Sweet Bird of Youth (1962)

Geraldine Page: Alexandra Del Lago

Photos 

Quotes 

• Chance Wayne : This is pretty high-class pot. Where'd you get it?

  Alexandra Del Lago : You beautiful, stupid young man. That is not pot. It's hashish, Moroccan, and the finest.

• Chance Wayne : .I appeared in the biggest stage hit on Broadway. I had my picture on the cover of Life magazine! Woo-ha! And at the same time I was - employing my other talent: lovemaking.

  Alexandra Del Lago : That may be the only talent you were ever truly meant for.

• Alexandra Del Lago : [after looking at Chance Wayne, who seems quite proud of his looks]  Well, I may have done better... but God knows I have done worse.

• Alexandra Del Lago : [to Chance Wayne]  I don't remember the face, but your hands are familiar.

• Chance Wayne : Well, some more oxygen?

  Alexandra Del Lago : No. No, I must look hideous in it.

  Chance Wayne : Oh, no, honey. You just look exotic. Yeah. Like a princess from Mars or a... big magnified insect.

• Alexandra Del Lago : Did we spend the night together?

  Chance Wayne : Oh, yes, ma'am. But I did not molest you.

  Alexandra Del Lago : Well, should I thank you for that or accuse you of cheating?

• Chance Wayne : Princess, just smoke.

  Alexandra Del Lago : Oh, yes. Smoke. And after this - the mercenary young lovers.

  Chance Wayne : Like me?

  Alexandra Del Lago : Yes, like you.

• Alexandra Del Lago : That water. Is that the Pacific Ocean?

  Chance Wayne : No, ma'am, that's the Gulf.

  Alexandra Del Lago : What Gulf?

  Chance Wayne : The gulf of misunderstanding between you and me.

• Chance Wayne : Don't you trust me?

  Alexandra Del Lago : Who taught you to rub desperate ladies the right way? And you say all you did was manipulate the papaya cream?

  Chance Wayne : Well, more or less.

  Alexandra Del Lago : How much more?

  Chance Wayne : Ma'am, if we'd made love, you'd have remembered it.

  Alexandra Del Lago : Well, what stopped you? Certainly not I. And certainly not *your* ethics.

• Chance Wayne : Aren't you ashamed a little?

  Alexandra Del Lago : Yes. Aren't you?

  Chance Wayne : More than a little.

  Alexandra Del Lago : Close the curtains, please. Then come here to me. And make me almost believe that we are a pair of young lovers without any shame.

• Alexandra Del Lago : My real, my only, interest in life is me, Alexandra Del Lago.

• Chance Wayne : Princess, now, look, you've gotta open the right doors for me. I know you're gonna do this for me, Princess. Because, I have been knocking on those doors of success till my insides are bloody. Because that's the way I've been knocking on those doors, see, with my bare insides!

  Alexandra Del Lago : You will open only one door: The door to my car as my chauffeur. You will wake me in the morning, as my butler or my lover, depending on what *I* want. In a few years, you will be through with your good looks and I will be through with you. And that is the truth. Can you face the truth?

• Alexandra Del Lago : Look at yourself. What do you see? What? A nameless face, that's what you see. Oh, I remember faces like yours. I remember young men with dreams like yours. I remember their eyes, I remember their voices, I remember their smiles, I remember their bodies. But their names, their names have gone. They're just nameless bodies.

• [first lines] 

  Alexandra Del Lago : Hey. Hey, you, whoever you are.

  Chance Wayne : Are you awake now, princess?

  Alexandra Del Lago : I want a drink.

  Chance Wayne : Oh, soon, princess.

  Alexandra Del Lago : I want it now! Oh, please, please get me a drink. For Gods sake, baby, don't hold out on me.

• Alexandra Del Lago : By the way, did we *do* anything?

• Alexandra Del Lago : I don't mind waking up in an intimate situation with someone, but I do like to see who it is. So I can make whatever adjustment seems called for.

• Chance Wayne : Do you remember where we met?

  Alexandra Del Lago : Well, this much I do remember: that I like bodies - to be silky-smooth, hard gold.

• Chance Wayne : What's the matter?

  Alexandra Del Lago : I remembered the thing I wanted to forget. The stupid, senseless end of my life, that's all. No wonder I didn't want to remember.

• Alexandra Del Lago : Where does one retire to? There is no place to retire to when you retire from the movies. No place except oblivion.

• Alexandra Del Lago : If I had just been old. But, you see, I wasn't old. I just wasn't young. Not young. I just wasn't young anymore.

