(liquid dripping)
(loud snoring)
Make it fast.
Don't want the boys to get wise.
Jees!
(laughs)
Ain't the old bastard a riot
when he starts that bull about
"turnin' over a new leaf"?
"Not a damn drink on the house," he tells me,
"and all these bums have gotta pay up their room rent
beginning tomorrow," he says.
(both men laughing)
I'm glad to pay up...
tomorrow.
And I know my fellow inmates will promise the same.
They've all a touching credulity
concerning tomorrows.
It'll be a great day for them tomorrow,
The Feast of All Fools.
And their ships will come in loaded to the gunwales,
with cancelled regrets and promises fulfilled,
and clean slates and new leases.
Yeah, and a ton of hope!
Don't mock their faith.
You no respect for religion,
you unregenerate Wop?
What does it matter if the truth is
that their favoring breeze
will have the stink of nickel whiskey
on its breath?
And their sea will be a growler
of lager and ale?
And their ships will long since be looted and scuttled,
and sunk on the bottom?
The hell with the truth.
The history of the world proves that truth
has no bearing on anything.
It's the lie of the pipe dream that gives life to the whole
misbegotten mad lot of us,
drunk or sober.
The old Foolosopher, like Hickey calls you.
I suppose you don't fall for no pipe dreams.
No, I don't.
Mine are dead and buried behind me.
What's before me is the fact
that death is a fine long sleep.
I'm damn tired,
and it can't come too soon for me.
Yeah, just hangin' around, hopin' you croak, ain't you?
Well, I'm bettin' you have a good long wait.
Jees, somebody'd have to take an ax to croak you!
(both chuckling)
Yeah, it's my bad luck to be cursed with an iron constitution
that even Harry's booze can't corrode.
The old Anarchist wise guy
that knows all the answers.
Forget the anarchist part of it.
I'm through with the Movement long since.
I saw that, if men wanted to be safe
from themselves,
that would mean they'd have to give up greed.
I wouldn't pay that price for liberty.
So I said to the world, "God bless all here
"and may the best man win...
and die of gluttony."
I took a seat in the grand stand
of philosophical detachment.
Fall asleep observing the cannibals
do their death dance.
Ain't I telling him the truth, Comrade Hugo?
Oh, for Chrissake!
Don't get that bughouse bum started!
(thick Russian accent) Capitalist swine!
Bourgeois stool pigeons!
Have the slaves no right to sleep even?
(giggling)
Hello, little Rocky,
little monkey face!
Where are your little slave girls?
(giggles)
Don't be a fool, loan me a dollar!
Damned bourgeois Wop!
Buy me a drink!
(snoring)
He's out again.
He's lucky no one don't take his cracks serious,
or he'd wake up every morning in a hospital.
"Nobody takes him seriously?"
That's his epitaph.
I've been through with the Movement long since.
It's been through with him.
And thanks to whiskey,
He's the only one that doesn't know it.
He's goin' to pull that slave girl stuff on me
once too often.
Hell, you'd think I was a pimp or somethin'.
A pimp don't hold a job.
I'm a bartender!
Them tarts, Margie and Pearl,
they're just a sideline to pick up some extra dough.
Strictly business,
like they were fighters
and I was their manager, see?
I fixed the cops for them, so they can hustle
without gettin' pinched.
And I don't beat 'em up like a pimp would.
They like me!
What if I, I take their money?
Tarts can't hang on to dough.
But I'm a bartender
and I work hard for my living
in this dump.
Shrewd businessman who doesn't miss
an opportunity to get on in the world, huh?
And that's me;
grab another ball, Larry.
You'd never think all these bums
had a bed upstairs to go to.
Scared if they hit the hay
they wouldn't be here when Hickey showed up,
and they'd miss a couple of drinks.
Me, it's not so much the hope of booze,
but I've got the blues.
And Hickey's a great one to make a joke of everything
and cheer you up.
Yes, some kidder!
Remember how he works up that gag about his wife
when he's cockeyed?
Crying over a picture
and then spilling in on you all of a sudden
that he left her in the hay with the iceman?
(chuckles)
Yeah, I wonder what's happenin'.
You could set your watch
by his periodicals before this.
We always got here a couple of days
before Harry's birthday party,
and now he's only got 'till tonight to make it.
This dump...
(chuckles)
is like a morgue with all these bums passed out.
It's a lie, Papa!
(sobbing)
Papa!
Poor devil.
Ah, the hell with pity!
It does no good, I'm through with it.
Dreamin' about his old man.
From what the old timers say,
the old gent sure made a pile of dough
on a bucket-shop game before the cops got him.
Jees!
I've seen him bad before but never this bad.
Look at that get-up.
Sold his suit and shoes at Solly's two days ago.
Solly give him two bucks and a bum outfit.
Yesterday he sells the bum one back to Solly
for four bits
and gets these rags to put out,
now he's through.
That's Solly's final edition
and he wouldn't take back for nothin'.
Willie sure is on the bottom.
I ain't never seen no one so bad except Hickey
on end of a couple of his bats.
It's a great game,
the pursuit of happiness.
I don't even know what to do about him.
He called up his old lady's lawyer,
like he always does
when Willie gets licked.
You remember,
they used to send down a private dick
to give him the rush to a cure.
But the lawyer tells Harry nix.
The old lady is off of Willie for keeps this time,
and he can go to hell.
(grunting)
There's a consolation he hasn't got far to go.
Ahhhh!
It's a goddamned lie!
Nix, nix! Oh, papa!
Hey, you, nix!
Cut out the noise! Oh, Jesus, papa!
Shhh!
Cut out the...
Who's that yelling?
Willie, boss,
the Brooklyn boys is after him.
Then why don't you give the poor fella a drink
and keep him quiet?
Bejees, can't I get a wink of sleep in my own back room?
Listen to the blind-eyed old bastard, would you?
He give me strict orders not to let Willie
hang up no more drinks, no matter what...
What's that?
I can't hear ya.
You're a cockeyed liar.
Never refused a drink to anyone
needed bad in my life.
Told you to use your judgment!
You're too busy thinkin' up ways to cheat me.
And I ain't as blind as ya think.
I can still see a cash register, bejees.
Oh, sure boss,
swell chance of foolin' you.
I'm wise to you and your sidekick, Chuck.
Bejees, you're burglars, not barkeeps!
You'd steal the pennies of your dead mother's eyes.
I'll fire both of you.
No one never played Harry Hope for a sucker.
No one but everybody.
The least you could do
is keep things quiet.
Give me a drink, Rocky.
Harry said it was all right.
God, I need a drink.
Then grab it,
it's right under your nose.
Thank you.
When!
I didn't say "Take a bath!"
Jees, look!
He's killed a half pint or more!
Leave him be, the poor devil.
(belches)
A half pint of that dynamite in one swig
will fix him for a while, if it doesn't kill him.
All right by me, it ain't my booze.
Who-whose booze?
Give me some!
Where's Hickey?
What time is it, Rocky?
Getting near time to open up.
Time you begun to sweep up in the bar.
Never mind the time.
If Hickey ain't come,
it's time Joe went to sleep again.
Hey...
I got a idea!
Say, Larry,
what about that young guy, Parritt?
Come look you up last night and rented a room.
He's upstairs asleep.
No hope there, Joe, he's broke.
Me and Rocky know different.
He had a roll when he paid you his room rent.
Didn't he, Rocky?
Yeah, he flashed it like he forgot
and then tried to hide it quick.
He did, did he? Yeah.
I figured he don't belong,
but he said he was a friend of yours.
He's a liar!
Ah, it's true, his...
his mother and I were friends
a few years ago on the coast.
Did you read in the papers
about that bombing on the coast
where a few people were killed?
Well, the one woman they pinched,
Rosa Parritt, is his mother.
They'll be coming up for trial soon,
they haven't got a chance.
She'll get life.
I'm telling you all this so you'll know why,
if Don acts a bit queer and not jump on him.
He's her only kid.
Why ain't he out there stickin' by her?
Must be a good reason.
I get it.
Then what kind of a sap is he to hang on to his right name?
I'm telling you, I don't know.
And I don't want to know!
The hell with the Movement
and everybody connected with it.
(laughing)
If there's one thing more than another
I can't stand
it's the sucker game
you and Hugo calls "Movement."
Reminds me of a damn full argument
me and Mose Porter had the other night.
He's drunk and I'm drunker,
and he says,
"Socialists and anarchists, we ought to shoot 'em dead."
I-I said: "Hold on, hold on."
"You talk as if the socialists"
"and anarchists was the same thing."
"Anarchist..."
"never works."
"He drinks, he never buys,"
and if you do ever get a nickel,
"he blows it on bombs,
"but he wouldn't give you nothin'.
"So you can go ahead and shoot him.
"But, uh, socialists...
"sometimes he gets a job.
"If he gives 10 bucks,
"he's bound by his religion
"to split it with ya 50-50.
"So you don't shoot no socialist
"while I'm around.
"Of course, if they broke,
then they're no-good, bastards, too."
(giggling)
Be God, Joe!
You've got all the beauty of human nature
and the practical wisdom of the world
in that little parable.
(laughing) Sure.
Larry ain't the only wise guy in this dump.
Eh, Joe?
Here's your guy.
Hello, Larry.
Hello.
What's up?
Thought you'd be asleep.
I couldn't make it,
I, uh, thought I might see if you were around.
Well...
sit down and join the bums then.
The rules of the house are that drinks may be served
at all hours.
Oh, I get you but, uh, hell, I'm just about broke.
Oh, I know, you guys saw...
You think I have a roll, don't you?
Well, I'll show you you're wrong.
You see?
They're all one's.
See, I've got to live on this 'till I get a job.
So you think I made up a phony, don't you?
Well, why the hell would I do that?
Where would I get a roll anyway?
You don't get rich doin' what I've been doin', ask Larry.
You're lucky in the Movement, you get enough to eat.
What's the song and dance about?
We ain't said nothin'.
Oh... Oh, I was just tryin' to put you right.
Hey, I don't want you to think I'm a tightwad.
I'll buy you a drink if you want one.
"If?"
Man, if I don't want a drink,
you call the morgue and you tell them.
"Come take Joe's body away,
'cause he sure look dead."
Now gimme the bottle, quick, Rocky,
before he changes his mind.
I'll take a cigar when I go in the bar.
What are you havin'?
Oh, nothin', I'm on the wagon.
What's the damage?
15 cents.
That must be some booze.
It's cyanide cut with carbolic acid,
to give it a mellow flavor.
Here's luck.
I guess I'll get back in the bar
and catch a couple of winks
before opening up time.
One-drink guy.
No hope till Harry's birthday party,
unless Hickey shows up.
If Hickey do come later,
you wake me up
if you have to bat me with a chair.
(laughing)
Who's Hickey?
A hardware drummer.
He's an old friend of Harry Hope's
and all the gang.
He's a grand guy.
Comes here twice a year regularly
on a periodical drunk,
and blows in all his dough.
He doesn't run into anyone he knows in his business here.
Oh, yes, that's what I want, too, Larry.
But like I told you last night,
I gotta stay undercover.
You did a lot of hinting,
but you didn't tell me anything.
Well, you can guess, can't you?
So what kind of joint is this, anyway?
This?
This is "No Chance Saloon,".
"Bedrock Bar,."
"End of The Line Café,."
"The Bottom of the Sea Rathskeller."
Don't you notice the beautiful calm
in the atmosphere?
