Kiss Me Kate (1953)

Howard Keel: Fred Graham 'Petruchio'

Photos 

Quotes 

• Lilli Vanessi : Do you really think *I* could play the shrew?

  Fred Graham : You'd make a perfect shrew!

• Petruchio : Go. Get thee to a notary.

• Fred Graham : You can't eat before a performance. It gives you indigestion.

  Lilli Vanessi : It's my stomach, thank you. Bring it in, Suzanne!

  Fred Graham : You'll not burp during my love scenes. Take it away.

  Lilli Vanessi : Suzanne, don't you dare.

  Suzanne : Let's make up our mind, shall we?

• Lois Lane : How am I doing, sweetie? I mean, Mr. Graham.

  Fred Graham : Very nice. Go to your dressing room and relax until curtain time. Let your mind go blank.

  Lois Lane : Whatever thou sayest.

• Fred Graham : You're sure the donkey's housebroken?

• Fred Graham : [phone rings]  Well, pick it up. It's probably that cowboy.

  Lilli Vanessi : He is not a cowboy. He's a cattle baron.

  Fred Graham : Cattle baron, huh? What's his crest? A hamburger smothered with onions?

• Fred Graham : Who are you?

  Lippy : Hey, fine-looking fellow.

  Slug : Clean-cut.

  Fred Graham : What are you doing backstage?

  Lippy : What a figure!

  Slug : What a profill.

• Fred Graham : [singing]  Let us drink, Liebchen mein

  Lilli Vanessi : In the moonlight divine

  Fred Graham , Lilli Vanessi : To the joy of our dream come true Wunderbar! Wunderbar!

• Lilli Vanessi : I'm not nervous now and I'm not going to whoops. And I'll never call you a louse in public again. Never.

  Fred Graham : You will, my sweet. You will.

• Petruchio : Hearing thy mildness praised in every town. Thy virtue spoke of and thy beauty sounded myself am moved to woo thee for my wife. Come. Sit on me.

  Katherine : Asses are made to bear and so are you.

• Lucentio : What happy wind blows you to Padua from old Verona?

  Petruchio : Such wind as scatters young men through the world to seek their fortunes. And you?

  Lucentio : I came to study.

  Petruchio : I am glad that you thus combine your resolve to suck the sweets of sweet philosophy - the mathematics and the botany. Fall to them as your stomach serves. No profit grows where is no pleasure taken. In brief, sir, study. As for me...

  [singing] 

  Petruchio : I've come to wive it wealthily in Padua, If wealthily then happily in Padua. If my wife has a bag of gold, Do I care if the bag be old? I've come to wive it wealthily in Padua...

• Fred Graham : Keep on acting the way you're doing, Miss Vanessi, and I'll give you the paddling of your life, and on-stage.

• Petruchio : Sunday comes apace and we will have rings and things in fine array. And kiss me, Kate.

  [Kate slaps Petruchio] 

  Fred Graham : All right, Miss Vanessi. You asked for it and you're going to get it.

  [proceeds to rapidly spanking Miss Vanessi, aka 'Katherine', on stage, in front of the audience] 

  Lilli Vanessi : Fred, what are you doing? Stop it! Stop it!

• Petruchio : Come, come! You wasp! I' faith, you are too angry.

  Katherine : If I be too waspish, best beware my sting.

  Petruchio : My remedy, then, is to pluck it out.

  Katherine : Aye, if the fool could find it where it lies.

  Petruchio : Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail.

• Petruchio : [singing]  And sweet Lucretia, so young and gay-ee? What scandalous doin's in the ruins of Pompeii!

• Petruchio : Carouse full-measure. Be mad, be merry, or go hang yourselves. But for my bonny Kate, she must with me. I will be master of what is mine own. She is my goods, my chattels, my horse, my ox, my anything.

• Petruchio : I see puzzlement upon thy good faces. Who are these two angelic sprites who bear my lady's train? They are distant relatives from Pisa.

  Slug : [to Lippy]  What's a sprite?

  Lippy : Some kind of fairy.

• Petruchio : Katherine, I - I charge thee, tell these headstrong women what duties they owe their lords and husbands.

  Katherine : I am ashamed that women are so simple to offer war where they should kneel for peace. Or seek to rule, supremacy and sway when they are bound to serve, love - and obey. Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth unapt to toil and trouble in the world - but that our soft conditions and our hearts should well agree with our external parts? So hold your temper, wives, and - and meekly put your hand beneath your lord and husband's foot. In token of which duty, if he please my hand is ready. Ready may it do him ease.

• Petruchio : Why, there's a wench! Come on and kiss me, Kate.

• Fred Graham : That's all I need - a blind stage manager.

• Fred Graham : [singing]  So taunt me, and hurt me.

  Lilli Vanessi : [singing]  Deceive me. Desert me.

  Fred Graham , Lilli Vanessi : [singing]  I'm yours till I die.