Montgomery Clift credited as playing...
John Wickliff Shawnessy
- Susanna Drake: That 4th of July race... what happens when you win?
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: Well, according to a friend of mine, if I win, a beautiful girl will place a garland of oak leaves on my sun-colored locks.
- Susanna Drake: I'd like to be that girl.
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: Maybe it can be arranged?
- Susanna Drake: Oh, it can be arranged, all right. *I'll* arrange it.
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: To see the Raintree is not nearly as important as what you find looking for it.
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: [On the riverboat with Susanna, visiting the South for the first time] You were right, Mrs. Shawnessy, I like your river. I really do. It even smells good.
- Susanna Drake: I knew that you'd understand it. Which is more than most Yankees do. Now, that's something I don't understand. 'Cause all you have to do is go South once and you LOVE it!
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: Well, to us Yankees, the South is not too easy to understand... You ever read "Uncle Tom's Cabin"?
- Susanna Drake: [Shocked] "Uncle Tom's Cabin"? Phoo... I haven't married an abolitionist, have I?
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: That is the skeleton in my closet.
- Susanna Drake: Now, you mustn't joke about it.
- Susanna Drake: [Arranging a vast collection of dolls on her bed] Anyway, there's worse things than being an abolitionist.
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: Like what?
- Susanna Drake: Like having Negro blood in you. Isn't it funny? Just one little teeny drop and a person's all Negro. A person can't always tell, either.
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: My students seem to enjoy creepin' up on me.
- Nell Gaither: They're all in love with you.
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: Teachers get fallen in love with. It's an occupational hazard.
- Ellen Shawnessy: Did you ever hear your father's sermon on the evils of tobacco? Ends with a regular poem: "Some do it chew, and some do it smoke, while some it up their noses do poke."
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: I do all three at the same time.
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: [People are gathering in the town center] What's going on here?
- Ellen Shawnessy: You haven't heard? They've attacked Fort Sumter. It means war sure as anything.
- T.D. Shawnessy: I'm not so sure. Now, say what you will, Americans will never fight each other. We'll settle our difficulties peacefully.
- Susanna Drake: John, don't go
- [Susanna is upset, and doesn't want him to leave]
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: Where would I go
- [assuring her that he'd never leave her]