That's because this is the last harbor.
No one here has to worry about where they're going next,
'cause they can go no further.
Although even here
they keep up the appearance of life
with a few harmless pipe dreams
about their yesterdays and tomorrows.
What's your pipe dream, Larry?
Oh, I'm the exception...
I haven't any left, thank God.
Don't complain about this place,
you couldn't find a better for lying low.
Oh, I'm glad of that.
I got, uh, knocked off base
by that business in the coast.
Since then it's been no fun dodging around the country
thinking every guy you see might be a dick.
You're safe here,
cops ignore this dump.
(sighs)
They think it's as harmless as a graveyard.
And be God, you know, they're right.
And it's been lonely as hell.
Christ, I'm glad I found you, Larry.
You know, I kept, I kept saying to myself:
If I can just find Larry, he's the one guy in the world
who can understand.
"Understand" what?
All I've been through.
Oh...
Oh, now you're thinking, "This guy has a hell of a nerve.
I haven't seen him since he was a kid."
Well, I've never forgotten you, Larry.
You're the one friend of mother's
who ever paid any attention to me.
I remember you used to ask me questions,
you took what I said seriously?
I guess I got the feeling in the years you lived with us,
you'd sort-of, you know, taken the place of my old man.
I don't suppose you remember it.
Ah, I remember it very well.
You were a lonely, serious little shaver then.
Why didn't they pick you up
when they got your mother and the rest?
Oh, I wasn't around.
And, as soon as I heard the news,
I went under cover.
You've noticed my glad rags here,
well, I will stake to them as a disguise,
and then I, you know, hung around gambling joints
and pool halls, and hooker shops.
Places where they wouldn't look for a Wobblie.
By pretending I was a...
a sport.
Anyway, they picked up everybody who was,
you know, really important, so I guess they didn't
think about me till afterwards.
Like you say, the cops got them.
The Burns dicks knew every move before hand.
Somebody in the movement must have sold out
and tipped them off.
Yeah, it hasn't come out who it was yet,
it may never come out.
I guess who it was must've made a bargain with the Burns men
to keep him out of it.
Be God...
I hate to believe it'd be any of that crowd.
All I know, they were damned fools!
As stupidly greedy for power as any capitalist they attacked,
but I'd have sworn there wasn't a yellow stool pigeon
among 'em.
Yeah, they'd sworn that, too, Larry.
I hope his soul rots in hell,
whoever it is.
Yes, so do I.
How did you locate me?
Oh, through mother.
I told her not to tell anyone.
Oh, uh, no, she didn't tell me,
but she kept all your letters.
I found where she'd hid them,
and I sneaked up there after she was arrested.
Never would've thought she was a woman
who kept letters.
No, I wouldn't either.
There's nothing soft or sentimental about mother.
I haven't written her for two years,
or anyone else.
You know, it's funny she kept in touch with you for so long.
When she's finished with someone she's finished with them.
And you know how she feels about the Movement.
Anyone that loses their faith in it
is more than dead to her.
Yet she seemed to forgive you.
She didn't.
She wrote to denounce me,
and bring the sinner to repentance.
Well, then what made you leave the Movement, Larry?
Was it on mother's account?
Who the hell put that idea in your head?
Well, nothing, it's just I remember that,
little fight you had with her just before you left.
Well, if you do I don't, that was 11 years ago.
You were only seven years old.
If we quarreled
it was because I told her I became convinced
that the Movement
was a beautiful pipe dream.
Oh, I don't remember it that way.
Well, blame it on your imagination
and forget it.
You asked me why I quit the Movement.
I had a lot of good reasons.
One was myself,
another was my comrades.
And the last was that breed of swine
called "men in general."
As for myself...
I'd become convinced
after 30 years of devotion to the cause
that I wasn't made for it.
I was born condemned to see both sides of a question.
And when you're damned that way...
the questions multiply until the end,
they're all questions
and no answers.
As history proves,
to be a worldly success at anything
especially revolution,
you've got to wear blinders like a horse
and only see what's straight ahead of you.
As for my comrades
in the great cause,
I've thought about them as Horace Walpole did about England
when he said he could love it,
if it wasn't for the people in it.
(laughing)
Well, that's why I quit the cause.
You see, it had nothing to do with your mother.
Well, but I bet mother always thought
it was on her account.
I mean, you know her, Larry, to hear her go on sometimes
you'd think she was the Movement.
That's a hell of a thing to say after what happened to her.
Oh, no, it wasn't sneering.
I said the same thing to her lots of times,
you know, to kid her.
I know I shouldn't now, but I keep forgetting
she's jail, she...
seemed so real to me, she's always been so free.
I don't want to even wanna think about it.
So what have you been doing all these years since you le...
ah, you know, left the coast, Larry?
I've been a philosophical drunken bum,
and proud of it.
I hope you've deduced
why I answer a lot of impertinent questions
from a total stranger.
For that's all you are to me.
I have a hunch you came to get something from me.
Well, I have no answers, no, not even for myself.
Unless you can call
what Heine wrote in his poem to Morphine an answer.
"Lo, sleep is good,
"better is death.
"In sooth, the best of all,
were never to be born."
That's a hell of an answer.
Still, you never may know when it might come in handy.
I don't suppose you've had a chance
to get any news of your mother since she was in jail?
Oh, no, no chance.
Anyway, I don't think she really wants to talk to me.
See, we got in this fight
just before that business happened.
She bawled me out because I was going around with tarts.
I told her, "You always acted the free woman",
you've never let anything stop you."
Anyway, she told me that she didn't give a damn what I did,
except she began to suspect that I was losing interest
in the Movement.
And where you? Sure I was.
I couldn't go on forever believing that gang
was gonna change the world by shooting off their loud traps
on soap boxes, sneaking around trying to blow up a bridge
or a lousy building.
And then I finally got wise
that it was all a crazy pipe dream.
And then this business of someone selling out,
that's what finished me off.
You can understand how I feel, can't you, Larry?
"The days grow hot, O Babylon!
"It's cool
beneath thy willow trees!"
Goddamned stool pigeon!
What, what do you mean?
You can't call me that!
(laughing)
Hello, little Don!
(laughing)
I didn't recognize you!
You've grown, big boy!
How's your mother?
Don't be a fool!
Loan me a dollar.
Buy me a drink!
Sure, I'll buy you a drink, Hugo.
I'm sorry, got, uh,
I got sore at you there.
I ought to remember that when you're sauced,
you call everyone "stool pigeon," ah?
It's just no damn joke right at this time.
(snores)
Oh, gee, he passed out again.
What are you giving me the hard look for, Larry?
You thought I was gonna to hit him?
What do you think I am?
I always stood up for him when everybody in the Movement
panned him for an old drunken has-been!
He had the guts to serve
10 years in the can in his own country,
got his eyes ruined in solitary.
I'd like to see some of 'em here stick that.
Well, they're gonna get their chance now tha...
Hey, Larry, tell me more about this dump.
Who are all these, uh, these tanks in here?
Who's that guy over there trying to catch pneumonia?
That's Captain Lewis,
one time hero
in The British Army.
He strips to display that scar,
which he got from a native spear,
whenever he's completely plastered.
The bewhiskered bloke next to him
is General Wetjoen,
who led a commando in the war.
They met up when they worked in The Boer War Spectacle
in the St. Louis Fair,
and they've been bosom friends ever since.
They dream away the hours and happy dispute
over the brave days in South Africa,
when they were trying to murder each other.
He was in it, too.
Correspondent for some English paper.
His nickname here is Jimmy Tomorrow.
But what do they do for a living?
As little as possible.
(laughs)
Once in a while one of them makes
a successful touch somewhere,
and some of them get a few dollars a month
from connections at home,
who pay it on the condition that they never come back.
The rest live on free lunch
and their old friend Harry Hope,
who doesn't give a damn what a man does
or doesn't do,
as long as he likes 'em.
That must be a tough life.
Don't waste your pity.
They manage to stay drunk and keep their pipe dreams,
and that's all they ask out of life.
It isn't often that men attain
the true goal of their heart's desire.
And that applies to Harry himself.
He's so satisfied with life
that he hasn't set foot out of this place
since his wife died 20 years ago.
He has no need of the outside world.
Place does a fine trade from the market across the street
and the dock workers.
So in spite of Harry's thirst
and his generous heart, he comes out even.
He never worries about hard times,
as long as there's friends from the old days
when he was a jitney Tammany politician
and the friendly brewery that tied him over.
Pat McGloin, his pal sitting beside him,
was a police lieutenant in the lush times of graft,
when everything went,
but he got too greedy.
And when the usual reform investigation came along,
he was caught red handed
and thrown off the force.
Joe there ran a colored gambling house, and,
was a hell of a sport.
(laughs)
Well, that completes our family circle of inmates,
except for the two barkeeps and their girls,
three ladies of the pavement that room on the third floor.
I never wanna see a whore again.
I mean, they always get you in dutch.
Why omit me from your.
"Who's Who in Dipsomania," Larry?
It's an unpardonable slight...
that's generous, stranger.
I trust you're generous.
I was born in the purple,
the son... hmm,
but unfortunately not the heir of the late world-famous.
Bill Oban,
king of the bucket shops.
A revolution deposed him,
he was sent into exile.
The fact, not to mince matters,
(giggling)
they locked him in the can and threw away the key.
Alas,
his was an adventurous spirit
that pined in confinement...
and so he died!
That's tough luck.
Hmm, hmm.
Even in Harvard I discovered my father was...
well known by reputation.
Although that was sometime before
the district attorney gave him
so much unwelcomed publicity.
Even as a freshman, I was notorious.
I was accepted socially,
with all the warm cordiality that, uh,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
who could've shown a drunken Negress
dancing the can can at high noon
on Brattle Street.
Harvard was my father's idea.
But I did make myself a brilliant student!
A dirty trick on my classmates...
inspired by revenge, I fear.
And I, I, I was a brilliant student
in Law School, too!
And my father
wanted a lawyer in the family.
Oh, a thorough knowledge of the law
close at hand in the house,
to help him find fresh ways to evade it.
But I discovered
a loophole in whiskey.
And so,
escaped his jurisdiction.
Speaking of whiskey, sir, reminds me,
and I hope reminds you,
that when greeting a prince,
the customary salutation is "What'll you have?"
Nix!
All you guys think I'm made of dough!
Broke?
You haven't the thirsty look of the impecunious.
I'd judge you to be a plutocrat,
your pocket's stuffed with ill-gotten gains.
Two or three dollars at least.
Don't think we question how you got it.
What do you mean "How I got it"?
That's a laugh, isn't it, Larry?
Him thinking me a plutocrat?
When I've been in the Movement all my life?
Ah, one of those, eh?
Why don't you go away and blow yourself up?
That's a good lad.
Hugo...
Hugo is the only licensed preacher
of that gospel here.
Oh, dangerous terrorist Hugo!
He'd as soon blow the collar off a schooner of beer
as look at you.
Let us ignore this useless youth, Larry,
And let us join in prayer
that Hickey, the great salesman,
will soon arrive bringing
the blessed bourgeoisie long green.
Would that Hickey
or Death would come, uh?
(laughs)
Meanwhile,
I will sing a song.
A beautiful old New England folk ballad,
which I'd picked at Harvard amid de debris of education.
