after our honeymoon — honeymoon!
BURNS: Was it my fault? Did I know that coal mine was going to have another cave-in? I meant to be with you on our honeymoon, Hildy — honest I did.
— His Girl Friday (1940), screen play by Charles Lederer, play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is reunion, suggested by Laura Deerfield. Today’s suggestion by MB.
Trivia: One of the first, if not the first, films to have characters talk over the lines of other characters, for a more realistic sound. Prior to this, movie characters completed their lines before the next lines were started.
Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by MB: “It’s a spectacular set-up for the rest of the movie–it tells you everything you need to know about why these two married and why they’re divorced.
It’s part of a scene where Burns learns he needs an ace reporter to cover a story and this excerpt here is followed by Hildy telling Burns she’s quitting the biz to get married.”
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