The Oscar (1966)

Stephen Boyd: Frank Fane

Photos 

Quotes 

• Frankie : [referring to Steve Marks]  What happened to him? He was a good actor. He made more pictures than I have.

  Alfred 'Kappy' Kapstetter : This is a chancy business, Frankie. You never know you're on the way out 'til you suddenly realize it would take a ticket to get back in.

• Frankie : I never said anything about creaming Barney Yale.

  Hymie Kelly : Birdseed, daddy!

• Kay Bergdahl : Frankie, you are *rude* and *nasty*, and *impossible*. Absolutely *impossible*.

  Frankie Fane : Will you stop beating on my ears, I'm up to here with all this bring-down! I'm me. You don't like what you see, then change the scenery. Go. That's right, go!

• Grobard : You got a pretty feisty mouth!

  Frankie Fane : And you got a glass head, I can see right through it! It's how I know you're stupid!

• Frankie Fane : You know, I think you go a little soft in the gourd early in the morning.

  Sophie Cantaro : [angrily]  Look at me when you talk to me! I'm not some sort of garbage pail you can slap a lid on and walk away!

• Hymie Kelly : She died on the table, ya bastard! She died under the knife! She miscarried!

  Frankie Fane : What's that got to do with me?

  Hymie Kelly : It was your baby!

• Frankie Fane : So just go sliding back in there and tell 'em game called on account of Oscar. That's right. *Oscar*.

• Kay Bergdahl : You're wasting your time. I'm not the kind of woman who uses sex as a release or, or even as a weapon.

  Frankie Fane : You always talk like that?

  Kay Bergdahl : I try.

  Frankie Fane : Then do me a favor, will ya, try droppin' it with me, I'm not that smart. You free thinkers confuse me.

  Kay Bergdahl : Let me put it this way. I think I have more to offer than just my body.

  Frankie Fane : [mocking]  Now I understand.

  Kay Bergdahl : I am the end result of everything I've ever learned, all I ever hope to be, and all the experiences I've ever had.

  Frankie Fane : How many experiences have you had?

  Kay Bergdahl : None. But when the right time comes I'll be special for some man. So it's worth waiting for.

• Laurel Scott : Ever since we hit this town you've been living off me. If you think I'm gonna work my tail off so you can run around with the Village chicks... oh, stop spreading the pollen around, Frankie, or else!

  Frankie Fane : Or else what? You'll chop my allowance? You'll turn me out of your warm bed? You're *nothin'*, that's what! So can that "or else" crap!

• Frankie Fane : Wha... Why do I... Why do I always try to destroy the people I love?

• Frankie Fane : Speaking of broads, whatever happened to Laurel?

  Hymie Kelly : I married her.

  Frankie Fane : Oh yeah? How is she?

  Hymie Kelly : She died.

  Frankie Fane : What'd you say?

  Hymie Kelly : I said she died.

• Sophie Cantaro : I don't know why I keep expecting you to act like other men when you're not... you're another kind of machine entirely. You bleed, you cry...

  Frankie Fane : No, Sophie. I don't care about anything that much.

• Frankie Fane : Don't lecture me, you've got to save me, Kappy.

  Alfred 'Kappy' Kapstetter : What am I, the second coming of the messiah? I'm an *agent*. There's just so much I can do.

• Trina Yale : Figured we'd get hammered together and wrestle around on the couch for a while?

  Frankie Fane : How 'bout that.

• Kay : Bye, Frankie! And I hope the Oscar keeps you warm on cold nights!

  Frankie : Yeah, go on and run! You're too stupid to understand!

• Frankie Fane : You a tourist or a native?

  Kay Bergdahl : Take one from column A and two from column B, you get an egg roll either way.

  Frankie Fane : [laughing]  I have a feeling I'm not gonna get anywhere with you.

  Kay Bergdahl : All depends, where you'd like to get.

  Frankie Fane : Mostly I'd like to get alone with you somewhere.

• Laurel Scott : [sighs]  Things haven't been going so good for us the past couple of months, have they?

