- Hymie Kelly: [narrating] Frankie wanted the town to be aware he was alive and he knew how to do it. Man, he wanted to swallow Hollywood like a cat with a canary. And he did it. The parts got bigger, and Frankie was hooked. Like a junkie shooting pure quicksilver into his veins. Frankie got turned on the wildest narcotic known to mortal man: Success. And he needed larger and larger doses. As the years went by, it became part of his life like air. The attention, the recognition. Now he was somebody. He was always too hungry. Too much and too far ahead of himself. He bought a Rolls before he could afford it. He bought the mansion in Bel Air. He went the route. The interiors were from the best shops on decorators row. Even Sam the houseboy was imported. Frankie played the part for real, the whole image. He had arrived.
- 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.
- 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!
- Sheriff: Hymie Kelly. Where'd ya get the name Kelly, *Hymie*?
- Hymie Kelly: From my father, Michael Kelly! And he got it from his father, Timothy Kelly! And my mother's name was Sadie Rabinowitz, any more questions?
- Hymie Kelly: [thinking] You finally made it, Frankie! Oscar night! And here you sit, on top of a glass mountain called "success." You're one of the chosen five, and the whole town's holding its breath to see who won it. It's been quite a climb, hasn't it, Frankie? Down at the bottom, scuffling for dimes in those smokers, all the way to the top. Magic Hollywood! Ever think about it? I do, friend Frankie, I do...
- 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: [narrating] Frankie found himself married, but, uh, he still couldn't change his feelings about women. So his only avenue was escape. He employed the slimy services of the Hymie Kelly broad-procuring agency. I was running out of numbers! He used 'em like Kleenex! Once, and threw 'em 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!
- [last lines]
- Merle Oberon: And the winner is... Frank - *Sinatra*!
- [the audience applauds; Frankie Fane, already standing, is crushed; Sinatra jogs up to the podium]
- Frank Sinatra: Thank you. Thank you very much.
- 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!
- Hymie Kelly: [narrating] He was living in a posh place just off the Strip. It was a far cry from the motels we used to crawl into. It had hot and cold running everything!
- 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.
- Sam: He's in a funky mood today.
- Hymie Kelly: Well, you know that pattern, every time he starts a new picture, snarly Fane, the boy-faced dog.
- Sam: Miss Cheryl Barker. Butter would melt in her mouth.
- Hymie Kelly: [laughs] Why not? She's got a hot mouth.
- 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.
- Alfred 'Kappy' Kapstetter: Look, I'm - I'm not trying to hurt you, I'm just trying to clear away the fog between you and reality.
- 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.
- 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.
- Bob Hope: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the annual Academy Award show. This is Hollywood's big night, so naturally we're holding it in Santa Monica.
- [audience laughs]
- Bob Hope: I'm emceeing the awards because they wanted someone who could lose and keep smiling...
- [audience laughs]
- Bob Hope: - and I've had the most practice.
- [audience laughs]
- Bob Hope: This night means a lot to everyone in the movie industry. This is the night war and politics are forgotten, and we find out who we *really* hate.
- [audience laughs and applauds]
- 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*!
- Kay Bergdahl: Kay, why don't you go to bed? It's almost three A.M.
- Kay Bergdahl: Because my bed is empty of husband. You know what I do, Hymie? I count nights. I found a Freudian substitute for counting sheep. I count empty nights.
- Kenneth Regan: These are exhibitors' reports, they speak very clearly and very loudly. They say do not send any more Frank Fane product. Send *botulism* or *typhus*, don't send Fain.
- Alfred 'Kappy' Kapstetter: So. We take off the clown's happy face and see tears underneath.
- Sophie Cantaro: Don't, Kappy.
- Alfred 'Kappy' Kapstetter: You leave a man's career like a bag of broken glass, and you say, "Don't, Kappy"?
- 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!
- Alfred 'Kappy' Kapstetter: Have you ever seen a moth smashed against a window? Leaves the dust of its wing. You're like that, Frankie. You leave a powder of dirt everywhere you touch.
- Trina Yale: Sure, Barney never reveals his clients. If he did he'd be killing the goose that lays his golden rotten eggs.
- 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.
- Sophie Cantaro: I want him to be *my* discovery, it's very important to me.
- Alfred 'Kappy' Kapstetter: Is it... is it possible he's *too* important?