* Oh
* Jack oh Jack was a sailor lad *
* And he went to a tavern for gin *
* And he rapped and he rapped with a *
(loud tapping)
* But
* Never a soul seemed in *
The origin of this beautiful ditty
is veiled in mystery, Larry.
There was a legend bruited about
in Cambridge lavatories
that Waldo Emerson composed it
during his uninformative period as a minister
while he was trying to write a sermon.
But my own view
is that it goes back much further,
and Jonathan Edwards is the author of both words
and the music.
* Oh he rapped and rapped *
* And he tapped and tapped *
* Enough to wake the dead
* 'Till he heard a damsel *
(tapping)
* On a window
* Right over his head *
Rocky!
Bejees,
can't you keep that crazy bastard quiet?
And now the influence of a good woman
enters our mariner's lifeline.
Well, perhaps "good" isn't the word,
but very, very kind.
* "Oh
* Come up" she cried "my sailor lad" *
* And you and I'll agree *
* And I'll show you the prettiest *
(tapping)
* That ever you ever did see *
You see, Larry?
The lewd puritan touch, obviously,
and it grows more marked
as we go on.
* Oh, he puts his arms
* Around her waist
* And gazed in her bright
* blue eyes *
Piano?
What do you think this dump is, a dump?
Give him a bum's rush upstairs.
Lock him in his room.
Come on.
No, please, Rocky, I'll go crazy up in that room alone!
It's haunted!
Please, Larry, please!
Let me stay here, I'll be quiet!
What the hell you doin' to him, Rocky?
Leave him alone...
as long as he's quiet.
Thanks, Harry,
you're a good scout.
Booze.
Yeah,
can't trust nobody.
Leave it to that Dago to keep order
and it's like bedlam in a cathouse!
Singin' and everything.
And you, a big barfly,
you're a hell of a help to me.
There ain't gonna be no more drinks on the house
'till hell freezes over.
(laughing)
Good God.
Have I been drinking at the same table
with a bloody Kaffir?
Hello, captain,
you comin' up for air?
(laughing)
A "Kaffir,"
who's he?
"Kaffir," that's a nigger, Joe.
That's joke on him, Joe,
he don't know you.
He's still blind drunk.
A great mistake,
I missed him at The Battle of Modder River.
With mine rifle
I shoot
damn fool Limey officers
by the dozen,
but him I miss.
(laughing)
Hey, wake up, Cecil, you bloody fool.
Don't you know your old friend Joe?
He's white, Joe is!
(laughing)
Oh, profound apologies,
Joseph, old chum.
Eyesight's a trifle blurry, I'm afraid.
Whitest colored man I ever knew.
Proud to call you my friend.
Oh, I know it's mistake, captain.
You here is a regular,
even if you is a Limey.
(laughing)
But I don't stand for "nigger" from nobody.
In the old days, somebody calls me a "nigger"
he ends up in the hospital.
Me, in old days in Transvaal,
I was so tough!
And strong!
I, I grab axle
of ox wagon,
with full load,
and lift like feather.
As for you,
my balmy Boer that walks like a man,
I say it again,
It was a grave error in our foreign policy
ever to set you free.
Well, now, Cecil, Piet!
We must forget the war.
Boer and Britain, each fought fairly
and played the game until the better man won,
and then we shook hands.
We are all brothers within The Empire,
united beneath the flag
on which the sun never sets.
* Ship me somewhere
* East of Suez
* Where the best
* Is like the worst *
* Where there ain't
* No Ten Commandments
* And a man can raise
* A thirst
* On the road
* To Mandalay
* Where the flyin' fishes
* Play
* And the dawn
* Comes up like thunder *
* Outer China
* 'Crost the Bay *
God, you're there already, Jimmy.
Worst is best here,
and east is west,
and tomorrow is yesterday.
What more do you want?
Come now, Larry, old friend.
You pretend a bitter,
cynic philosophy,
but in your heart
you are the kindest man among us.
The hell you say.
Tomorrow, yes.
It's high time
I got myself straightened out.
I must have this suit
cleaned and pressed.
I can't look like a tramp when I...
Yes, sir,
white folks always said I was white.
In the days when I was flush,
Joe Mott's the only colored man they allows
in the white gamblin' houses.
"You're all right, Joe,
you're white,"
they tells me.
(laughs)
They wouldn't let me play craps, though.
'Cause they knew I could make them dice behave.
"Any other game,
any limit you like, Joe,"
they says.
Man, the money I lost.
(chuckling)
Yeah...
look at the Big Chief in them days.
He knew I was white.
I'd saved my dough
so I could start my own gamblin' house.
Folks in the know they tells me,
"You see the man at the top,
"then you never has trouble.
You get Harry Hope to give you a letter to the Chief."
And he does.
(chuckles)
Ain't that right, Harry?
Eh?
Sure, I gave you a letter.
I says you was white.
There, you see, captain?
I went to see the Chief, shakin' in my boots,
and there he was,
sittin' behind a big desk,
lookin' as big as a freight train.
He don't look up.
He keeps me waitin' and waitin',
and after what seems like an hour to me,
he says slow and quiet,
like he didn't mean no harm,
"You want to open a gamblin' joint, does you, Joe?"
But he don't give me no chance to answer.
He jumps up,
lookin' as big as two freight trains,
and he pounds his fist like a ham on the desk,
and he shouts,
"You black son of a bitch!
"Harry says you're white and you better be white!
"Or there's a little iron room up the river
waitin' for ya!"
Then he sits down,
and he says, quiet again,
"All right, you can open, get the hell outta here."
So I opens,
and he finds out I was white, sure 'nuff.
'Cause I run wide open for years
and I pays my sugar on the dot,
and me and the cops is friends.
Them old days!
Many's the night I used to come in here.
(laughs)
This used to be a first-class hangout for sports
in them days.
Good whiskey,
15 cents, two for two bits.
(laughs)
I throws down a $50 bill
like it was trash paper!
And I says,
"Drink it up, boys,
I don't want the change."
Ain't that right, Harry?
Yes,
and bejees, if I ever see you throw
50 cents on the bar now,
I'd know I had delirium tremens!
(men laughing)
Well thanks, Harry, old chum.
I will have a drink, now you mention it,
seeing it's so near your birthday.
I sorry, can't hear you.
(sighs)
No, I was afraid you wouldn't.
I don't have to hear you, bejees.
Booze is the only thing you ever talk about.
True, true.
Yet there was a time when my conversation
was more comprehensive.
But as I became burdened with the years,
it seemed rather pointless to discuss my other subject.
You can't joke with me.
How much room rent do you owe me?
Tell me that!
I'm sorry.
(chuckles)
Adding always baffled me,
subtraction's my forte.
(men laughing)
Oh, think you're funny.
Captain, bejees,
showin' off your wounds.
Put on your clothes, for Chrissake!
This ain't no Turkish bath!
Lousy Limey army.
Took 'em years
to lick a gang of Dutch hayseeds.
That's right, Harry, give him hell!
I give you my word of honor,
as an officer and a gentleman,
you shall be paid tomorrow.
We swear it, Harry,
tomorrow without fail!
There you are, Harry.
Sure, what could be fairer?
A promise is a promise, as I've often discovered.
Naming you, too...
old grafting flatfoot.
Fine company for me, bejees!
Been livin' in my flat since Christ knows when,
and you ain't even got the decency
to get me upstairs, where I got a good bed!
Kept me down here
waitin' for Hickey to show up,
hopin' I'd blow you to more drinks!
I did my damnedest to get you up.
But you said you couldn't bear the flat
because it was one of those nights
when memory brought
poor old Bessie back to you.
Ah, yes...
I remember now.
I could almost see her in every room
just as she used to be...
and it's 20 years since I...
Isn't a pipe dream of yesterday a touching thing?
By all accounts, 20 years...
Bessie nagged the hell out of him.
And I've never set foot out of this house
since the day I buried her.
Once she's gone, I didn't give a damn for anything.
The boys was gonna nominate me for Alderman.
Mm, Bessie wanted it,
and she was so proud.
But when she was taken,
I told 'em, "No, boys, I can't do it.
I'm through."
I know, Lord,
why Bessie would appreciate my grief.
She wouldn't want it to keep me cooped up in here
all my life.
So I've made up my mind to go out soon.
Take a walk around the ward,
see all the friends I used to know.
Get together with the boys.
(hits table) My birthday, tomorrow!
That'd be the right time to turn over a new leaf!
60, that ain't too old.
The prime of life, Harry.
Hmm.
Time I took hold of myself.
Tomorrow I must get my things
from the laundry.
Clean collar and shirt.
If I wash the ones I've got on anymore,
they'll fall apart.
(chuckles)
I must make a good appearance.
I've heard rumors management
were at their wits' end
and would be only too willing
to have me run the publicity department
for them again.
All I have to do is get fixed up
with a decent front tomorrow,
and it's as good as done.
Poor Jimmy's off on his pipe dream again.
I'm sorry we had to postpone
our trip again this April, Piet.
I'd hoped the blasted old estate
would be settled by then.
We'll make it next year,
even if we have to work
and earn our passage money.
You'll stay with me at the old place
just as long as you like.
England in April.
Oh, I want you to see that, Piet.
I admit that the veldt has its points,
but it's not home.
Especially home in April.
* We've been together now *
* For 40 years
* And it don't seem
* A day too much
* There ain't a lady
* Livin' in the land
* As I'd swop
* For me dear old Dutch
* There ain't a lady
* Livin' in the land
* As I'd swop
* For me dear
* Old Dutch *
Yeah, Cecil, I can see
how beautiful it must be,
but I will enjoy
when I am home, too.
The veldt, ya!
You could put England on it,
and it would look like a
farmer's small garden.
By God,
there is space to be free,
the air...
(sniffs)
like wine is,
you don't need booze to be drunk.
I'll make my stake and
get my new gamblin' house open
before you boys leave.
You gotta come to the openin'.
Bejees, Jimmy's started them off
smoking the same hop.
Be God!
This bughouse will drive me stark, raving loony yet!
What, what'd you say?
Nothing, Harry.
I had a crazy thought in my head.
Crazy is right,
the old wise guy.
Damned old fool Anarchist.
I-Won't-Worker!
You'll pay up tomorrow,
or I'll,
I'll start a Harry Hope Revolution!
(chuckles)
I'll tie a dispossess bomb to your tails
that'll blow you out in the street!
(chuckles)
I'll, I'll make your Movement move!
(men laughing)
Sure it's hot, parching work
sittin' here laughin' at your jokes so early in the morning...
on an empty stomach.
Who asked you to laugh anyway?
Bejees, Bessie'd never forgive me
if she knew I had you living in her flat,
throwing ashes and cigar butts
on her carpet.
You know her opinion of you, Mac.
"That Pat McGloin is the biggest drunken grafter
that ever disgraced the police force,"
she used to say.
"If I had my way
"he'd get booted up in the gutter
of his fat behind."
And sometimes she didn't say "behind" either.
(laughs)
She didn't mean it.
She was angry at me because you used to get me drunk.
Hmm.
But Bess,
she had a heart of gold underneath her sharpness.
She knew I was innocent
of all the charges.
(slamming table with glass)
One moment, please.
Lieutenant McGloin!
Are you aware that you're under oath?
You know what the penalty for perjury is?
Come now, lieutenant.
Isn't it a fact you're guilty as hell?
No, don't say "How about your old man?"
I'm asking the questions!
Gentlemen of the Jury!
The court will now recess
while the D.A. sings out a little ditty
that he learned at Harvard.