  Frankie Fane : What you mean is, I'm not workin', so I'm a creep!

  Laurel Scott : You could get a job, Frankie. It wouldn't kill you.

  Frankie Fane : [grabs Laurel]  Tell me all about it. You twitch your hips and you think that's ten years on the road guy. Well, nobody ever gave me a dime that I didn't have to sweat for! So knock off with this lazy slob routine!

  Laurel Scott : You hurt me, Frankie!

  Frankie Fane : Send me a bill.

• Laurel Scott : I've gotta go to work. But when I come back you and me are gonna have a talk!

  Frankie Fane : Sure, if you like talking to yourself!

• Kay Bergdahl : If a woman doesn't treasure herself, how can a man treasure her?

  Frankie Fane : You make my head hurt with all that poetry.

  Kay Bergdahl : [laughs]  I think you try awfully hard not to understand people.

  Frankie Fane : I'm tryin' to understand you.

  Kay Bergdahl : No, you're not. You're trying to seduce me.

• Kay Bergdahl : Don't you understand *how* you embarrassed me in there? Who do you think you are, Frankie, just who do you think you are?

  Frankie Fane : I'm *me*. And that's plenty good enough.

• Kay Bergdahl : You represent everything I *loathe*, Frankie!

  Frankie Fane : You mean everything you *love*!

• Frankie Fane : When you tell it straight you don't do any polka, do you.

• Hymie Kelly : Where've you been? They told me you left the network three hours ago!

  Frankie Fane : I took a drive.

  Hymie Kelly : The phones haven't stopped! While you were out playing the part of the Wandering Gentile everyone who wouldn't look our way last week is calling to proclaim buddyhood.

• Barney Yale : Hey, uh, Mr. Fane, you're a pretty chilly item. I can't figure you out.

  Frankie : Yeah. How 'bout that.

• Frankie : What's the talk around town?

  Hymie Kelly : That you're an ex-pimp and I'm a child molester! I've heard of dirty politics, but this is the lowest!

• Frankie Fane : Gentlemen, gentlemen, what you're about to see is a form of art, art that comes to you from way back in the dawn of time, from that first little bit of art they called Eve. The kind of round and warm art that made that old snake serpent, that the blind stagger started crawling around backwards. I'm talking about Helen of Troy, man, about Cleopatra. I'm talking about woman, friends. I'm talking about Miss Laurel, the one and only hip-switching, nice walking bunch of loveliness you're gonna see right now. Let's hear it for Miss Laurel!

• Kay Bergdahl : Frankie, Miss Cantaro is from Hollywood.

  Frankie Fane : Swingin'. And I'm from Ohio. How many green stamps is that?

  [Miss Cantaro burst out laughing] 

• Hedda Hopper : Anything going between you two I should have for the column?

  Cheryl Barker : Oh really, Hedda, you're embarrassing us. If there's anything at all, you'll be the first to know it.

  Hedda Hopper : Thank you.

  Frankie Fane : There's nothing.

  Cheryl Barker : Frankie and I are just inseparable good friends, that's all.

  Frankie Fane : We're nothing.

  Cheryl Barker : Once you've gone out with Frankie, why, there's just nobody else in Hollywood. I just think Frankie is the most dynamic man I've ever dated.

  Frankie Fane : She's nothing.

• Frankie : You fat honey-dripper, come up with the rest of our money.

• Frankie Fane : You got yourself a beef that's makin' a hole in the back of my head listening to you whine about it.

• Kay Bergdahl : when the right time comes I'll be special for some man. So it's worth waiting for.

  Frankie Fane : Most of us have to keep grabbin' what's handy.

  Kay Bergdahl : Well, I'm not up for grabs.

• Sophie Cantaro : What do you do?

  Frankie Fane : I push a dress cart in the garment center. Strong back, weak mind.

  Sophie Cantaro : Do you think you could tear yourself away long enough for a little stage experience?

• Frankie Fane : I can't offer you a front table at the Waldorf, but I'll show you the big town. We'll have Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island too.

