Quiz Show Movie Quotes
Herbie Stemple
You know why they call them Indians? Because Columbus thought he was in India. They're "Indians" because some white guy got lost.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Congressman Derounian
I'm happy that you've made the statement. But I cannot agree with most of my colleagues. See, I don't think an adult of your intelligence should be commended for simply, at long last, telling the truth.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[At a poker game]
Dick Goodwin
I know you're lying.
Charles Van Doren
Bluffing. The word is bluffing.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Mark Van Doren
I'm sorry, Charlie. I'm an old man, it's all a little difficult for me to comprehend!
Charles Van Doren
It's television, Dad. It's... it's just... just television...
Mark Van Doren
You make it sound like you didn't have a choice!
Charles Van Doren
What was I supposed to do at that point, disillusion the whole goddamn country?
Mark Van Doren
Charlie, you took the money!
Charles Van Doren
Yes, yes, I took the money!
Mark Van Doren
Is that what this was about?
Charles Van Doren
No... no, um, I don't know...
Mark Van Doren
It was a goddamn quiz show, Charlie.
Charles Van Doren
An ill-favored thing, sir...
Mark Van Doren
This is not the time to play games!
Charles Van Doren
At mine own, it was mine!
Mark Van Doren
Your name is mine!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Charles Van Doren
They gave me the answers.
Mark Van Doren
They gave you the answers... they gave YOU the answers?
Charles Van Doren
Well, no... no, at first they'd ask me questions they already knew I knew the answers to. We ran through those, and I really didn't want them to give me the answers, so they gave me the questions and I'd look up the answers on my own, as if that were any different. Well, we ran through those in a couple of weeks and I just didn't have the time, finally, and it just seemed silly, so...
Mark Van Doren
They gave you all that money to answer questions they knew you knew... now, that's inflation!
Charles Van Doren
You're not being very helpful!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[to a reporter outside the committee hearing]
Herbie Stemple
You know what the problem with you bums is? You never leave a guy alone unless you're leaving him alone.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Dick Goodwin
21 is rigged and I can prove it... I have Enright cold and that means I have you.
Kitner
Really?
Dick Goodwin
Really.
Kitner
Then how come you're the one who's sweating?
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[while Dan Enright is testifying]
Dick Goodwin
I thought we were gonna get television. The truth is... television is gonna get us.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Charles Van Doren
I've stood on the shoulders of life and I've never gotten down into the dirt to build, to erect a foundation of my own. I've flown too high on borrowed wings. Everything came too easy.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Mark Van Doren
If you look around the table and you can't tell who the sucker is, it's you.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Mark Van Doren
Cheating on a quiz show? That's sort of like plagiarizing a comic strip.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Mark Van Doren
Sixty-four thousand dollars for a question, I hope they are asking you the meaning of life.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Dick Goodwin
And I'll send you a little helpful reminder. You'll notice it because it'll look very much like a subpoena.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Dick Goodwin
Hey, you don't have to be a genius to connect the dots.
Charles Van Doren
Well, don't connect them through me.
Dick Goodwin
Hey, don't treat me like some member of your goddamn fan club. Are you telling me everybody got the answers but you?
Charles Van Doren
You're so persistent, Dick. You know, I really envy that.
Dick Goodwin
Was it just the money, Charlie?
Charles Van Doren
You'll forgive me, but anyone who thinks money is ever "just money" couldn't have much of it.
Dick Goodwin
Charlie, you wanna insult me, fine, but you can't envy me at the same time.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Sandra Goodwin
You dragged Herb Stempel into the spotlight.
Dick Goodwin
Stempel? The man has to be dragged from the spotlight with his teeth marks still on it!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Mark Van Doren
Your name is mine!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Charles Van Doren
Dad, I can't simply just tell them the truth.
Mark Van Doren
Can't tell them the truth? Why on earth not?
Charles Van Doren
Because it's complicated.
Mark Van Doren
Complicated?
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Jack Barry
Eleven points will bring you to 21 and you will be our new champion! Because of a disagreement with his commanding general, Ulysses S. Grant was virtually placed under arrest for a brief time early in 1862. Who was the commanding general of the Union army at that time? Tough question.
Charles Van Doren
Just so oddly familiar.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Dick Goodwin
Excuse me. Do you think he might see me before the peacock molts?
Kintner's Secretary
Who are you with again?