It was composed in a wanton moment
by the Dean of the Divinity School
on a moonlight night in July, 1776,
while sobering up in a Turkish bath.
* "Oh come up,"
* She cried "my sailor lad *"
* And you and I'll agree
* And I'll show you the prettiest *
(slamming table) Rocky!
* Aay! * Yi.
Harry, please, please!
Don't make Rocky bounce me upstairs,
I'll go crazy alone!
I apologize,
I apologize, Mac.
Don't get sore, I was only kidding you.
You will let me...
take your case?
Won't you, Mac?
Yeah, sure Willie,
and it'll make your reputation.
Hey, Mac.
What the hell you thinks happened to Hickey?
I hope he turns up.
(chuckles)
You remember that gag he always pulls
about his wife and the iceman?
(men laughing)
Opening time, boss.
Why don't you go to bed, Boss?
Hickey'd never turn up this time of the mornin'.
Someone's comin' now!
Oh, that's only my two pigs,
it's about time they showed.
You keep them dumb broads quiet!
I'm gonna catch a couple more winks here,
and I don't want no damn fool laughin' and screechin'.
Hey.
Never thought I'd see the day
when Harry Hope's would have tarts living in.
What would Bessie think, hmm?
But he don't let 'em use my rooms for business.
Pay their rent, too,
which is more than I can say for...
Bejees, Mac,
I, I'll bet Bessie's doin' somersaults
in her grave!
(women giggling)
Hello.
Jees, Pearl.
This place is a morgue
with all these stiffs on deck.
Hey, you Old Wise Guy,
ain't you died yet?
Not yet, Margie.
But I'm waiting impatiently for the end.
Yeah.
Hey, who's the new guy?
Friend of yours?
Hey, kid!
You wanna have a good time, huh?
Hey, hell with him!
You dumb broads!
Cut the loud talk!
Sit down before I knock you down!
Ohh, you!
What, what, what, what?
(sighs)
Well, how do you tramps do?
Ah, pretty good, uh, Pearl?
Sure, we nailed a couple of all-night guys.
On Sixth Avenue, boobs from the sticks.
Stinko, the both of 'em!
We think we's in luck you know,
so we steers them to a real hotel.
We figured they're too stinko to bother us much
and we could cop a good night sleep in beds
that ain't got cobble stones in the mattress like the ones
in this dump. Yeah,
but we was outta luck.
They didn't bother us much that way,
but they wouldn't go to sleep either, see?
Jees, I never heard such gabby guys!
So... here we are.
Yeah, I see you,
but I don't see no dough yet.
Right on the job, ain't he, Margie?
Yeah, our little business man, that's him.
Come on, dig!
What, you're scared we're holdin' out on you?
Way he grabs, you'd think it was him done the work.
Here you are, grafter!
I hope it chokes you!
Hey, you dumb baby dolls give me a pain.
What would you do with money if I wasn't around?
Give it all to some pimp.
Jees, what's the difference?
Oh, didn't mean that, Rocky.
A lot of difference, get me?
Sure, don't get sore.
Jees, can't you take a little kiddin'?
Hey, come on, Rocky!
Pearl was only kiddin'.
We know you don't live off us, you got a regular job.
That's why we like you,
you're a bartender.
Sure, I'm a bartender,
and I treat you girls right, don't I?
(together) Yeah.
Jees, I'm wise you hold out on me,
but I know it ain't much.
So what the hell, I let you get away with it.
(both laughing)
Hey, you know ought not kid him about that stuff.
Serves you right if he beats you up.
Jees, I'd bet he'd give you an awful beatin' once he started.
Ginnies got awful tempers.
Anyways,
we wouldn't keep no pimp like we were regular old whores.
We ain't that bad.
Oh, no, we're tarts, but that's all.
Right.
Ahh!
Hey, Rocky.
Cora got back around 3:00 o'clock.
She woke up Chuck
and dragged him outta the hay
to go to for a chop suey joint.
Imagine him standin' for that stuff!
I bet they been sittin' around kiddin' themselves
with that old pipe dream about gettin' married
and settlin' down on a farm.
Jees, when Chuck's on the wagon,
they never lay off that dope.
Yeah,
of all the pipe dreams in this dump,
they got the nuttiest.
They been dreamin' it for years,
every time Chuck goes on the wagon.
What would gettin' married get them?
But the farm stuff is the sappiest part.
When both of 'em have been dragged up in this ward,
and ain't never been nearer a farm
than Coney Island.
They'd get D.T.'s
if they ever heard a cricket chirp.
I heard crickets once,
on my cousin's place in Jersey,
I couldn't sleep a wink.
Jees, can you picture a good barkeep like Chuck
diggin' spuds?
And imagine a whore hustlin' the cows home.
Hey, Rocky,
you oughtn't to call Cora that.
I mean, she may be a tart, but...
Oh sure, sure, that's all I meant, a tart.
Yeah, but he's right about the damned cows, Margie.
I bet Cora don't know
which end of the cow has the horns!
I'm goin' to ask her.
Here's your chance.
Hello, bums!
Jees...
the morgue on a rainy Sunday night.
Hello, Old Wise Guy, ain't you croaked yet?
Not yet, Cora.
Damned tiring this waiting for the end.
Aw, go on, you'll never die.
You'll have to hire someone to croak you with an axe.
Hey, you dumb hooker,
cut the loud talk.
This ain't a cathouse.
Ohh!
(Maggie) Hey, Cora, how you doin'?
(Pearl) Hey, Chuck, what's happening?
(women giggling)
If I'd known this dump was a hooker hangout,
I'd never come in.
You seem down on the ladies.
I hate every bitch that ever lived.
Well, you can understand how I feel, can't you?
When it was gettin' mixed up with a tart
that made me have that fight with mother.
Well, what the hell does it matter to you?
You're in the grandstand, you're through with life.
I'm glad you remember that.
Who's the guy with Larry?
A tightwad, the hell with him.
Say, Cora,
wise me up.
Which end of the cow is the horns on?
Aw, don't bring that up.
Me and this overgrown tramp's been scrappin' about the farm.
He says Jersey's the best place, and I said Long Island
on account it will be near Coney.
And then I tells him,
"How do I know you're off of periodicals for life?"
And I tells her "I'm off the stuff for life."
Then she beefs we won't be married a month
before I'll throw it in her face she was a tart.
"Jees, baby," I tells her, "Why should I?
"What the hell you think I think I'm marryin', a virgin?
"Why should I kick
"as long as you lay off it and don't do no cheatin'
with the iceman or nobody?"
It's on the level, baby.
Eh?
Aw, you big tramp.
Can you tie it?
I'll buy a drink, I'll do anything.
No, this round's on me!
I run into luck.
That's why I dragged Chuck outta bed to celebrate.
It was a sailor, I rolled him.
Listen, it was a scream.
My dogs was givin' out when I seen this guy
holdin' up a lamp post,
so I hurry to get him before a cop did.
I says, "Hello, handsome,
wanna have a good time?"
Jees, he was paralyzed!
One of them polite jags.
He tries to bow to me, imagine,
and I had to prop him up or he'd fell on his nose.
"Lady," he says,
"can you kindly tell me the nearest way
to the Museum of Natural History?"
(laughing)
Can you imagine?
It's 2:00 A.M.!
As if I'd know where the dump was anyway.
But I says, "Sure thing, honey boy,".
"I'll be only too glad."
So I steered him into a side street where it was dark,
and propped him against a wall and I give him a frisk.
And what do you think he done?
I mean, Jees, I ain't lyin',
he begins to laugh, the big sap!
(laughing)
"Quit ticklin' me," he says,
while I was friskin' him for his roll!
I near died!
Then I turned him 'round and give him a shove to start him.
"Just keep goin'," I told him.
"It's a big white building on your right,
you can't miss it."
Ohh!
He must be swimmin' in the North River yet.
Ain't Uncle Sam the sap
to trust guys like that with dough?
Well, I picked 12 bucks off of him.
So come on, Rocky, set 'em up.
Oh, say, Chuck's kiddin' about the iceman a minute ago
reminds me, where the hell's Hickey?
That's what we're all wonderin'.
Well, he oughta be here!
Me and Chuck seen him.
You've seen Hickey? Yeah.
Hey, boss!
Boss, boss, come to.
Cora's seen Hickey.
Where'd you see him, Cora?
Right on the next corner, he was standin' there.
We said, "Welcome to our city!
"The gang's expectin' ya with their tongues hangin' out
a yard long."
And I kidded him, "How's the iceman, Hickey?
How's he doin' at your house?"
And he laughs and says, "Fine."
And then he says,
"Tell the gang I'll be along in a minute.
"I'm just finishin' figurin' out the best way
to save 'em and bring 'em peace."
Bejees, he's thought up a new gag!
(chuckles)
It's a wonder he didn't borrow a Salvation Army uniform
and show up in that!
Go out and get him, Rocky.
Tell him we're waitin' to be saved!
Yeah, Harry, he was only kiddin'
but he was funny, too, somehow;
he was different or somethin'.
Sure, he was sober, baby, that's what made him different.
Sure!
Gee, ain't I dumb?
Dumbest broad I ever seen.
Hmm.
Sober?
That's funny.
He's always lapped up a good starter on his way here.
Well, bejees, he won't be sober long!
He'll be good and ripe for my birthday party
tonight at 12:00.
Listen, he's fixed some new gag to pull on us.
We'll pretend to let him kid us, see?
And we'll kid the pants off him!
(all laughing)
(Rocky) Here's the old son of a bitch!
(cheering and hollering) Hello, gang!
* Oh dear old pals
* We're jolly old pals
* In all kinds of weather *
* We always stick together
* Like we're always game
* Whenever the same soul
* Give me for friendship *
* My jolly old pals
* And another little drink
* Won't do us any harm *
(cheers, applause.
Do your duty, Brother Rocky,
bring on the rat poison!
How goes it, Governor?
Bejees, Hickey, you old bastard, it's good to see you!
Hello, Mac.
Welcome, "boyo!"
Willie!
Hey, Hickey!
How you've got...
(laughter)
Hello, Joe.
All right, Hickey, how you doin'?
Hello, Hickey, old timer.
Oh, Captain Lewis!
General Wetjoen!
(playful babbling) I said!
Hello, Hugo!
How goes it?
Wow, wow!
Too much wine underneath the willow trees, eh?
Hello, Jimmy.
It's grand to see ya. How's the old scout?
You look great.
Sit down, Hickey, sit down.
Well, I, I... Jimmy!
(laughing)
Bejees, it seems natural
to see your ugly, grinning map.
This dumb broad was tryin' to tell us
you'd changed,
but you ain't a damned bit!
Tell us about yourself.
Bejees, Hickey,
you look like a million dollars!
Here's your key, Hickey, same old room.
Oh, thanks, Rocky.
I'll be goin' up in a little while
and grab a snooze.
I haven't been able to sleep lately,
I'm tired as hell.
A couple of hours of good kip will fix me.
First time I ever heard you worry about sleep.
Bejees, you never would go to bed.
Get a couple of slugs under your belt,
you'll forget sleeping.
Here's mud in your eye, Hickey.
(everybody toasting)
Drink hearty, boys and girls.
Bejees, is that a new stunt?
Drinking your chaser first?
No, I forgot to tell Rocky.
You'll have to excuse me, boys and girls,
but I'm off the stuff, for keeps.