  Kay Bergdahl : How very lyrical.

• Frankie Fane : You can call me Mr. Fane.

• Frankie Fane : You want to make me a star, is that right? Haven't we got this all backwards? Isn't it me that's supposed to be hustlin' you?

• Sophie Cantaro : Ah, Mr. Fane. Mr. Fane.

  Frankie Fane : You can call me Frankie.

• Sophie Cantaro : Don't break a leg getting out of here.

  Frankie Fane : What's that supposed to mean?

  Sophie Cantaro : I didn't know we considered meanings, Frankie. I thought you and I went strictly by instinct.

  Frankie Fane : You got a bug again.

  Sophie Cantaro : No bug, just a middle-aged woman's rosary, a bead for each year, six with your name on them.

• Kay Bergdahl : Fine, now you got the yacht and you got cars, and - they save the best table for you at the best restaurants. So what? You haven't changed. It's that seed of rot inside of you which makes you what you are. That you can't change. You just dress it better.

  Frankie Fane : Now I get it. I think I understand. Maybe it's that thing inside me, that rot, that evil you think you see. Maybe that's what turns you on.

  Kay Bergdahl : Take me home, Frankie.

  Frankie Fane : You slapped my face the first time I made a pass at you. But you got me a job that kept me near you. Every time I tried to get close, you pushed me away, but not too far. Oh, that middle European peasant upbringing of yours, baby. They told you so often that playing house with a guy was dirty, you got all knotted up inside. But you like to play. So you can't get turned on by a guy who treats you nice, a schlep like the one you were out with tonight. But a guy who wipes his feet on you? That, you dig.

• Frankie Fane : Listen, Kay. I was a punk without a subway token. It couldn't have gone anywhere with us. It's different now.

  Kay Bergdahl : What are you talking about?

  Frankie Fane : I'm talking about us.

  Kay Bergdahl : Us? There's no us. There's you and there's me. There's no us.

• Frankie Fane : Would you mind breakin' that two-buck violin you're playin'? What is this sincere bit?

• Sophie Cantaro : Go on and get out of here. That's what you want to do anyway, you want get out of here without having to look at me. So, go on, go on!

  Frankie Fane : I'm going, old lady. But let's make this the last stand. Let's make this the one that wraps it up. Fade out!

• Kay Bergdahl : What does it mean "dedicate the bull" to you?

  Frankie Fane : It means they cut the ears of the dead carcass and give them to me.

  Kay Bergdahl : That sounds charming.

• Trina Yale : You know, I admire you.

  Frankie Fane : You admire me.

  Trina Yale : 'Cause you're a movin' picture star. That's what I was gonna be.

• Frankie Fane : I go better with you than any other girl I know. Woman, I know. Which are you, Kay? Girl or woman?

  Kay Bergdahl : I'd like to think that I'm a woman, Frankie.

  Frankie Fane : Woman.

  [kiss] 

  Frankie Fane : Spend the night with me - at Rosarita Beach.

• Frankie Fane : I'm beat. We'll talk about it tomorrow.

  Kay Bergdahl : But we're running out of tomorrows.

• Frankie Fane : What about that spy thing at Warner's?

  Alfred 'Kappy' Kapstetter : They signed Dean Martin.

  Frankie Fane : Dean Martin? That part was right for me.

  Alfred 'Kappy' Kapstetter : Yeah, but they wanted Dean Martin.

• Frankie Fane : Tell it like it is.

  Alfred 'Kappy' Kapstetter : Well, they talk James Garner or Rod Taylor or somebody else. They won't talk you.

  Frankie Fane : When you tell it straight, you don't do any polka, do you?

• Alfred 'Kappy' Kapstetter : There's a short-scheduled picture that I've been working on for you. It means a trick deal, a cut in salary. It's a nice script, one of those horror shticks with a couple of big name older actresses.

  Frankie Fane : Kappy, you've gotta be shuckin' me. Cut in salary? Trick deal? Old bags?