Dick Goodwin
I'm with the United States Congress. Perhaps you've heard of them.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Herbie Stemple
You wanna be worshipped? Go to India and moo.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Student At Book Party
Professor Van Doren, I took your course at Columbia - "Hawthorne, Original Sin, and the American Experience". Well, as silly as it sounds, it changed my life.
Mark Van Doren
Was it the Hawthorne or the sin?
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Herbie Stemple
Come and see Herbie Stempel get thrown to the Columbia lions! Watch Charles Van Doren eat his first kosher meal in his life.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Mark Van Doren
[reciting poetry at his birthday party]
Now see summer bloom upon this lee, three score rings around this tree, once green, now bare, once lush, now sere, consoled only that I am planted here...
John Van Doren
You certainly are!
Mark Van Doren
Roots thick...
Thomas Merton, The Monk
And bold...
Mark Van Doren
And deep...
John Van Doren
And doddering...
Mark Van Doren
Assuage my woes...
Bunny Wilson
And termites nibbling at my toes!
Mark Van Doren
Et tu, Bunny!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Albert Freedman
It's not like we're hardened criminals here. We're in show business.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Charles Van Doren
I've been swarmed by stockbrokers lately; I feel like a girl with a bad reputation.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Dan Enright
How much do they pay instructors up at Columbia?
Charles Van Doren
Eighty-six dollars a week.
Dan Enright
Do you have any idea how much Bozo the Clown makes?
Charles Van Doren
Well... we, we can't all be Bozo the Clown.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Herbie Stemple
And they love me for the same reason they used to hate me, because I'm the guy who knows everything.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Herbie Stemple
[referring to television]
That box is the biggest thing since Gutenberg invented the printing press, and I'm the biggest thing on it.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Dick Goodwin
[Dick Goodwin questions Dan Enright about evidence of Twenty One being fixed]
Dan, I have it on the kinescope, it's clear as day. The man literally did a double-take.
Enright
[laughing]
He did a double-take? And who told you this? Is this Herb again? Or is this the Greenwich Village Beatnik?
Dick Goodwin
That's interesting, why is he a beatnik? Because he's not Charlie Van Doren?
Enright
Yeah, you're damn right he's not Charlie Van Doren. You know, you got these crackpots coming out of the woodwork, you're snooping around asking questions. You don't have a shred of concrete evidence.
Dick Goodwin
Dan, let me tell you something. In this envelope are all the questions that James Snodgrass was asked on Twenty One. The odd thing about this envelope is that he appeared on the show January 13th, if you recall. Yet, he somehow mailed this to himself on January 11th via registered mail. I'd say that's pretty goddamn concrete, wouldn't you?
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Cornwall Cousins
Charles, is Jack Barry single?
Charles Van Doren
I think so.
Cornwall Cousins
My roommate has a huge crush on him, she wants you to introduce her.
Cornwall Cousins
What's Dave Garroway like?
Charles Van Doren
Cheap.
Cornwall Aunt
'Cheat'?
Mark Van Doren
Wasn't I talking?
Bunny Wilson
You were, just talking, and talking, and talking...
Cornwall Cousins
Charlie's famous, like Elvis Presley!
Mark Van Doren
And like Leopold of Belgium, usurped by his son before his time!
Charles Van Doren
Oh, that makes me King Baudouin!
Mark Van Doren
Next birthday, you all get a dirty limerick.
Thomas Merton, The Monk
I certainly hope so!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Toby Stempel
My mother wants to know why you only went for eight on the movies.
Herbie Stemple
Because my real expertise is pain-in-the-ass in-laws, all right?
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Dick Goodwin
You know, money isn't everything.
Sandra Goodwin
I'm not the one who came home with a Chrysler catalogue.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Mark Van Doren
What these books have conclusively proven is that the diffence between men and women is exactly 38 pages.
Man 1
Can I quote you, Mark?
Mark Van Doren
Not before I quote me.
Dorothy Van Doren
His own quotes are his greatest pleasure.
Man 2
Did you hear the market dropped 30 points today. There's a rumor Eisenhower died.
Dorothy Van Doren
How could they tell?
Mark Van Doren
Oh, please. Don't get Dorothy started on politics. There'll be a raid.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Charles Van Doren
Last week alone, I had 11 proposals of marriage!
Mark Van Doren
Perhaps you should accept one of them.
Dorothy Van Doren
[to Mark]
And to think, they unleash you on those impressionable young minds.