(gasping, repressed laughter)
(Harry) What the hell?
Sure, sure!
Joined the Salvation Army, ain't you?
Been elected President of the W.C.T.U.?
Take the bottle away from him, Rocky.
We don't want to tempt him into sin.
Eh, I know it's hard to believe, but, uh,
Cora was right, Harry, I have changed.
I mean about the booze,
I don't need it anymore.
Bejees, Cora says you was comin' here to save us.
Well, go on, get this joke off your chest.
Start the service!
Sing a Goddamned hymn if you like.
We'll all join in the chorus.
"No drunkard can enter this beautiful home."
You don't think I'd come around here
peddlin' any brand of temperance bunk, do you?
Just 'cause I quit the stuff
don't mean I'm going Prohibition.
I'm not that ungrateful,
it's given me too many good times.
So if anybody wants to get drunk,
if that's the only way they can be happy,
and feel at peace with themselves,
why the hell shouldn't they?
Hell, I know that game from soup to nuts.
I wrote the book.
The only reason I quit is...
well, I finally had the guts to face myself
and throw overboard that damned lying pipe dream
that'd make me miserable,
and do what I had to do
for the happiness of all concerned.
Then all at once,
I was at peace with myself
and I didn't need the booze anymore.
Well, what the hell?
Don't let me be a wet blanket.
Set 'em up again, Rocky.
Here, keep the balls coming until last kill,
then I'll ask for more.
Jees, a roll that'd choke a hippopotamus.
Fill up, you guys!
That sounds more like you, Hickey.
All that water-wagon bull!
Cut the act and have a drink, for Chrissake.
It's no act, Governor, but that don't mean
I'm a teetotal grouch and can't be in the party.
Why else do you think I'm here except to have a party,
like I've always done, and help celebrate your birthday tonight?
You've all been good pals to me,
best friends I've ever had.
And I've been thinking about you ever since I left the house,
all the time I was walking over here.
"Walkin'?"
Bejees, you mean to say you walked?
I sure as hell did.
All the way from the wilds of darkest Astoria.
I seemed to get here before I knew it.
And that ought to encourage you, Governor,
show you a little walk around the ward
is nothin' to be so scared about.
It was goin' on 12:00 when I went into the bedroom
to tell Evelyn I was leaving, six hours, say.
No, less than that,
'cause I'd been standin' on the street corner
some time before Chuck and Cora came along,
thinkin' about all of you.
Of course, I was only kidding Cora
with that stuff about saving you.
But no, I wasn't either,
but I didn't mean booze.
I meant save you from pipe dreams.
Because I know now, from my experience,
that they're the things
that can really poison and ruin a guy's life
and keep him from finding any peace.
If you knew how free and contented I feel now.
Why, I'm like a new man,
and the cure for them is so damned simple
once you got the nerve.
Just stop lying to yourself and kidding yourself
about tomorrows.
Hell, this begins to sound like a damned sermon
on the way to lead the good life!
It's in my blood, I guess.
My old man used to whale salvation
into my heinie with a birch rod.
He was a preacher in the sticks of Indiana,
like I've told you,
got my knack of sales gab from him, too.
He was the boy that could sell those Hoosier hayseeds
building lots along the Golden Street!
Now don't look at me like that, boys and girls.
I'm not tryin' to sell you a goldbrick.
Nothin' up my sleeves, honest.
Let's take an example, any one of you, eh?
Take you, Governor.
That walk around the ward you never take.
What about it?
Well, you know as well as I do, Harry,
everything about it.
Well, Bejees, I'm going to take it!
Of course you are, because I'm gonna help you.
I know it's the thing that you've got to do
before you know what real peace means.
Same thing with you, Jimmy.
You're goin' have to try and get your old job back,
and no tomorrows about it.
Ahh, I...
No, don't tell me, I know all about tomorrows.
I wrote the book.
I, I don't understand you, Hickey.
I admit I've foolishly delayed,
but as it happens,
I'd just made up my mind
that as soon as I could get straightened out...
Fine, fine, that's the spirit,
and I'm gonna help you, Jimmy.
'Cause you've always been damned kind to me,
and I wanna prove how grateful I am to you.
When it's all over,
you don't have to nag yourself any more.
You'll be grateful to me, too.
And all the rest of you,
the ladies included,
are in the same boat, one way or another.
Be God, you've hit the nail on my head, Hickey.
This dump
is the Palace of Pipe Dreams!
Well, well,
the Old Grandstand Foolosopher speaks, ah?
And you think you're the big exception, eh?
Life doesn't mean a damn to you any more.
You're retired from the circus,
you're impatiently waiting for the end
in the good old Long Sleep.
Well, I think a lot of you, Larry, you old bastard,
and I'll try and make an honest man out of you, too.
What the devil are you hintin' at?
Well, you don't have to ask me, do you,
wise old guy like you?
Just ask yourself, I'll bet you know.
He's got your number all right, Larry.
That's the stuff, Hickey.
He's got no right to sneak out of everything.
Well, hello!
A stranger in our midst.
I didn't notice you before, brother.
My name's, uh, Parritt, I'm an old friend of Larry's.
What are you staring at?
Oh, no offense, brother, I was just trying to figure.
Haven't we met before...
some place?
No, it's the first time I've been East.
No, you're right, I know that's not it.
You see, in my game, to be a shark at it,
you teach yourself
never to forget a name or a face.
But still I know damned well there's...
something that I recognize about you.
We're members of the same lodge...
in some way.
What are you talkin' about?
You're nuts.
Don't kid me, little boy.
I'm a good salesman, so damned good the firm was glad
to take me back after every drunk.
And what made me good was I could size up anyone.
But still, I don't...
Well, never mind.
I can tell you're havin' trouble with yourself,
and I'll be glad to do anything I can
to help a friend of Larry's.
Mind your own business, Hickey.
He's nothing to you,
or to me.
You're keeping us all in suspense.
Tell us more about how you're going to save us.
Well, hell,
don't get sore, Larry.
We're old pals,
I've always liked you a lot, you know that.
Forget it, Hickey.
Fine, fine...
Well, that's the spirit.
What's the matter, everybody?
Come on, drink up!
A little action!
Have another...
Hell, this is a celebration!
Oh, forget it if anything I said sounded too serious.
You think I'm talkin' out of turn,
just tell me to go chase myself.
(yawning)
No, boys and girls,
I'm not trying to put anything over on you.
It's just that I know now,
from experience,
what a lying pipe dream can do to you.
And how damned relieved and contented with yourself
you'll feel when you're rid of it.
(yawning)
Oh, my God...
I'm sleepy all of a sudden.
That long walk must be gettin' to me.
I better go upstairs.
Hell of a trick to go dead on you like this.
And no, boys and girls, I've...
never known what real peace was until now.
It's a grand feeling.
Like when you're sick and suffering like hell and then...
doc gives you a shot in the arm.
The pain goes and...
you drift off.
You let yourself go at last.
You sink down to the bottom of the sea.
Rest in peace.
(keys clattering)
There's no further you have to go.
Not one single
hope or dream left to nag you.
But you'll all know what I mean.
Excuse me, I'll just grab 40 winks.
Drink up, everybody...
on me.
Don't let me be a wet blanket.
All I want is to see you happy.
(dishes rattling)
Well, how's that, kid?
What the hell do I know about flowers?
You can see they're pretty, can't you, you big dummy?
Yeah, baby, sure, if you like 'em,
they're all right with me.
Oh, Jees, Pearl!
Look at that cake, eh?
Come here, look, six candles,
each for 10 years.
Oh...
when do we light the candles, Rocky?
Ask that bughouse Hickey.
"Just before Harry come down," he says.
"Then Harry blows them out with one breath, for luck."
(spits)
Hickey was gonna have 60 candles,
but I says "Jees, if the old guy took that big a breath",
he'd croak himself."
Anyways, it's a nice cake, ain't it?
Oh, sure, it's all right by me.
But what is Harry gonna do with a cake?
If he ever ate a hunk, it'd croak him.
Jees, you're a dope!
Ain't he, Margie?
Yeah, dope is right.
You broads better watch your step or I'll...
Or what? Yeah, what, what?
Say, what the hell's got into ya's?
It'll be 12:00 o'clock and Harry's birthday before long.
I ain't lookin' for no trouble.
Oh, we ain't neither, Rocky.
A guy what can't see flowers is pretty
must be some dumbbell.
Yeah, well, if I was as dumb as you...
Jees, you got your scrappin' pants on, ain't you?
What the hell, baby, what's eatin' you?
All I'm thinkin' is,
"What the hell could Harry do with flowers?"
He don't know a cauliflower from a geranium.
Jees,
ever since Hickeys woke up, you can't hold him.
He's taken on the party like it was his birthday.
Well, he's payin' for everything, ain't he?
Aw, I don't mind the birthday stuff so much.
What gets my goat
is the way he's buttin' in all over the place,
tellin' everybody where they get off.
He just keeps hintin' around.
Yeah, he was hintin' to me and Margie.
Yeah, the lousy drummer.
He just gives you an earful of that line of bull about
you gotta be honest with yourself
and not kid yourself,
and you gotta have the guts to be what you are.
I told him,
"That's all right for the bums in this dump.
"But it don't go with me, see?
I don't kid myself with no pipe dreams."
What are you grinnin' at?
Nothin'. Nothin'.
It better be nothin'!
And don't let Hickey put no ideas in your nuts
if you wanna stay healthy.
He's ridin' someone every minute.
He's got Harry and Jimmy Tomorrow run ragged.
And the rest are hidin' in their rooms,
so they don't won't have to listen to him.
They're all actin' cagey with the booze, too,
like they was scared if they get too drunk,
they might spill their guts.
And everybody's getting a prize grouch on.
Yeah,
he's been hintin' around to me and Chuck, too.
You-you'd think he suspected me and Chuck
had no real intention of gettin' married.
You'd think he suspected Chuck wasn't goin' to lay off
of periodicals,
or maybe didn't even want to.
I told him, "I'm on the wagon for keeps,
and Cora knows it."
And I told him: "Sure, I know it.
"And Chuck ain't never goin' to throw it in my face.
"I was a tart, neither.
"And if you think we're just kiddin' ourselves,
"we'll show ya!
We are gettin' married tomorrow."
Ain't we, honey?
You bet, baby.
Christ, Chuck!
Are you lettin' that bughouse louse Hickey kid you into...
Nobody's kiddin' him into it, nor me neither!
Hickey's right,
if this big tramp's goin' to marry me,
he ought to do it, and not just shoot off
his old bazoo about it.
You can't be that dumb, Chuck.
Rocky, you keep outta this, you hear?
And don't start beefin' about the crickets on the farm
drivin' us nuts.
Christ, you'd think they was elephants!
Ah, Rocky, don't notice that broad.
You heard what she said, right?
"Tomorrow, tomorrow!"
The same old crap.
Is that so? Uh.
Imagine Cora a bride!
That's a hot one!
Jees, Cora,
if all the guys you've stayed with was side by side,
you could walk on 'em from here to Texas!
You can't talk to me like that, you skinny Dago hooker!
I may be a tart, but I ain't a cheap old whore like you!
I'll show you who's a whore!
(unintelligible loud screaming)
Dago whore!
(yelling, screaming)
Oh, bury it!
What are you, a virgin?
You mean you think I'm a whore, too?
Yeah, me, too?
Now don't start nothin'!