• Chance Wayne : Your comeback. I mean, what happened? You just didn't have it anymore?

  Alexandra Del Lago : Oh, I had it. I had the will and I had the talent to go with it. But the camera. The camera doesn't know how to lie. The screen is a very clear mirror. There is a thing, God help us, called a close-up.

• Chance Wayne : First, we - we let the hash take effect. And, then, we apply the magic formula.

  Alexandra Del Lago : What?

  Chance Wayne : Like we did in Palm Beach, remember? That soothing, magical formula called papaya cream.

  Alexandra Del Lago : Ah, yes. Yes. Papaya-cream rubs...

• Alexandra Del Lago : Boy, I doubt very much if I have any vice, old or new, that I could introduce to you.

  Chance Wayne : Ma'am, don't call me boy.

• Alexandra Del Lago : The hashish came later. In Tangier.

  Chance Wayne : How'd you get it into the States, smuggle it?

  Alexandra Del Lago : Know another way?

• Chance Wayne : That's very ugly language.

  Alexandra Del Lago : The language of the gutter is understood by anyone who ever fell in it.

• Alexandra Del Lago : Now, then, signed checks are payment. Delivery comes first. I have only one way to forget the things that I don't want to remember and that way is through making love. It's the only dependable distraction and I need that distraction right now.

• Alexandra Del Lago : Why did you still hold out?

  Chance Wayne : I wanted to hold your interest.

  Alexandra Del Lago : Well, you miscalculated. My interest always increases with satisfaction.

• Alexandra Del Lago : I would like to smoke, please. No, no. Just one of the ordinary cigarettes that only give you cancer.

• Chance Wayne : I've wallowed in a social register of New York - with discreet wives in the millionaire set and debutante daughters in the horsy set.

  Alexandra Del Lago : Did they foot the bills too?

  Chance Wayne : Yeah. But I always gave them much more than I took. To older women, I gave back a feeling of excitement and youth. To sad, lost women - a merciful display of affection and temporary hope. Eccentrics? Understanding, tolerance.

  Alexandra Del Lago : You must have been quite a successful enterprise.

• Alexandra Del Lago : A movie starring our special talent would be banned in all 50 states, censored worldwide.

• Alexandra Del Lago : What are those lovely bells?

  Chance Wayne : Why, madam, it is Easter Sunday.

  Alexandra Del Lago : How fitting. I feel absolutely reborn. Yes. The world and I are on very good terms this morning.

• Alexandra Del Lago : Do you want me to call the police?

  Thomas J. Finley, Jr. : All right, you go ahead. Do that, Miss Del Lago. You tell them you spent the night in an orgy with a criminal degenerate.

• Thomas J. Finley, Jr. : This is the Assistant Manager and I am Tom Finley, Jr.

  Alexandra Del Lago : Well, I hardly imagined that you were a senior.

• Alexandra Del Lago : Chance, I am truly ashamed of last night. I will *never* degrade you - nor myself.

• Alexandra Del Lago : I realized that your coming back here and the things that you'd hoped for, poor baby, I knew that your comeback had been a failure, like my own. And at that moment, I felt something in my heart for you. It's a miracle. It's a wonderful thing that has happened to me. I felt something for somebody besides myself. You know what that means? That means that my heart is still alive.

• Miss Lucy : Give the hicks a show, Miss. You show them you're a real princess. It's good public relations.

  Alexandra Del Lago : Public? The public and I have always enjoyed the very best relations.

• Alexandra Del Lago : What happened to your unfinished business? Floppola?

• Alexandra Del Lago : I did go to the preview, but I only stayed a few minutes. As soon I saw that first big close-up of myself on that monstrous CinemaScope - I tell you, I ran right out of there! I screamed for a taxi and I haven't been - I haven't stopped running since.

• Alexandra Del Lago : I know exactly the kind of gold-plated hell I'm going to. But you, you have gone past something you couldn't afford to go past. Your time, your youth. You've passed it. Is all you've had and you've had it!

• Alexandra Del Lago : I need nobody. I climbed up alone. And I will climb back alone. Back to where I belong.

• Alexandra Del Lago : I heard nothing, read nothing, I just wanted oblivion.

• Alexandra Del Lago : I saw Franz a few years later in Monte Carlo. He was with a woman of 70, and his eyes were older than hers. But she held him. She led him by an invisible chain through a string of hotels and casinos and bars like a blind, obedient lap dog. Chance Wayne is Franz Albertzart.

• Chance Wayne : Just look at yourself. What do you see in there?

  Alexandra Del Lago : I see me. Alexandra Del Lago, artist and star.