Mark Van Doren
Well, why not? He's 33 years old, Jesus Christ had a girlfriend at 33 years old.
Dorothy Van Doren
Look how that turned out.
Thomas Merton, The Monk
And, he shared an office with His Father!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Herbie Stemple
Charles Van Doren! He wouldn't know the answer to a door bell if you didn't give it to him!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Mark Van Doren
Charlie, from what I understand, it's just a bunch of frauds showing off an erudition they really didn't have. All you have to do is...
Charles Van Doren
The problem is, Dad, is that it seems I was one of those frauds.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Toby Stempel
I know what you're gonna accomplish, I just don't know what he's gonna accomplish.
Herbie Stemple
You want to know what? If I do nothing else I will convince them that Herbert Stemple knows what won the God-damned Academy Award for best God-damned picture of 1955; that's what I'm gonna accomplish.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Account Guy
Stempel is an underdog. You know, people root for that. It's a New York thing.
Martin Rittenhome
Queens is not New York!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Herbie Stemple
I love my wife, but it's like living with a plague of locusts.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Herbie Stemple
Don't do this to me, it's humiliating.
Enright
For seventy grand, Herb, you can afford to be humiliated.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Mark Van Doren
Why don't you just put it in the bank Charlie? That's what I've always done with my prize money.
Charles Van Doren
It's just, you don't understand dad, it's, there are all sorts of tax implications
Mark Van Doren
You Think I can't understand the concept of taxes.
Charles Van Doren
At this level it's a bit more complicated.
Mark Van Doren
And at my level? I never thought of myself as having a level. What level might that be?
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Dick Goodwin
I asked myself, "why would he do this, he knows I'll come after him?" Then it occurred to me. He knows I'll come after him.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Dick Goodwin
You're to receive the questions in advance, and I'm to thank you for the courtesy of attending this hearing.
Martin Rittenhome
Mercy. What a grueling line of inquiry.
Dick Goodwin
Must have a familiar ring - the questions in advance.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Dan Enright
Charlie, Charlie, the only people who can implicate you directly are all in this room, just think about that, okay?
Albert Freedman
You think that noodge is going to get me to talk?
Charles Van Doren
He may be a noodge but he first in his class at Harvard Law School.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Charles Van Doren
I'm just trying to imagine what Kant would make of this.
Albert Freedman
I don't think he'd have a problem with it.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Albert Freedman
If you were a kid, would you wanna be an annoying Jewish guy with a side wall haircut?
Charles Van Doren
Well I wanted to be Joe Dimaggio.
Albert Freedman
Oh yeah, me too. Especially after he signed for that hundred grand.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[coming upon a large gift box; it contains a TV]
Mark Van Doren
Well, what do we have here?
Party guest
Aftershave.
Mark Van Doren
Aww.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Jack Barry
[prepping for the show] My light okay? My nose doesn't look big?
Stage worker
You look great Jack.
Jack Barry
Last week I looked like a sun dial.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Toby Stempel
I'm retaining water, for your information.
Herbie Stemple
You and the Grand Coulee Dam.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Dan Enright
Well, it's the damndest thing, but you've plateaued.
Herbie Stemple
Plateaued? What - wh-what kind of word is that?
Dan Enright
What, plateaued?
Herbie Stemple
Plateaued.
Dan Enright
Plateaued? Uh, it's well, it's like, uh, you...
Herbie Stemple
You mean, people don't like me anymore?
Dan Enright
No, no, no. It's not you, per se. It's just...
Herbie Stemple
Maybe I should get my teeth capped
Dan Enright
No, it's the nature of the show. They've already seen you win, and they want something new.
Herbie Stemple
So, what are you saying? Th - You think they want me to lose?
Dan Enright
Well, don't you think that's natural?
Herbie Stemple
Joe Louis was the champ for 12 years. Nobody ever wanted Joe Louis to lose.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[while seeing Herb Stempel on "Twenty One."]
Blonde
Well, there's a face for radio.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kitner
You're a producer, Dan. Produce.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[while leaving Dan Enright's office]
Herbie Stemple
I'll just tell everyone it's a fraud! That'll warm them up! The fix is in, this week on Twenty One!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Dan Enright
He blames Charles Van Doren for his downfall. And of course, the real downfall of Herbert Stempel has always been Herbert Stempel.
Albert Freedman
Herbert Stempel, absolutely. Well, you met him. Does he seem stable to you?
