Sweet Bird of Youth (1962)

Ed Begley: 'Boss' Finley

Photos 

Quotes 

• Boss Finley : [to Chance Wayne, after referring to him as 'Prince']  I once had a dog called Prince. I had to butcher him to keep all the bitches in town from being violated.

• Boss Finley : [to Nonnie]  Me... What about me?

  Aunt Nonnie : [Parting words to Boss Finley]  You? You can go straight to hell!

• Heavenly Finley : You have got an illusion of power, Boss.

  Boss Finley : I have power - and that is no illusion.

• Boss Finley : A lot of folks say they like what I did but they don't like the way I did it. But if a bunch of hogs won't come out of your garden when you holler: Sooie! - then you've gotta use language and methods that hogs and pigs understand. Do you understand?

• Boss Finley : I'm against loose government, loose money, and loose women!

• Boss Finley : Only idiots laugh at nothing.

• Boss Finley : I expect you and your Daughters of Dixie to be there.

  Mrs. Maribelle Norris : God bless you, honey.

• Boss Finley : I've hawked and spit all my life - and I'll go on hawkin' and spittin' till the end of my days. You can bet on that.

• Boss Finley : They say I stole their oil rights. Well, if'n I did, I stole it for my state and my people. I also fought the fertilizer trust. I lowered taxes. I saved our hog-raisers from the Chicago meatpackers.

• Boss Finley : Let me tell you something, laddie. This here is America. Today you're nobody, tomorrow you're somebody. But you got to think big, act big, and you'll be big.

• Boss Finley : In this world, there's only one payoff window. Number one. The winner. Success. Now, that can be you.

• Boss Finley : You're my kind of man. You got ambition, ideas, youth. And the good looks to go with them too.

• Boss Finley : Boy, you just got a natural talent for being plain mean and ornery.

• Boss Finley : Supposin' Mr. Wayne didn't just happen to come back. Supposin' he was sent for - to smear his stink over Heavenly and, through her, over me.

• Boss Finley : I'm only tryin' to save my baby from being hurt ever again.

  Heavenly Finley : How? By insistin' I marry Dr. George Scudder? And before him, a 50-year-old moneybags you needed for your business?

  Boss Finley : Me? Sell my own flesh and blood?

  Heavenly Finley : More than once. Remember the Texas oil tycoon? And the Washington wheel? All of them rich, all of them important.

  Boss Finley : Every one of them had a powerful feelin' for you.

• Boss Finley : Burnin' books, Halloween masks. You're just plain stupid, boy. Least you could've done is wear white hoods and burned a cross on his lawn. Then the Ku Klux Klan would've been blamed for it.

  Thomas J. Finley, Jr. : Oh, my.

  Boss Finley : You better stop laughin' at nothin' or you'll end up in a nuthouse, committed there by me.

• Heavenly Finley : She doesn't speak very well of you, Papa. She says you're not much of a lover.

  Boss Finley : Who says Miss Lucy says that?

  Heavenly Finley : She wrote it with lipstick on the mirror in the ladies' room at the hotel bar.

• Boss Finley : You listen to me, you ungrateful, hypocritical slut. Last week, in the state capital, when I was speakin' on the menace to the chastity of womanhood, a heckler almost caused a riot. You know what he hollered? "Hey, Boss Finley, how about your daughter? How about her chastity?"

• Boss Finley : Like it, sugar baby?

• Dr. George Scudder : He's not gonna involve me in this crazy...

  Boss Finley : Doctor, laddie, you are already involved right up to your scrofulous chicken neck.

• Boss Finley : How can you watch two TVs, chop your toenails, stuff yourself with chocolates, and read a magazine, all at the same time?

  Miss Lucy : I already seen the movie.

• Ben Jackson : Are you aware, Mr. Finley, it was the Finley Youth Club hoodlums that started that riot?

  Boss Finley : What riot? I'm only aware that decent loyal Americans were defending freedom of speech - which I have yet to receive the benefit of.

• Boss Finley : I am shocked, *shocked*, to find our state overrun by backstabbin' Bolsheviki and Red rabble-rousers.