The Barefoot Contessa (1954)

Humphrey Bogart: Harry Dawes

Photos 

Quotes 

• Harry Dawes : "Life, every now and then, behaves as though it had seen too many bad movies, when everything fits too well - the beginning, the middle, the end - from fade-in to fade-out."

• Maria Vargas : In Hollywood, it is not easy to become a star.

  Harry Dawes : Ah, where is it easy?

• Maria Vargas : Can you teach me to act, Mr. Dawes?

  Harry Dawes : If you can act, I can help you. If you can't nobody can teach you.

• Harry Dawes : I have a sixth sense that any witch in the world would give her left broomstick to have.

• Harry Dawes : The fact that you don't drink at all, Kirk, is the greatest argument for drunkenness I know.

• Harry Dawes : My name is Harry Dawes.

  Maria Vargas : Harry Dawes? Harry Dawes? Did you not once direct Jean Harlow and Carole Lombard?

  Harry Dawes : You must have gone to the movies when you were a very little girl. How did you know my name? Only one out of 10,000 moviegoers...

  Maria Vargas : Oh, I can name to you Lubitsch and Fleming and Van Dyke and La Cava

  Harry Dawes : You didn't think I was dead too, did you?

• Harry Dawes : [voiceover]  The difference between European and American movie magnates is astonishing. There is absolutely none.

• Harry Dawes : [voiceover]  The blonde was made in Hollywood, USA. Her name was Myrna - and she travelled.

• Harry Dawes : [voiceover]  We'd been scouting for what is called, delicately, a new face. By most standards, flying all the way to Madrid to look for a new face would seem like going to a lot of trouble. But I've known producers who'd travel further for a good smoked whitefish.

• Harry Dawes : [voiceover]  Kirk was producing a motion picture -- his first. He has as much in common with anything creative as I have with nuclear physics.

• Harry Dawes : There's more to talking than just words.

• Harry Dawes : What I tell Maria to do, she will do - with her shoes on, that is.

  Oscar Muldoon : What's her shoes got to do with it?

  Harry Dawes : Nothing.

• Harry Dawes : The unholy pity of it! The one man in all of your fantasy and the one woman in all of his who could have made each other happy. And, once more, life louses up the script.

• Harry Dawes : [voiceover]  Kirk Edwards - Wall Street wizard who came up from the streets of New York. Who came up from the bottom, but never really left it.

• Harry Dawes : [voiceover]  My name is Harry Dawes I've been a writer and director of movies for longer than I like to remember. I go way back: back to when the movies had two dimensions, and one dimension, and sometimes no dimension at all.

• Harry Dawes : Seorita, your bare feet are showing.

• Maria Vargas : In Hollywood, it is not easy to become a star.

  Harry Dawes : Ah, where is it easy?

  Maria Vargas : In Madrid, here at least I'm a little star. Why should I take the chance that I lose it?

• Harry Dawes : Do you know who Mr Kirk Edwards is?

  Maria Vargas : I have heard of him. He is the owner of Texas.

  Harry Dawes : That is correct. Recently, however, Mr. Edwards decided to produce motion pictures and for that purpose he's just bought California, too.

  Maria Vargas : And now he wants to buy me.

• Maria Vargas : Why did not Mr Kirk Edwards come to ask me himself?

  Harry Dawes : Well, I'm sure he would have been delighted! But, after all, since I'm the Director...

  Maria Vargas : Do all Directors come to ask young women to sit with their Producers?

• Maria Vargas : The man with the sweat was more pleasant.

  Harry Dawes : Not really.

• Maria Vargas : Key light? What is that?

  Harry Dawes : Oh, that's your own special light when the stage is all lit up. The light that shines only on you,

  Maria Vargas : Like the moon.

  Harry Dawes : Like the moon. You have to learn how to find this light out of all the other lights. How never to lose it. How to make it do things for your eyes and your lips and your hair.

  Maria Vargas : But, this is not acting.

  Harry Dawes : No, this is not acting.

• Harry Dawes : Her name is Jerry.

  Maria Vargas : She has the name of a man.

  Harry Dawes : There is no further resemblance.

• Maria Vargas : Mr Dawes, do you think really that I could be a star?

  Harry Dawes : Well, there's one phrase I've avoided like the plague; because, it never worked out. With you, I think it would. You - couldn't miss.

  Maria Vargas : I think that I am pretty enough. But, I would not want to be that kind of star.

• Oscar Muldoon : You can't get away with this!

  Harry Dawes : You're being disloyal, Oscar. You're stealing dialogue from television

• Harry Dawes : What are you afraid of?

  Maria Vargas : The same as everybody else. The same as you. Of being exposed and unprotected. Like Mr Kirk Edwards without his money. Like you, as you used to be without your drink - or now without your script girl, who loves you. Like me, in my shoes and on display for men and women to examine - for different reasons.

• Harry Dawes : Many men must be in love with you.

  Maria Vargas : In the dirt, it's hard to tell.

  Harry Dawes : Haven't you been in love?

  Maria Vargas : From the dirt, it's easy to look into the clouds.

• Maria Vargas : I am ready, Mr Dawes.

  Harry Dawes : You forgot your shoes.

  Maria Vargas : No. I did not forget them.

• Harry Dawes : Where are you, Maria?

  Maria Vargas : Half in the dirt and half out.

• Harry Dawes : [voiceover]  Nothing could have helped. The moving finger had already writ and moved on. And nothing I could do would have cancelled half a line. Nor would my tears wash out a word of it.

• Harry Dawes : I don't want this to be a shock to you; but, a Count is a man and a Contessa is a woman.

• Harry Dawes : Are you still bewitched? And bewildered?

• Harry Dawes : The hardest thing in the world is getting an actor to stand still.

• Harry Dawes : It's not going to be easy.

  Maria Vargas : Has it been, up till now?

• Maria Vargas : I do not like Mr. Kirk Edwards.

  Harry Dawes : You're starting at the end of a long, long line.

  Maria Vargas : Somehow, to me, he is not a healthy man. Somehow he's sick. And I cannot bear to watch sick people be sick.

• Harry Dawes : [voiceover]  Don't feel sorry for Kirk Edwards - not unless you're a hungry psychiatrist.

• Maria Vargas : Harry, I think that I should go home.

  Harry Dawes : Well, this is your home.

  Maria Vargas : This is an ugly house in bad taste which I rent, containing a bed to sleep on, when I rest. Chairs to sit on and a stove to keep we warm when I rest.