Tension (1949)

Barry Sullivan: Lt. Collier Bonnabel

Photos 

Quotes 

• Lt. Collier Bonnabel : Where's the gun, Quimby?

  Warren Quimby : Where's the gun? Why don't you ask my wife? Barney Deager was her friend, not mine. She was at his house, not me. Why don't you ask her? Maybe she'll tell you that, too. Go on, ask her! Ask her! Ask her!

• [first lines] 

  Lt. Collier Bonnabel : I'm Collier Bonnabel. I'm a cop. I'm a Lieutenant Detective in, uh, Homicide. That's a fancy name for murder. We get plenty of tough cases. Solve most of 'em, sure. But how?

  [begins to stretch and relax a rubber band] 

  Lt. Collier Bonnabel : I only know one way, one thing that breaks 'em wide open - tension. I work on people, on suspects. Play up to them. Play up to their strengths, pour it on their weaknesses. Romance 'em or ignore 'em. Kiss 'em. Press 'em. But whatever way, keep stretching them.

  [now stretches rubber band to its extreme without relaxing it] 

  Lt. Collier Bonnabel : Everything, everybody's got a breaking point. And when they get stretched so tight they can't take it any longer...

  [rubber band snaps as film title flashes on screen with dramatic fanfare in score] 

• Artie : [approaching Bonnabel in a bar]  Lieutenant, what are you working on?

  Lt. Collier Bonnabel : Irish whiskey.

• Lt. Collier Bonnabel : You're talking to me, Claire. That's like talking to an old friend. I know you from way back.

  Claire Quimby : So?

  Lt. Collier Bonnabel : So... I got a file on you that goes back further than you'd like to remember and up to where you wish you could forget.

• Lt. Collier Bonnabel : [voice over]  This is the corner of St. Ann's and 13th. That's an all night drug store. It never closes! You know, in a town as big as this there are only four or five of 'em. Oh, that's Warren Quimby. He's the night manager. Lives in an apartment right over the drug store. You know, these stores have everything: raisins and radios, paregoric and phonographs, vitamin capsules and cap pistols. They'll serve you a cup a coffee, sell you a pack of cigarettes or a a postage stamp, and in a pinch they'll even fill a prescription for you.

• Lt. Collier Bonnabel : [voice over]  It was a beautiful morning. Most people look forward to the morning as the beginning of the new day. There's a hope, a promise of good things about to happen.

• Lt. Edgar Gonsales : There is no Paul Southern.

  Lt. Collier Bonnabel : What are talking about?

  Lt. Edgar Gonsales : Get a load of this. Not in the phone directories. Has no car on the ship. He's not on any payroll, hotel registry. No hospital cards on him. No charge accounts. Never took out any insurance. He doesn't take milk from a milkman. Doesn't have a newspaper delivery. And he's got no police record. All we've got to do is find him.

• Lt. Collier Bonnabel : We'll find him. They always make one mistake. All we got to do is look for that one mistake. Find it and we've got Paul Southern.

• Artie : What about the dame? When are you gonna haul in the dame?

  Lt. Collier Bonnabel : What dame, Artie? What dame?

  Artie : The dame what plugged Deager, that dame.

• Claire Quimby : Look, Lieutenant. I'm a big girl. About the dame...

  Lt. Collier Bonnabel : Yeah?

  Claire Quimby : Me maybe?

• Lt. Collier Bonnabel : What's wrong with this? What's wrong combining a little business with a little...

  Claire Quimby : Pleasure?

• Lt. Collier Bonnabel : You're in the clear. We've checked all the leads. Everybody's in the clear. The Deager case is right back were it started. No place.

• Lt. Collier Bonnabel : Missing persons just called.

  Lt. Edgar Gonsales : What?

  Lt. Collier Bonnabel : Paul Southern had a dame.

  Lt. Edgar Gonsales : Yo ho!

• Lt. Collier Bonnabel : [voice over]  Yeah, the tension was working; but, nobody was ready to break. I needed more pressure. Claire. She was a smart baby and tough. But, I thought I knew what would work on her - all the way down the line.