Dick Goodwin
Well, I definitely have an inkling of what you're talking about. He told me this whole story about how when a Jew is on the show, he always loses to a gentile, and then the gentile wins more money. Right? I mean, who could dream up a scheme like that?
Dan Enright
A symptom of his Van Doren fixation!
Dick Goodwin
The thing of it is... I looked it up. It's true.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[In his office, Dan Enright has just told Herb Stempel that he submitted a list of 45 names for a panel show on NBC. The network had rejected three of those 45 names and Herb was one of those three names that they had rejected]
Herbie Stemple
That big, uncircumcised putz is on the cover of Time Magazine and I can't even make the top 42 for a panel show.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Herbie Stemple
The point is, Van Doren got the answers.
Dick Goodwin
He did not get the answers. If anything, he gave them answers!
Herbie Stemple
I know he got the answers.
Dick Goodwin
Ah, bullshit, Herb. How do you know he got the answers?
Herbie Stemple
Because I got the answers!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Martin Rittenhome
Television is gonna go on. The quiz shows are gonna go on. Makes me wonder what you hope to accomplish with all this.
Dick Goodwin
Don't worry, I'm just getting started.
Martin Rittenhome
You're a bright young kid with a bright future. Watch yourself out there.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Jack Barry
Herb Stemple, you lead at this point by 18 to 11. The category is movies, how many points do you wish to try for?
Herbie Stemple
I'll try 3, three points.
Jack Barry
Which would give you 21 points if you guess right and you will be the winner again.
Herbie Stemple
[feigning nervousness and thinking]
1955... Academy Award... Best Picture. Hmmm, you know... I don't remember.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Mark Van Doren
[Charlie takes an 11-point question on World War II planes]
That's much harder than the question they asked that woman, and hers was 10 points! Do you know the names of those planes?
Dorothy Van Doren
Of course not. Sit down...
Mark Van Doren
Who would know the names of those planes, he's not the Secretary of Defense.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Dick Goodwin
Sandra, you have no idea what these people are like. It's all Thurber and Trilling and 'Bunny' Wilson.
Sandra Goodwin
'Bunny'?
Dick Goodwin
Yeah, Edmund Wilson, that's what they call him.
Sandra Goodwin
Well that doesn't mean you have to.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[while watching a TV commercial concerning the upcoming episode of "Twenty One."]
Herbie Stemple
No, Herbert Stempel is not going to win $100,000! Herbert Stempel is going to take a dive!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Announcer
Geritol. America's #1 tonic. Geritol, the fast-acting, high-potentcy tonic, that helps you feel... stronger... fast... presents the exciting quiz program..."Twenty-One." Brought to you by NBC, The National Broadcasting Company, broadcasting nationally coast to coast, from New York to Los Angeles, from Seattle to St. Petersburg... via a vast network of affiliates crisscrossing the country. Coming up next, "Twenty-One," starring master of ceremonies Jack Barry!
[music cues build dramatically]
Announcer
Two players racing to score 21 points... each in a soundproof television studio, not knowing the other one's score... with $500 riding on each point... as they both play..."Twenty-One!"
[lively theme music plays]
Announcer
And here's your host... Jack Barry!
[the audience applauds as Jack runs on to the stage and stands behind his podium]
Jack Barry
[looking at us] Good evening. I'm Jack Barry. Due to a series of ties, Herbert Stempel, our 29-year-old ex-G.I. college student, must play at $3,000 a point, which means that in a few brief minutes, he can either win as much as $100,000 - the most money won on television to date - or lose everything he's won in the last eight weeks.
[as Jack continues to speak, Herbert and his opponent wait to be introduced]
Stempel's opponent
You nervous?
Herbie Stemple
[chuckles as he clean's his glasses] It's only money.
Jack Barry
Isolated in their soundproof studios, neither player is aware of the other's score. I've been assured by our friends at the encyclopedia... that they've concocted some real brain-breakers this week, so we'll find out in the next 30 minutes... if the unstumpable Herbert Stempel can be stumped. Could I have the questions, please?
[a drumroll plays as the questions are handed to Jack by a stagehand]
Jack Barry
Thank you, gentlemen. Remember the questions on "Twenty-One" are secured each week in a Manhattan bank vault 'til just before show time. So right now, let's meet Herbert Stempel and his challenger as Geritol, America's #1 tonic, presents "Twenty-One."
[a fanfare plays and the audience applauds as Herbert and his opponent make their entrances]
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