I suppose it'd tickle you if me and Margie did
what that louse Hickey was hintin',
and come right out and admitted we was whores!
Yeah.
It's the truth, ain't it?
Jees, Rocky,
that's a fine hell of a thing to say to two girls
that's been as good to you as Pearl and Margie!
Oh, oh look,
I-I didn't mean to call you that, Pearl.
No hard feelings, Cora.
There,
that fixes everything, don't it?
Okay, Rocky, we're whores.
You know what that makes you, don't you?
Look out, now!
A lousy little pimp, that's what.
I'll loin you!
A dirty little Ginny pimp, that's what!
Yes,
you provin' it to us, Pearl!
Sure!
Hickey's converted him,
he's given up his pipe dream.
Lay off of me or I'll...
Oh, lay off them!
Harry's party ain't no time to beat up your stable.
Whose stable?
Who do you think you're talkin' to?
I ain't never beat 'em up!
What do you think I am?
I just give 'em a slap, like any guy would his wife,
if she got too gabby.
I'm not lookin' for no trouble on Harry's birthday party!
(gasps)
You lousy little Ginny!
I'll lay off you until the party's over,
if Pearl will.
Sure I will...
For Harry's sake, not yours, you little Wop!
Say, listen, you! (laughing)
If you don't get no wrong I...
What the hell are you laughin' at,
you half-dead old stew bum?
At himself, and he ought to be.
Jees, Hickey's sure got his number.
Wake up, comrade!
Here's a revolution starting all around you,
and you're sleeping through it!
Be God, it's not to Bakunin's ghost
you ought to be prayin' your dreams,
but to the great nihilist, Hickey!
He started a movement that'll blow up the world!
You, Larry!
Renegade!
Traitor!
I'll have you shot!
Don't be a fool, buy me a drink.
(laughing maniacally)
Bourgeois swine, Hickey!
He laughs like good fellow,
he makes jokes.
He dares to hint to me,
so I see what he dares to think!
He thinks I'm finish,
it is too late.
So I do not wish the day to come
because it will not be my day.
Ahh?
I see what he thinks!
He thinks lies
even worse,
that I...
I'll have him hanged the first one of all
to the first lamppost!
(laughing maniacally)
Why you so serious,
you little monkey-faces?
It's all great joke, no?
So we get drunk,
and we laugh like hell,
and then we die,
and the pipe dream vanish!
(laughing)
But be of good cheer, little stupid peoples!
"The days grow hot,
O Babylon!"
Soon, little proletarians,
we will have free picnic in the cool shade,
and we will eat hot dogs
and drink free wine
beneath the willow trees!
Like hogs, yes!
Like beautiful, little hogs!
Goddamned liar, Hickey!
It's he who makes me sneer.
I want to sleep!
Hickey ain't overlookin' no bets.
Tell it to Old Wise Guy Larry,
who's still pretendin' he's the one exception
who don't do no pipe dreamin'!
I...
All right.
Take it out on me, if it makes you more content.
Sure, I love every hair of your heads,
my great big beautiful baby dolls,
and there's nothing I wouldn't do for you.
The old Irish bunk, huh?
We ain't big
and we ain't your baby dolls!
But we admit we're beautiful,
huh, Margie? Yeah, sure thing.
But what would he do with beautiful dolls
even if he had the price, the old goat?
Ahh!
Larry, you're okay even though you are full of bull.
Sure, you're aces with us;
we're nervous, that's all.
It's Hickey, that lousy drummer!
Why can't he be like he's always been?
I ain't never seen a guy change so.
What do you think happened to him, Larry?
I don't know.
With all his gab
I noticed he's kept that to himself so far.
Maybe he's saving the great revelation
for Harry's party.
Oh!
Let him mind his own business and I'll mind mine.
Yeah, that's what I say.
Say, Larry,
where's that young friend of yours disappeared to?
I don't care where he is,
except I wish he was a thousand miles away!
He's a pest.
I told him,
"I'll take a lot from you, Hickey,"
"like everyone else in this dump,"
"because you always been a grand guy."
"But there's things I don't take from you nor nobody, see?"
"Remember that,"
or you'll wake up in a hospital,
"or maybe worse,
"with your wife and the iceman
walkin' slow behind ya."
Aw, you oughtn't make that iceman crack, Rocky.
I noticed he ain't pulled that old gag this time.
(gasps)
Do you suppose he did catch his wife cheatin', hum?
Oh, that's the bunk!
He ain't pulled that gag or showed a photo around
because he ain't drunk.
And if he's caught her cheatin'
he'd be drunk, wouldn't he?
He'd have beat her up and then gone on the worst drunk
he'd ever staged.
Sure, Rocky's got the right dope, baby.
I stood tellin' people this dump is closed for the night
all I'm gonna!
Let Harry hire a doorman, pay him wages, if he wants one.
Yeah?
Harry's pretty damned good to ya.
Sure he is,
I don't mean that.
Anyways, it's all right.
I told Schwartz, the cop,
we closed for the party.
He'll keep folks away.
I wants me a big drink, that's what.
Who's stoppin' yuh?
You can have all you want on Hickey.
All right,
I earned all the drinks on him I could drink in a year
for listenin' to his crazy bull.
And here's hopin' he gets the lockjaw.
I drinks on him, but I don't drink with him.
No, sir, never no more!
Oh, bull.
Hickey's all right, what's he done to you?
That's my business.
Sure, you would think he's all right.
He's a white man, ain't he?
Now listen to me, you white boys!
Now don't you get it in your head
that I was pretendin' to be what I ain't,
or that I ain't proud to be what I am
you gettin' me?
Or you and me is goin' to have trouble.
What nerve!
Just because you act nice to him,
he gets a swelled nut...
if that ain't a coon all over.
He talkin' fight talk, huh?
I'll murder the nigger.
Listen, listen, boys,
I, I'm sorry.
You been good friends to me.
It's that Hickey,
he gets my head all mixed up with craziness.
Oh, that's all right, Joe.
The boys wasn't takin' you serious.
Jees, what did I say?
Hickey ain't overlookin' no bets.
And you gotta admit
he's got the right dope.
I mean, on some of the bums here.
He's certainly got one guy I know sized up right.
Ain't he, Pearl?
He certainly has.
Cut it out, I told ya!
It's nothing to me what happened to him.
But I have a feeling he's dying to tell us inside him,
and yet he's afraid.
Like that damned kid.
Strange the queer way he seemed to recognize him.
If he's afraid,
that explains why he's off booze.
Afraid if he got drunk, he might tell...
Well, well, well!
Here I am in the nick of time.
Well, come on, somebody,
give me a hand with these packages.
Jees, Hickey,
you scared me outta a year's growth,
sneakin' in like that.
"Sneakin'?"
You were all so busy drinking in words of wisdom
from Old Wise Guy here,
you couldn't hear anything else.
And from what I heard, Larry,
you're not so good
when you start playing Sherlock Holmes.
You've got me all wrong.
I'm not afraid of anything now,
not even myself.
You better stick to the part of Old Cemetery,
the Barker for the Big Sleep.
That is, if you can still let yourself get away with it.
"Old Cemetery!"
That's him, Hickey.
We'll have to call him that.
Beginning to do a lot of puzzling about me,
aren't you, Larry?
But that won't help you.
You've got to think of yourself,
I couldn't give you my peace.
You've got to find your own,
all I can do is to help you,
and the rest of the gang,
by showing you the way to find it.
Oh, hire a church!
All right, boys and girls, don't get sore.
I guess that did sound too much like a lousy preacher.
Well, let's forget it and get on with the party.
Is those bundles grub, Hickey?
You bought enough already to feed an army.
I want this to be the biggest birthday Harry's ever had.
Now you and Rocky go out in the hall
and bring in the big surprise!
My arms are busted lugging it.
Jees, you got us all head up!
What is it, Hickey?
Wait and see!
I thought to myself,
"I'll bet this is what would please those whores
more than anything."
Then I said to myself, "I don't care
"how much money it costs, they're worth it,
"they're the best little scouts in the world,
"and they've always been damned kind to me
when I was down and out."
And I meant every word of that.
Well, what's the matter?
Ehh...
Oh, I see.
Now look, you know I didn't say that to offend you.
So don't be silly now.
All right, all right.
Oh, look, here it comes!
Hickey, what...
What'd you get?
Unveil it, boys!
Oh, it's champagne!
Oh, jees, Hickey, if you ain't a sport!
I never been soused on champagne!
Hey, let's get stinko!
Oh, you betcha my life!
All of us!
You sure is hittin' the high spots, Hickey.
When I runs my gamblin' house,
I drink that old bubbly water in steins.
And I'm gonna drink that way again, too,
as soon's I make my stake.
And that ain't no pipe dream, neither.
What'll we drink it outta, Hickey?
There ain't no wine glasses.
Well, Joe's got the right idea, steins!
That's the spirit for Harry's party.
We will drink wine
beneath the willow trees!
That's the spirit, brother,
and let the lousy slaves drink vinegar.
(chuckles)
Got damned liar!
Leave Hugo be!
He rotted 10 years in prison for his faith.
He earned his dream!
Have you no decency or pity?
Hello, what's this?
I thought you were in the grandstand.
Listen, Larry, you're gettin' me all wrong.
Hell, you ought to know me better.
Of course I have pity,
but now that I've seen the light,
it's not my old kind of pity,
the kind yours is.
The kind that lets itself off by encouraging some poor guy
to go on kidding himself with a lie.
The kind that leaves the poor slob worse off
because he feels guiltier than ever.
The kind that makes his lying hopes nag at him,
and reproach him until he's a rotten skunk in his own eyes.
No, sir.
The kind of pity I feel now is after final results
that really help save the poor guy.
Make him contented with what he is,
and quit battling himself,
so he can find peace for the rest of his life.
Oh, I know how you resent the way
I have to show you up to yourself,
but you'll be grateful to me
when all at once you're able to admit,
without feeling ashamed,
that all the grandstand foolosopher bunk
and the waiting for the Big Sleep stuff
is a pipe dream.
You'll be able to say to yourself,
"I'm just an old man who is scared of life,
"but even more scared of dying.
"So I'm keeping drunk and hanging on to life
at any price, and what of it?"
Be God,
if I'm not beginning to think you've gone mad.
You're a liar!
Now, listen, that's no way to talk to an old pal
who's trying to help you.
Hell, if you really wanted to die,
you'd just take a hop off the fire escape, wouldn't you?
And if you really were in the grandstand,
you wouldn't be pitying everyone.
As for my being bughouse,
you can't crawl out of it that way.
I'm too damned sane.
I can size up guys and turn 'em inside out
better than I ever could,
even where they're strangers like that Parritt kid.
He's licked, Larry.
I think there's only one possible way out
you can help him take.
That is, if you have the right kind of pity for him.
What do you mean?
I'm not advising him,
except to leave me out of his troubles...
he's nothing to me.
You'll find he won't agree to that.
He'll keep after you until he makes you help him.
Because he's got to be punished,
so he can forgive himself.
He hasn't got the guts,
he can't manage it alone.
And you're the only one he can turn to.
For the love of God, mind your own business.
How'd you know about him?
He's hardly spoken to you.
No, that's right,
but I do know a lot about him just the same.
I've had hell inside of me, I can spot it in others.
Maybe that's what gives me the feeling
there's something familiar about him,
something between us.
No, it's more than that.
Tell me about him, for example,
I don't imagine he's married, is he?
