Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)

Elizabeth Taylor: Maggie Pollitt

Photos 

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Quotes 

• Brick Pollitt : What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof?

  Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : Just staying on it I guess, long as she can.

• [last lines] 

  Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : Thank you for keeping still, for backing me up in my lie.

  Brick Pollitt : Maggie, we're through with lies and liars in this house. Lock the door.

• Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : You can be young without money, but you can't be old without it.

• Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : Maggie the cat is alive. I'm alive.

• Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : Look, Mama, he's wearing Brick's birthday present. I haven't given you my present yet, but I will now. I have an announcement to make.

  Mae Pollitt : What kind of an announcement?

  Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : An announcement of life beginning. A child is coming, sired by Brick out of Maggie the cat. I have Brick's child in my body, and that is my present to you.

  Mae Pollitt : Did you ever in all your born days hear such a bold-faced lie?

  Gooper Pollitt : Shut up.

  Ida 'Big Momma' Pollitt : [kissing Maggie]  Thank you. Thank you very much.

  Harvey 'Big Daddy' Pollitt : Yes indeed, this girl has life in her body. And that's no lie. Gooper, I want to talk to my lawyer in the morning. Brick?

  Brick Pollitt : Yes, Big Daddy?

  Harvey 'Big Daddy' Pollitt : I'm going to go out and look this place over before I give it up. The place and the people on it.

• Brick Pollitt : A family crisis brings out the best and the worst in every member of the family.

  Gooper Pollitt : That's the truth.

  Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : Amen.

  Mae Pollitt : You want to talk about the truth? You're not pregnant!

  Gooper Pollitt : Keep still, Mae.

  Mae Pollitt : She's making it up!

  Gooper Pollitt : I said shut up.

  Mae Pollitt : Don't you try to kid us, Maggie!

  Brick Pollitt : Mae, she's not kidding you.

  Mae Pollitt : How can she be pregnant by you when you won't even...

  Gooper Pollitt : Mae, will you be quiet!

  Mae Pollitt : We occupy the next room and the walls between aren't soundproof. We hear the nightly pleadings and the nightly refusals!

  Brick Pollitt : Not everybody makes as much noise about love as you do.

  Mae Pollitt : Brick, I never thought you would stoop to her level!

  Brick Pollitt : You heard what Big Daddy said. That girl's got life in her body.

  Mae Pollitt : That's a lie!

• Ida 'Big Momma' Pollitt : I'm talking in Big Daddy's languge now. I'm his wife, not his widow. I'm still his wif!

  Gooper Pollitt : What we've got here...

  Mae Pollitt : What Gooper's saying is just a plan, a basis.

  Ida 'Big Momma' Pollitt : I'll tell you what your plan is. Margaret, what is it Big Daddy always says when he's disgusted?

  Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : He says bull when he's disgusted.

  Ida 'Big Momma' Pollitt : Yes, that's right. I say bull too, like Big Daddy.

  Mae Pollitt : Well, coarse language don't seem called for to me.

  Ida 'Big Momma' Pollitt : Bull!

• Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : You've got to.

  Brick Pollitt : I don't have to do anything I don't want to! Now, you keep forgetting the conditions on which I agreed to stay on living with you.

  Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : I'm not living with you! We occupy the same cage, that's all.

• Harvey 'Big Daddy' Pollitt : Why did you and Brick suddenly decide to drive up from New Orleans?

  Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : For your birthday, what else?

  Harvey 'Big Daddy' Pollitt : I had a birthday last year and the year before that. Didn't see you then.

  Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : Well, you know how Brick is sometimes.

  Harvey 'Big Daddy' Pollitt : Maybe he thought he'd be coming to my funeral, instead of my birthday.

  Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : But Brick loves you! He does!

  Harvey 'Big Daddy' Pollitt : But does he love you?

  Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : What do you want, proof?

  Harvey 'Big Daddy' Pollitt : If I was married to you three years, you'd have the living proof. You'd have three kids already and a fourth in the oven.

• Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : Stop that, ya little no-neck monster!

