I love this website…finally a place to ask stupid questions that have bugged me.
The line quoted in my title to this post…I’ve often heard it spoofed in various films and TV shows but I have never actually been able to figure out what it comes from originally.
Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The Mexican bandit tells Bogart and the other miners that they are Federales.
Bogart asks “If you’re Federales, where are your badges?”
“Badges? We don’t have to show you no badges! We don’t need no stinking badges!”
And a gun fight begins.
“Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges.”
Said by a bandito (masquerading as a Federale) to Dobbs (Bogart) in the mountains. You can get a wealth of film information from the Internet Movie Database. Happy searching!
Didn’t we all leap up and answer exactly this same question, oh, about a month ago?
What is it about this particular quote that people can’t identify where it’s from? Don’t they teach TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE in film courses any more?
Okay, all of you who have never seen TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE…yes, YOU…don’t try to sneak out of here!..stop by the video store on the way home and rent it. It’s a national fucking classic. And entertaining to boot.
The bandits weren’t masquerading as federales as much as they were just trying to get our “heroes” to come out of hiding. It was not exactly a clever ruse and Bogie wouldn’t fall for it. Neither did Huston or Holt or Bennett.
Read the book, don’t just watch the movie. The book Treasure of the Sierra Madre* was written by B. Traven, about whom relatively little was known. As I recall, he was supposedly an American expatriate who lived in Mexico. I think “B.Traven” was a pen name, although I don’t recall his real one. I believe he died in the not too distant pass, so maybe more details about him are now available. FFWIW, the movie follows the book pretty closely.
Sierra was one of Sam Peckinpah’s personal favorite films. While he didn’t exactly re-make it, he alludes to it quite heavily in his warped Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.
At one point Warren Oates asks Gig Young his name, Young answers, “Fred C. Dobbs.”
But the’re not the same film. For example, Sierra didn’t include Kris Kristofferson in a typically Peckinpahian “woman facing the prospect of rape suddenly comes around to liking the prospect” scene. (Man, that guy was a creep when it came to women.)
I thought that B. Traven was a German expat. Whatever he was, he was very secretive about his past and liked living in Mexico because no one ever bugged him out carrying around things like a passport or any other kind of ID.
His real name was believed to be Berwick Traven Torsvan and he was born around 1882 in Chicago, but moved to Germany, but left there after WWI to live in Mexico.
There are a lot of other stories about B. Traven’s life and he did little to dispel any of them.
Other possible names for are: Hermann Feige, Ret Marut, Hal Croves, and even Jack London (!).
Everyone seems to agree that he did die in Mexico City on March 26, 1969 and he was around 80-83 years old.