Don Rickles on Get Smart: 'I didn’t vote for him, but I use his baby powder!'
Johnson wasn’t President when I heard that line; but still, I must have heard it in the '70s.
From Gilligan’s Island:
GILLIGAN: ‘You’re thinking of Rockery Hudpeck.’
SKIPPER: 'Rockery Hudpeck? :dubious: ’
GINGER: 'Why, he’s right. I was thinking of Rock Hudson and Gregory Peck but I couldn’t make up my mind!'
Hawkeye on MASH*: '… his ill-gotten booty. Or his ill-booten gotty.'
From Magnum, P.I.: “Hey, Ivan. Did you see the sunrise?”
From All In The Family: Archie and the daughter are arguing about gun control. She cites some statistic about how many people are murdered by handguns each year. Archie replies, “Would it make you feel any better, little girl, if they was pushed out of windows?”
I don’t remember the situation exactly, but Archie was arguing with someone when he used Truman Capote as a positive example. Only he pronounced the surname ‘ka-pote’. Michael corrected him, ‘E.’ Archie: ‘That’s right. Just like Truman E. Kap-pote!’
I can’t hear Truman Capote’s name without remembering that line.
Another from Cheers-
Diane: If a tree falls in the forest and there’s nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound?
Coach Ernie Pantuso: If there’s nobody there, how do you know it fell? Maybe some beavers set it down there.
I’ve been searching for proof my memory is accurate on this one, but somebody now much more famous and star quality than they were when they had the bit part on “Cheyenne” (and I would bet it was Clint Eastwood in his pre-Rawhide days) said something very much like, “Bodie, I accuse you of cowardice.” And it was the emphasis on “dice” that made it stick in my mind. There aren’t many occasions to use the line, but there you go.
Richard Boone on “Have Gun, Will Travel” was the first (that I ever heard) to use the expression “you pencil-necked geek” to and about another character. I use that from time to time.
And although it wasn’t said as such on TV, there was a parody of Gunsmoke on record where the Chester character says, “Mister Dillon, it’s Doc. He’s a-layin’ in the street with a arrow in his heart. That’s what he’s a-doin’.” Whoever said it had Dennis Weaver down pat and I must have used that line hundreds of times out of the clear blue in totally inappropriate situations.
The Sopranos rule, though. Upwards of 80% of the lines on that show have stuck, especially the one Paulie utters about somebody being a “malignant cunt.”
From MASH:
Ah, Bach.
Me, too…neither.
This is me!
Horse hockey!
Here’s looking up your old address.
Ferret face!
Ladies and gentleman, take my advice: pull down your pants and slide on the ice.
Well, there’s the classic “Frank Burns eats worms.”
I’ve got a few from Bob Newhart’s short-lived show Bob. It was critically panned, but Mr. S and I loved it.
(Bob’s daughter, Trisha, is soliciting pledges for a fund-raising jump-rope-a-thon.)
Grouchy old woman character: Sure, I’ll pledge a dime a jump to watch you break your neck!
(Same show: Trisha is reading names off the pledge sheet she posted.)
Trisha: Ida Ho . . . Jim Shoe . . . Sam and Janet Evening . . . I. P. Nightly?! Oh hardy har har! I can hear children hooked up to monitors laughing all over the city!
(Same show: Trisha makes a show of jumping badly, everyone laughs. She stops, declares oops, she’s using the wrong rope, and produces a new rope from a fancy wooden case.)
Trisha: Ahh, Cobra! There’s my baby. (She caresses it, then proceeds to jump rope at warp speed.)
(Trisha wakes up late on the day she was planning a surprise anniversary party for her parents.)
Trisha: Get up, get up, I can’t tell you why! Put on your wedding dress and meet me in the car in five minutes!!
(Same show: Chad enters, eating from a large white disk about two feet across.)
Albie: Where’d you get that?
Chad: I sliced an inch off the bottom of the wedding cake. Come on, I’ll show you how. (They start slicing another piece off the bottom of the cake.)
(Same show: Bob and wife are cutting the wedding cake.)
Albie: Ooh, it’s gooood—I mean it LOOKS goood!