Band of Angels (1957)

Clark Gable: Hamish Bond

Photos 

Quotes 

• Amantha Starr : You say you won't touch me. You give me your *word* as a gentleman. Well, what's to stop you from breakin' your word late one night and forcin' yourself on me while I sleep?

  Hamish Bond : [grins]  Only the word of a gentleman.

  Amantha Starr : [late that night, unable to sleep]  He said he wouldn't. But those are his footsteps, coming down the hall. Coming closer!

  [listens tensely] 

  Amantha Starr : He didn't! Not tonight, anyway. Why not?

  [Frowning at first, she thinks it over, then gradually falls asleep] 

• Hamish Bond : Sounds like the gales we used to get off Rio Pongo. I've seen them all: Cape Verde, Cape Saint Maria, Sierra Leone, and the Bight of Benin.

  Amantha Starr : You sailed to all those places?

  Hamish Bond : Yes, and a thousand more. Or maybe it wasn't me at all. Maybe it was that other fellow, the fellow I used to be. He wasn't a bad sort.

• Hamish Bond : I can still hear them. The puking and the screaming and the praying.

• Hamish Bond : I was in the nigger business. I was in it in a large way, if I may say so without pompous boasting.

  Amantha Starr : You mean the slave trade?

  Hamish Bond : Yeah. They called me Captain Strike Down. There was a time when I was right proud of that name. Well, a man has to be proud of something. But don't get the idea that it was all white man's wickedness. My chief partner was Old Gezo, a black king who drank rum out of gold-mounted skulls while the buzzards sat around waiting for him to start to slaughter.

• Hamish Bond : Wherever you go, l don't want to know where it is - I don't ever want to know where you are.

• Hamish Bond : I know better than most men that money is no cure-all. I used to think it was. I used to think it would open the door to friendship and other essentials more important than power. I used to believe it was everything. A drug for loneliness, a painkiller for certain memories. Well, the whole apothecary shop for every problem of life.

• Amantha Starr : Why did you buy me?

  Hamish Bond : Because you were on the slave block, somebody else was bound to bid you in. I saw a fellow with laced cuffs putting his hands on you - and I hate lace cuffs.

• Hamish Bond : I got a past I'd like to forget; but, I can't run away from it - no more than you can run away from what you are.

• Hamish Bond : Listen, forget everything. Everything that's happened. Forget me.

• Hamish Bond : The world is full of fools.

  Rau-Ru : Of all colors, monsieur. The cry for freedom is in the air like a rising wind. Slaves have already gone wild on many plantations.

• Hamish Bond : He's a blue blood all right. But, I always figured it was better to be a man than a gentleman.

• Hamish Bond : You used the whip and the hot iron too much.

• Hamish Bond : Men don't make history, but are shaped by history - and history takes its time.

• Rau-Ru : This is a new day.

  Hamish Bond : Maybe for you, but not for me.

• Hamish Bond : He's a high-stepper, isn't he? That's why they call him "Big Bond's High-Stepper." He gets off the sidewalk for nobody. No constable or paddy roll ever stopped him. Nor no steamboat captain ever asked to see his pass. Because he's Big Bond's boss Negro.

  Amantha Starr : And what am I? All your others know their duties. What are mine?