Mister Roberts (1955)

Henry Fonda: Lieutenant Roberts

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Quotes 

• Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : Frank, I like you. There's no getting around the fact that you're a real likable guy.

  Ensign Frank Thurlowe Pulver : Yeah? Yeah!

  Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : But...

  Ensign Frank Thurlowe Pulver : But what?

  Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : Well, I also think you're the most hapless, lazy, disorganized, and in general, most lecherous person I've ever known in my life.

  Ensign Frank Thurlowe Pulver : I am not!

  Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : You're not what?

  Ensign Frank Thurlowe Pulver : I am not disorganized!

• Shore Patrol Officer : A little while ago, six men from your ship broke into the home of the French Colonial governor. They started throwing things through a plate glass living room window. We found some of the things on the lawn. Large world globe. Small love seat. A lot of books. A bust of Balzac. The French writer. We also found an Army private first class. He was unconscious at the time. He claims they threw him, too.

  Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : Through the window?

  Shore Patrol Officer : That's right. It seems he took them there for a little joke. He didn't tell 'em it was a governor's house. He told 'em is was, uh... well, what we call in Alabama...

  Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : Yeah, we call it the same thing in Nebraska.

  Shore Patrol Officer : Well, that's about all, Lieutenant. If it makes you feel any better, Admiral Wentworth says this is the worst ship he's ever seen in his entire naval career.

• Doc : That's mostly what makes physical heroism - opportunity. It's a reflex. I think that seventy-five out of a hundred young males have that reflex. You take any one of them. Say even Frank Thurlowe Pulver, here. Put him into a B-29 over Japan, and you know what you'd have?

  Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : No I don't, Doctor.

  Doc : You'd have Pulver, the Congressional Medal of Honor winner. Pulver, who single-handed shot down twenty-three attacking Zeros. Pulver who, with his bare hands, held together the severed wing struts of his plane, and with his bare feet successfully landed his mortally wounded plane on his home field. Reflex. It's like the knee jerk. Strike the patella tendon in any human being, you produce the knee jerk. Look.

  [Doc hits Pulver in the knee and nothing happens] 

  Ensign Frank Thurlowe Pulver : What's the matter, Doc?

  Doc : Nothing, but stay out of B-29s, Frank, my boy.

• Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : You pretend you want me to improve your mind. You've never finished one book I've given you to read.

  Ensign Frank Thurlowe Pulver : I've finished "God's Little Acre," Doug boy!

  Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : I didn't give you that. He's been reading "God's Little Acre" for over a year now. He's underlined every erotic passage and added exclamation points. And after a certain pornographic climax, he's inserted the words "well written."

• Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : How did you get in the Navy? How did you get on our side? Oh you ignorant, arrogant, ambitious... keeping sixty-two men in prison 'cause you got a palm tree for the work they did. I don't know which I hate worse, you or that other malignant growth that stands outside the door

  The Captain : Why, you stinking little...!

  Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : How did you ever get command of a ship? I realize in wartime they have to scrape the bottom of the barrel, but where did they ever scrape you up?

  The Captain : There's just one thing left for you, mister. A general court martial!

  Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : That suits me fine, court martial me!

  The Captain : You've got it!

  Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : I'm asking for it! If I can't get transferred, I'll get court martialed off! I'm fed up! But you'll need a witness. Call your messenger - I'll say it all over again in front of him. Go on, call him. You want me to call him?

  The Captain : No. You're a smart boy, Roberts. But I know how to take care of smart boys. I hate your guts, you smart college guys! I've been seeing your kind around since I was ten years old... working as a busboy. "Oh busboy, it seems my friend has thrown up on the table. Clean up that mess, boy, will'ya?" And then when I went to sea as a steward... people poking at you with umbrellas. "Oh, boy!", "You, boy!", "Careful with that luggage, boy!" And I took it. I took it for years! But I don't have to take it any more. There's a war on, and I'm captain of this vessel, and now *you* can take it for a change! The worst thing I can do to you... is to keep you right here, mister, and here is where you're going to stay. Now, *get out!*

• Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : Captain, you told me...

  The Captain : Never mind what I told you. *I'm telling you!*

• Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : We've got nothing to do with the war. Maybe that's why we're on this ship, cause we're not good enough to fight. Cause our glands don't secrete enough adrenaline, or our great-great-grandmothers were afraid of the dark or something.

  Doc : What is it you want to be, Doug, a hero?

  Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : Hero? Doc, you haven't heard a word I've said. Look, Doc, the war's way out there, and I'm here. Well, I don't want to be here, I wanna be out there. I'm sick and tired of being a lousy spectator.

• Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : I looked down from our bridge and saw our captain's palm tree! Our trophy for superior achievement! The Admiral John J. Finchley award for delivering more toothpaste and toilet paper than any other Navy cargo ship in the safe area of the Pacific.

• Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : Doc, he lies in his sack all day long, bores me silly with great, moronic plots against the captain. He's never carried out one of them.

  Ensign Frank Thurlowe Pulver : I haven't, huh?

  Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : No, Frank, you haven't. What ever happened to those marbles you were gonna put in the captain's overhead so they'd roll around all night and keep him awake?

  Ensign Frank Thurlowe Pulver : Now you've gone too far. Now you've asked for it.

  [pulls out a box] 

  Ensign Frank Thurlowe Pulver : What does that look like? Five marbles. Got another one in my pocket. Six marbles. I'm looking for marbles all day long!

• Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : Doc, that new hospital hasn't got nurses, has it?

  Doc : It didn't have yesterday.

  Ensign Frank Thurlowe Pulver : It has today.

  Doc : And how did you find out they were there?

  Ensign Frank Thurlowe Pulver : It just came to me all of a sudden. I was lying on my bunk this morning, thinking. And there wasn't a breath of air. And all of a sudden, a funny thing happened. A little breeze came up, and I took a big, deep breath, and I said to myself "Pulver, boy, there's women on that island!"

• Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : [Pulver is expecting the company of a woman. Roberts reads out the embroidered words on one of Pulver's pillows in dismay]  Tonight or never. Compliments of The American Harvester Company. We plough deep while others sleep.

• Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : [Drinking a toast to Ensign Pulver]  To a great American! Frank Thurlowe Pulver. Soldier, statesman, scientist...

  Doc : Friend of the working girl.

• Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : Frank, you asked me what I thought of you. Well, I'll tell you. The day you finish one thing you started out to do, the day you actually *put* those marbles in the Captain's overhead, and then have the guts to knock on his door and say, "Captain, *I* put those marbles there," that's the day I'll have some respect for you. That's the day I'll look up to you as a man. Okay?

• Doc : [reading the inscription on Mr. Roberts' medal]  Order of the Palm. To Lt. JG Douglas Roberts. For action against the enemy, above and beyond the call of duty.

  Lt. j.g. Douglas A. Roberts : It's very nice, but I think you got the wrong guy.

  Chief Petty Officer Dowdy : [smiling]  We know sir, but we'd like you to have it anyway.