No.
Hasn't he been mixed up with some woman?
Oh, I don't mean trollops.
I mean the old real love stuff
that crucifies you.
Maybe you're right,
I wouldn't be surprised.
I see.
You think I'm on the wrong track and you're glad I am.
Because then I won't suspect whatever it is he did
about the Great Cause.
That's another lie you keep telling yourself, Larry,
that the good old cause means nothing to you any more.
What the hell...
But you're wrong about Parritt.
That's not what's got him stopped,
it's what's behind that.
And it's a woman,
I recognize the symptoms.
And you're the boy who's never wrong.
His trouble is he was brought up a devout believer
in the Movement, and now he's lost his faith!
It's a shock...
but he's young,
and he'll soon find another dream just as good
or as bad.
All right, I'll let it go at that, Larry.
He's nothing to me, except that I'm glad he's here
'cause he'll help me make you wake up to yourself.
I don't even like the guy,
or the feeling there's anything between us.
But you'll find out that I'm right just the same,
when you get to the final showdown with him.
There'll be no showdown!
I don't give a tinker's...
Sticking to the grandstand, eh?
I always knew that you'd be the toughest of all the gang
to convince, Larry.
And along with Harry and Jimmy Tomorrow.
It was you I wanted to help the most.
I've always liked you a lot, you old bastard.
Hey, not much time before 12:00!
Well, come on, gang, let's get going.
Come on, boys and girls, let's get busy.
Let's see, cake's all set.
And my gifts and yours, girls.
It's a tie, tie and a handkerchief.
Chuck and Rocky, hmm?
What's this for, Hickey?
Harry certainly will be very touched by your thoughts of him.
Now Margie and Pearl, get back in the bar
and get ready to bring the grub right in.
There'll be some drinking first and some toasts.
My idea was to use the wine for that,
so get that all set.
Now I'll go upstairs and root everybody up,
Harry the last.
When you hear us coming, somebody light the candles
and start playing his favorite tune on the piano.
Well, come on, Cora, everybody, let's hustle!
We want this to come off in style, uh?
But Jees, I gotta practice.
I ain't laid my mitts on a box in God knows when.
Hey, Joe!
*
Oh, Jees, I've forgotten this has-been tune.
Come on, Joe, hum it so I can follow.
(humming)
Be God!
It's the second feast of Belshazzar,
with Hickey to do the writing on the wall!
Aw, shut up, Old Cemetery!
Well, if it ain't Prince Willie.
Gee, kid, you look sick.
Get a couple of shots in ya.
No, thanks, not now, I'm-I'm-I'm tapering off.
It's been hell up in that damned room, Larry.
The-the-the things I've imagined!
(piano music, humming)
But...
I've-I've got it beat now.
By-by tomorrow morning I'll...
I'll be on the wagon.
And I'll, uh...
I'll get back my clothes first thing.
Hickey's loaning me the money.
And I'm goin' to do what I always said.
I'm-I'm-I'm gonna go to the D.A.'s office,
because he knows that I...
I-I really was a brilliant student.
Oh, I know I can make good.
I-I owe a lot to Hickey.
He's...
made me wake up to myself and see what a fool...
(laughs)
It wasn't nice to face but...
It's not what he says.
It's what you feel behind what he hints!
Christ, you'd think
all I really wanted to do with my life
was sit here and stay drunk!
I'll show him!
You want my advice...
you'll put your mouth on this bottle
and keep it there
until you don't give a damn about Hickey.
(laughs)
That's fine advice.
I thought you were my friend!
(piano music stops)
(steps approaching)
Gee, I'm glad you're here, Larry.
That damned fool Hickey knocked on my door.
I opened up because I thought it must be you.
He came bustin' in and made me come downstairs here.
(piano music resumes)
I don't know what for,
I don't belong at this birthday celebration,
I don't know this gang,
and I don't wanna be mixed up with them.
All I came here for was to find you!
I've warned you that...
Can't you make Hickey mind his own business?
Just now he pats me on the shoulder,
like he's sympathizing with me.
He says, "I know how it is, son,
"but you can't hide from yourself,
"not even here on the bottom of the sea.
"You've gotta face the truth and then do what must be done
"for your own peace and for the happiness
of all concerned."
Now, what'd he mean by that, Larry?
How the hell would I know?
Then he grins at me and says, "Oh, never mind,
"Larry's getting wise to himself.
"I think you can rely on his help in the end.
"He's gonna have to choose between living and dying,
"and he'll never choose to die
while there's a breath left in the old bastard!"
Then he laughs like it's a joke on you.
Well, what do you say to that, Larry?
I've got nothing to say.
Except you're a bigger fool
than he is to listen to him.
Oh, is that so?
Well, he's no fool where you're concerned.
He's got your number, all right.
(piano playing continues)
You know I don't mean that.
Larry, you know what I want most is to be friends with you.
I haven't a single friend left in the world.
I hoped...
I hoped you'd...
And you could, too, without it hurting you.
You ought to, for mother's sake, Larry.
She really loved you.
You loved her, too, didn't you?
Leave what's dead in its grave.
Oh, I suppose because I was only a kid
you don't think I was wise about you and her, uh?
Well, I've been wise ever since I can remember
to all the guys she's had.
Although she used to try to kid me along
it wasn't so.
That's a silly stunt
for a free Anarchist woman, isn't it?
To be ashamed of being free!
Shut your damned trap!
Yes, I know I shouldn't say that now.
I keep forgetting she isn't free anymore.
You know, Larry, you're the one of them all
she cared most about.
Anybody else who left the Movement
would've been more than dead to her,
but she couldn't forget you.
She used to make excuses for you.
I used to try to get her goat about you.
I'd say, "Larry's got brains
and yet thinks the Movement's a crazy pipe dream."
She'd blame it on the booze getting you.
She'd kid herself that you'd give up booze
and come back to the Movement, tomorrow.
She used to say, "Larry can't kill in himself
"a faith he's given his life to,
not without killing himself."
How about that, Larry, what she right?
(Cora singing)
I suppose what she meant by that was to come back to her.
She was always getting the Movement
mixed up with herself.
(dishes rattling)
But I'm sure she really must've loved you, Larry.
As much as she could love anyone besides herself.
No, she wasn't even faithful to you at that though, was she?
That's why you walked out on her, isn't it?
I remember that last fight you had with her.
I was listening.
I was on your side, even if she was my mother,
because I liked you so much.
I remember she was putting on her
high-and-mighty free-woman stuff,
telling you you were still a slave
to bourgeois morality and jealousy.
And that you thought that the woman you loved
was a piece of private property you owned.
And I remember you got mad, you told her, "I don't like"
living with a whore, if that's what you mean!"
You lie, I never called her that!
And that's why she still respects you!
See, 'cause you walked out on her.
She got sick of the others.
She just had to keep on having lovers to prove to herself
how free she was.
Made home a lousy place.
I felt like you did about it.
It was like living in a whorehouse, only worse,
because she didn't have to make her living at it, you know.
You bastard!
She's your mother.
Have you no shame?
No.
She brought me up to believe that family-respect stuff
is all bourgeois, property-owning crap.
Why should I be ashamed?
I've had enough of this! No, Larry!
Please don't leave me!
Larry, I promise, I only mentioned her name
to make you understand better.
Why didn't you come up to my room
like I asked you to?
I kept waiting...
We can talk over everything up there.
There's nothing to talk about.
But Larry, I gotta talk to you or I'm gonna talk to Hickey!
I feel he knows, anyway,
and I'm sure he'd understand all right,
but I hate his guts!
I'm scared of him, honest, there's something not human
behind his damned grinning and kidding.
Ah, you feel that too, eh?
But I can't go on like this, I've gotta tell you, Larry.
I won't listen! Okay, I won't!
Larry!
Who do you think you're kidding?
I know damned well you've guessed.
I guessed nothing.
No, but I want you to guess now.
I'm glad you have.
I know now, since Hickey's been after me,
that I meant you to guess right from the start.
That's why I came to you.
I want you to understand the reason.
You see, I, I began to study
American history.
And I got admiring Washington and Jefferson,
Jackson and Lincoln,
and I began to feel patriotic
and love this country.
I saw it was the best government in the world,
where everybody was equal,
everybody had a chance.
And I saw all the ideas behind the Movement,
they came from a lot of Russians like Bakunin and Kropotkin.
They were all meant for Europe.
So we didn't need them here in a democracy,
the way we were free already.
I didn't want this country to be destroyed
for a damned foreign pipe dream!
I began to feel like I was a traitor
for helping a lot of cranks and bums
and free women plot to overthrow our government.
And I saw it was my, my duty to my country...
You stinking rotten liar.
You think you can fool me
with such hypocrite cant?
I don't give a damn what you did!
It's on your own head, whatever it was!
I don't know and I don't want to know!
But Larry, I never thought mother would be caught.
Please believe that, I never would...
All I know is that I am sick of living!
I'm through.
I'm drowned and contented on the bottom of a bottle!
Honor or dishonor,
faith or treachery,
are nothing to me but opposites of the same stupidity
that is the king and ruler of life,
and in the end
they'll both rot into dust
in the same grave.
All things are meaningless to me,
because they grin at me
from the one skull of death.
So go away...
I've forgotten your mother.
You "old foolosopher," eh?
You lousy old faker!
For the love of God, leave me in peace
the little time that's left to me!
No!
Don't pull that pitiful old-man junk on me!
You old bastard, you'll never die
because there's a drink of whiskey left!
You be careful how you taunt me back into life,
I warn you.
Because I might remember this thing called justice there,
and the punishment for...
You're as mad as Hickey...
just as big a liar.
Wait'll Hickey gets through with you.
Well, hello, "Tightwad Kid."
Hey, did you come to join the party?
Oh, wow, boy, don't he act bashful, Pearl?
Yeah, especially with his dough.
(loud arguing in distance)
Hey, Rocky, fighting in the hall!
(unintelligible shouting)
Don't touch me!
Can you beat it?
I heard you's two call each other
every name you can think of
but I never seen...
A swell time to stage your first bout,
on Harry's birthday party!
What started the scrap?
Nothing, old chap.
Our business, you know,
but that bloody ass, Hickey, made some insinuation about me,
and the boorish Boer had the impertinence
to agree with him!
That's a lie!
Hickey made joke about me,
and this Limey said yes, it was true!
Well, sit down the both of you!
And cut out this rough stuff!
Jees, would you look at those bums!
Like a couple of kids!
For God's sake, would you kiss and make up, ah?
Yeah, Harry's party begins in a minute,
and we don't want no soreheads around here.
Oh, very well then.
In deference to the occasion,
I apologize,
General Wetjoen,
provided you do also.
I apologize, Captain Lewis,
because Harry is my good friend.
Aw, hell!
If you can't do better than that...
Here's the star boarder.
It's serious this time.
I'm tellin' all of you,
that bastard Hickey's got Harry on the hip.
And it ain't gonna do us no good if he gets Harry
to take that walk tomorrow.
He's sure to call on Bessie's relations
and have a little cry over poor old Bessie.
And you know what that bitch
and all her family thought of me!
Once Bessie's relations get their hooks into him,
it'll be as tough for us
as if she wasn't even gone.
Everything all set?
Ah, fine.
Half-a-minute to go,
Harry's starting down with Jimmy now.
I had a hard time getting him to move.
Harry don't even want to remember it's his birthday now!
Oh, here they come!