• Frankie Fane : You've got to save me, Kappy.

  Alfred 'Kappy' Kapstetter : What am I, the second coming of the Messiah? I'm an agent! There's just so much I can do.

• Alfred 'Kappy' Kapstetter : There's a television pilot deal, an adventure series.

  Frankie Fane : A television pilot?

  Alfred 'Kappy' Kapstetter : I figured you'd feel that way about it.

  Frankie Fane : Pilot films are a dollar a six-pack. If it doesn't sell, I'm really through. This town is full of ex-actors who were in unsold television pilots. They're selling used cars or real estate.

• Kay Bergdahl : Machiavelli would have loved your technique. In no time at all I've been typecast as the nagging, shrewish haus frau.

  Frankie Fane : Kay, you're getting more, more I don't know what every day.

  Kay Bergdahl : If you're groping for a verb to explain my condition, try "frustrated," huh?

• Frankie Fane : I'm fighting for my life! And I'll use a spiked boot on anybody who gets in my way.

• Frankie Fane : Losers are a dime a dozen. Who were the nominees last year? Or the year before? Can't remember, right? Only get remembered when you win. And I'm gonna win.

• Frankie Fane : I'm not exactly Guy Kibbee, world's most beloved actor.

• Frankie Fane : This is starting to smell, Yale. Put a little chlorophyll in the conversation.

• Frankie Fane : I'm gonna win that Oscar!

  Alfred 'Kappy' Kapstetter : Perhaps you will. But do you want me to tell you why you won that nomination? Because you played the role of a man without morals, a man without ethics or decency. You played the part of you, yourself, Frankie Fane. What you really are.

• Frankie Fane : Stinkin' creep!

  Alfred 'Kappy' Kapstetter : Hey, the sun is warm today.

  Frankie Fane : Miserable flesh peddier!

  Alfred 'Kappy' Kapstetter : I think I'll take a nice rock steam bath.

  Frankie Fane : Drop dead, damn youl!

• Frankie Fane : I'd like to see his grinning kisser pounded to jelly, break his arms, bust him up good. We can't let him roll over us like this.

• Frankie Fane : Inside that chorus girl head, you've got a guillotine.

  Trina Yale : Inside that chorus girl head, I've got a lot of sad.

• Hymie Kelly : Hey, are there always that many broads around?

  Frankie Fane : Wait till the weekend!

  Hymie Kelly : Hey, I'm gonna like it here.

• Frankie Fane : Is there something eating you, lady?

  Sophie Cantaro : What should be eating me? That I haven't seen you in almost two months? That Sam or Hymie tell me you've gone to Tierra del Fuego when I call? That you should appear suddenly out of the night and expect me to play Lady Bountiful to your world-weary carcass? Oh, should I be disturbed? Heaven forbid.

• Frankie Fane : Hymie, fix Kappy a plate of Huevos Rancheros.

  Hymie Kelly : Eggs rancheros coming up in honor of our Mexican friends below the border. Eggs made with chopped green tomatoes, some chilies, and a couple of squirts of Tequila guaranteed to cement inter-American relations.

  Alfred 'Kappy' Kapstetter : Just orange juice.

• Frankie Fane : One phone call and I'm not dogmeat like I was in Regan's office, like I was in there a minute ago. One phone call. So just go sliding back in there and tell 'em, "game called on account of Oscar." That's right, Oscar. That phone call from Hymie. Academy nominations were announced.

• Hymie Kelly : You don't care who else it smears, do you?

  Frankie Fane : Can't make an omelet without breakin' eggs.

• Frankie Fane : You start balkin', I start cuttin' the hired help. And you ain't got a union, baby.

  Hymie Kelly : No, but I've got a patron Saint. Saint Judas.

• Hymie Kelly : Can't you reason with Yale?

  Frankie Fane : Sure I can reason with him, but it will take 15,000 green reasons. You tell me where I'm gonna dig up that much logic.

• Frankie Fane : Hymie, help me. Help me, Hymie.