• Ida 'Big Momma' Pollitt : Do you make Brick happy?

  Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : Why don't you ask if he makes me happy?

• Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : You know what I feel like? I feel all the time like a cat on a hot tin roof.

  Brick Pollitt : Then jump off the roof, Maggie. Jump off it. Cats jump off roofs and land uninjured. Do it. Jump.

  Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : Jump where? Into what?

• Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : We've still got one thing on our side. No, two things. Are my seams straight? Big Daddy dotes on you, Brick. He can't stand Brother Man and Brother Man's wife. That fertility monster, she's downright odious to him, I can tell. That's the second thing we've got on our side. He likes me. The way he looks me up and down and over, he's still got an eye for girls.

  Brick Pollitt : That kind of talk is disgusting.

  Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : Did anybody ever tell you you're a back-aching Puritan, Brick? I think it's a fine thing that a man on the doorstep of death can still look at a woman like me with what I call deserved appreciation.

• Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : This is a deliberate campaign to ruin Brick!

  Mae Pollitt : He don't need no help.

  Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : [crying]  And for the most sordid reasons on earth! Greed! Avarice and greed!

  Ida 'Big Momma' Pollitt : Margaret, darling, don't cry.

  Mae Pollitt : Well, that takes the cake! Who are the tears for? Brick? Big Daddy? Or are they for yourself? Are you crying cause you're childless? You know why she's got no kids? Ask her big, beautiful husband!

  Gooper Pollitt : Mae!

• Brick Pollitt : Don't make a fool of yourself, Maggie.

  Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : I don't mind making a fool of myself over you.

  Brick Pollitt : Well, I mind. I feel embarrassed for you.

  Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : Feel embarrassed? Well, I can't live on this way.

  Brick Pollitt : You agreed to accept that condition.

  Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : I know I did. But I can't! I can't!

• Gooper Pollitt : The point is I won't see this place run into the ground by a drunken ex-football hero.

  Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : You shut up about my husband!

  Mae Pollitt : You shut up!

• Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : [to Mae]  Not only will I spit on you, I'll claw your eyes out.

• Ida 'Big Momma' Pollitt : What's all this about?

  Gooper Pollitt : Doc, Big Mama wants the whole truth about the report we got from the clinic today.

  Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : The truth, the truth! Everybody keeps hollering about the truth. Well, the truth is as dirty as lies!

  Ida 'Big Momma' Pollitt : Is there something I don't know, Doc?

  Dr. Baugh : Well, Ida...

  Ida 'Big Momma' Pollitt : I want to know! Somebody must be lying! I want to know about my husand!

  Dr. Baugh : He had the most thorough examination ever given at the Oppenheim clinic.

  Gooper Pollitt : It's one of the best in the country.

  Mae Pollitt : It's the best in the country, bar none.

  Gooper Pollitt : They were ninety-nine percent sure before they even started.

  Ida 'Big Momma' Pollitt : Sure of what?

  Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : Not now!

  Mae Pollitt : The test was positive!

  Gooper Pollitt : Mae, shut up.

  Dr. Baugh : It's helpless, Ida. He knows it, too.

• Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : Did the storm cause any damage, Big Daddy?

  Harvey 'Big Daddy' Pollitt : Which storm you talking about, the one on the outside or the hullabaloo I heard going on in here? Heard some mighty loud talking. What's the powwow about?

  Mae Pollitt : Nothing, Big Daddy, nothing at all.

  Harvey 'Big Daddy' Pollitt : What's in them important-looking documents you got there, Gooper?

  Gooper Pollitt : Nothing, sir, nothing much of anything at all.

• Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : You're a drinker and i'm childless.

• Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : Where did I fail you? Where did I make my mistake?

• Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : Did you ever hear so many dogs' names tagged on to children?

• Brick Pollitt : Now why did you call Gooper's kiddies no-neck monsters?

  Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : Cause your brother's children got no necks, that's why.

  Brick Pollitt : Oh.

  Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : At least none visible. Their fat little heads sit on their fat little bodies without a bit of connection.