Come on, everybody, light the candles!
Cora, get ready to play, stand up, everybody, eh?
Chuck, Rocky, the wine!
Let's see, 12:00 o'clock on the dot.
Come on, everybody, with a "Happy Birthday, Harry!"
(all) Happy Birthday, Harry!
Hey!
(Cora singing, playing piano)
Cut out the glad hand, Hickey!
You think I'm a sucker?
Bejees, I know you,
you sneaking, lying drummer!
And all you bums,
what the hell you trying to do,
yelling and raising the roof?
You want the cops to close the joint,
and take my license away?
Hey, you dumb tart,
quit banging that box.
Jees, Harry, I...
Bejees, the least you could do is learn a tune.
You two hookers,
screaming at the top of your lungs!
What do you think this is, a dollar cathouse?
Bejees, that's where you belong!
(crying)
Jees, Harry,
I never thought you'd say it like you meant it.
Now, Harry, you don't want to get sore at the gang
just 'cause you're upset about yourself, hmm?
Look, anyway, I promised you it'd come through all right,
haven't I?
So quit worrying. Ahh...
You don't wanna blow out the old gang
just when they're congratulating you
on your birthday, do you?
Bejees,
they ain't as dumb as you.
They know I was only kiddin' 'em.
They know I appreciate their congratulations.
Don't you, fellas, huh?
(Pat) Yeah, sure Harry.
(affirmative exclamations)
Bejees, I like you broads.
You know I was only kiddin'.
Sure, we know, Harry.
Sure!
Sure, Harry's the greatest kidder in this dump,
and that's sayin' somethin'.
Look how he's kidded himself for 20 years.
But unless I'm wrong, Governor, and I'm bettin' I'm not,
we'll soon know, eh?
Tomorrow morning.
No, by God, it's this morning now.
This... this is this morning?
Yes, it's the day at last, Jimmy.
But don't be scared, I'll help you,
I promised that.
I don't understand you.
Kindly remember
I'm fully capable of settlin' my own affairs!
Well, isn't that exactly what I want you to do?
Only watch out on the booze.
You've had a lot to drink already,
and you don't want to let yourself duck out of it
by being too drunk to move,
not this time.
Bejees, Margie, you know I didn't mean it.
It's that lousy drummer riding me
that's got my goat.
I know, Harry, I know.
Hey, come on, look at your cake,
you haven't even noticed it yet!
Ain't it grand?
Yeah, say, that's pretty.
I ain't have had a cake since Bessie...
And six candles, eh?
Mm-phm.
Each for 10 years, eh?
You got it.
That was thoughtful of him.
He means well, I guess...
The hell with this cake! Oh, oh, wait, Harry!
You ain't seen the presents
from me and Margie and Cora,
and Chuck and Rocky.
And there's a watch all engraved
with your name and the date from Hickey.
Ah, the hell with it!
Bejees, he can keep it!
Jees,
he ain't even goin' to look at our presents!
Hey, hey, come on everybody,
this is all wrong!
If someone don't put some life in this party
I'm gonna go nuts!
Hey, Cora, come on!
Why don't you bang on that box?
Eh...
ohh, play somethin' for Harry, uh?
You don't have to stop just 'cause he kidded you.
Yeah, now you was playing it fine, Cora.
It was Bessie's favorite tune.
She was always singing it.
It brings her back, I wish...
Yes, we've all heard you tell us
that you thought the world of her, Governor.
So I did, bejees...
everyone knows I did.
And bejees, if you say I didn't...
Now, Governor, I didn't say anything.
You're the only one that knows the truth about that.
Marjorie's favorite song was "Loch Lomond."
She was beautiful,
she had a beautiful voice,
and she played the piano beautifully.
You were lucky, Harry,
Bessie died.
But there are more bitter sorrows
than losing the woman one loves
by the hand of death.
Now, you needn't go on, Jimmy.
We've all heard the story about how you came back to Cape Town
and found her in the hay with a staff officer.
We all know that you'd like to believe that
that's what started you on the booze
and ruined your life.
(crying)
I... I'm talking to Harry.
Will you kindly keep out of...
(weeping)
My life is not ruined!
But I'll bet when you admit the truth to yourself,
you'll confess it, you were pretty sick
of her hating you for getting drunk.
And I'll bet you were really damned relieved
when she gave you such a good excuse.
I know how it is, Jimmy,
you see, I...
Ha!
So that's what happened, is it?
Your iceman joke finally came home to roost, did it?
Maybe you should've remembered
there's truth in the old superstition
that you'd better look out what you call,
because in the end it comes to you.
Was that a fact, Larry?
Well, well.
Then you'd better be careful
how you keep calling for the old Big Sleep.
Chair.
Well, what are we waiting for, boys and girls?
Let's get this party rolling!
Chuck, Rocky, bring on the big surprise!
Oh, Governor, you sit over here at the head of the table.
Come on.
Well, sit down, girls, sit down.
And I'll sit here at the foot.
Real champagne, bums, cheer up!
What is this, a funeral?
Mixin' champagne with Harry's redeye
will knock you paralyzed!
Ain't you never satisfied?
Order, order, Ladies and gents!
Oh, yes, I am going to drink with you this time, Larry.
To prove that I'm not teetotal
because the booze'll make me spill my secrets,
as you think.
I don't need the booze anymore,
or anything else.
I just want to be sociable and propose a toast
in honor of our old friend, Harry,
and drink it with you.
Wake up our demon bomb-tosser, Rocky.
We don't want any corpses at this feast.
Hey, Hugo, come up for air!
Don't you see the champagne?
Hah.
We will eat birthday cake
and drink champagne beneath the willow trees!
(chuckling)
(chokes)
This wine is unfit to drink!
It has not properly been iced!
Always a high-toned swell at heart,
eh, Hugo?
Well, God help us poor bums if you'd ever got
to telling us where to get off.
You'd have been drinking our blood beneath
(fake Russian accent) those willow trees!
But here's the toast, Ladies and gents.
Here's to Harry Hope,
who's been a friend in need to every one of us.
And here's to the old Governor,
the best sport and the kindest,
biggest-hearted guy in the world.
Come on, everybody, to Harry!
Bottoms up.
(all) To Harry!
To you, boss. Happy Birthday!
Thanks, all of you.
Hickey, you old son of a bitch,
that's white of you.
I know you meant it, too.
Of course I meant it, Harry, old friend.
And I mean it when I say that I hope that this will be
the biggest day in your life,
and in the lives of everyone here,
and the beginning of a new life
of peace and contentment.
And here's to that, Harry.
Oh, forget that bughouse line
of bull for a minute, can't you?
You're right, Rocky, I am talking too much.
It's Harry we want to hear from.
Speech, speech, speech!
(all agreeing)
Bejees, I'm...
I'm no good at speeches.
All I can say is
thanks to everybody again
for remembering me on my birthday.
Only don't think because I'm 60,
I'll be a bigger damned fool easy mark than ever!
Like Hickey says, it's gonna be a new day!
This dump has got to be run like other dumps,
so I can make some money and not just split even.
I'm sick of bein' played for a sucker.
I know you're all
laughin' at me now behind my back,
thinking to yourselves,
"The old, lying' pipe-dreaming faker,
"we've heard his bull
"about takin' a walk around the ward for years,
"he'll never make it!
"He's scared, he's yellow,
"he ain't got the guts!
He's scared he'll find out... ".
But I'll show you, bejees!
And I'll show you, too, you son of a bitch
of a frying-pan-peddling bastard!
Hu, hu, hu, that's the stuff, Harry!
Of course you'll try to show me,
that's what I want you to do.
Bejees...
all of you, forgive me.
I lost my temper.
I ain't feeling well.
I got a hell of a grouch on.
You're as welcome as the flowers in May!
Oh, sure, boss,
you're always aces with us, see?
Listen, everybody.
I know you're sick of my gabbing, but, uh,
I think I owe it to you to do a little explaining
and apologize for some of the rough stuff
I've had to pull on you.
I had to make you help each other with me, eh?
I saw that I couldn't do what I had to do alone.
Not in the time at my disposal.
I knew when I came here I wouldn't be able to stay long.
I'm slated to leave on a trip.
Now I know every one of you,
inside and out, by heart.
I may have been drunk when I've been here before,
but old Hickey could never be so drunk
he couldn't have to see through everybody.
Everybody, that is, except himself.
And finally, he had to see through himself, too.
Now I swear I would've never acted this way
if I didn't absolutely believe it'd be worthwhile to you
in the end.
When you're rid of the damned guilt
that makes you lie to yourselves
that you're something you're not,
and the remorse that nags at you
and makes you hide behind lousy pipe dreams,
you won't give a damn what you are anymore.
I wouldn't say this unless I knew, brothers and sisters.
This peace is real, it is a fact.
I know, because I've got it, here, now,
right in front of you.
Well, you can see the difference in me.
You remember how I used to be.
Even when I had two quarts of rotgut under my belt,
and joked and sang "Sweet Adeline,"
I still felt like a guilty skunk.
But you can see that I don't give a damn
about anything anymore.
And I promise you,
by the time this day is over,
I'll have every one of you feeling the same way.
I guess that's about all from me for the present, boys and girls.
So, let's get on with the party.
(Larry) Wait!
I think it would help us, poor pipe-dreaming sinners
along the sawdust trail to salvation,
if you told us now what it was happened
that converted you
to this great peace you've found.
I noticed you didn't say anything
when I asked you about the iceman.
Did this great revelation
of the evil habit of dreaming about tomorrow
come to you after you found out your wife was sick of you?
Bejees, you've hit it, Larry.
I've noticed he hasn't shown her picture around
this time.
He hasn't got it!
The iceman took it away from him!
Jees, look at him!
Who could blame her?
She must be hard up to fall for an iceman!
Imagine a sap like him
advisin' me and Chuck to get married.
Yeah, he done so good with it.
At least I can say that Marjorie
chose an officer and a gentleman.
Come to look at you, Hickey, old chap,
you've sprouting horns
like a bloody antelope!
Bigger, by God,
like a water buffalo's!
(imitating buffalo sound)
* "Oh come up" she cried, *
* "My iceman lad
* "And you and I'll agree *
* "And I'll show you the prettiest *
(banging table)
* "That ever you did see" *
(mocking laughter)
Well, I'm glad to see you get in good spirits
for Harry's party,
even if the joke is on me.
Well, I'll admit
I always asked for it in the old days
by pulling that iceman gag, so, uh, laugh all you like.
(mocking laughter)
Well, I guess this forces my hand,
by brining up the subject of Evelyn.
I had wanted to wait until the party was over,
But, uh,
you're getting the wrong idea about poor Evelyn,
and I've got to stop that.
I'm sorry to tell you that my dearly beloved wife
is dead.
Be God...
I felt he had the touch of death on him.
Forgive me, Hickey...
I'd like to cut my dirty tongue out.
Now, look everybody, you mustn't let this be a wet blanket on.
Harry's birthday party.
You're still getting me all wrong.
There's no reason...
You see, I don't feel any grief.
I've got to feel glad, for her sake,
because she's at peace;
she's rid of me at last.
And you can imagine what I was like being married
to a no-good drunken cheater like me.
And there was no way out of it for her,
because she loved me.
But now she is at peace,
like she always longed to be.
So why should I feel sad?
She wouldn't want me to feel sad.
Why, all that Evelyn ever wanted out of life
was to make me happy.