Shared with you
- Cab Calloway: [manhandles Sandman for kissing a dancer] Hands off the merchandise ni**er.
- Owney: In the next room, gentlemen, is the best food, drink, and pussy available on any price in New York. I suggest you take a sample of these things - and try to remember that *this* is why we work so hard - to live the way that the kings and princes live in this world. Huh? Come on, get outta here.
- [a boy runs up to Dixie in the street]
- Boy in Street: Vincent's been telling everyone around here that you saved the Dutchman's ass!
- Frenchy Demange: Anything you need, Dutch?
- Dutch Schultz: Yeah, why don't you bring me the moon, Frenchy?
- [Frenchy violently smashes Owney's pocket watch]
- Frenchy Demange: You cheap son of a bitch! You only offered $500 for me?
- Owney: What?
- Frenchy Demange: If you were kidnapped, I wouldn't offer more than that for you!
- Owney: $500?
- Frenchy Demange: That's what I heard!
- Owney: 50 grand I paid for you. 50 grand! They only wanted 35. I gave them 50 not to hurt you. $500. I would've given $500,000. I'm worried sick about you. Shit! Look what you done to my fuckin' watch.
- Frenchy Demange: 50 grand?
- Owney: Yeah.
- [Frenchy hands Owney a box that Owney opens]
- Owney: What's this? A platinum watch.
- [smiling]
- Owney: You asshole.
- [they embrace]
- Bumpy Rhodes: [violently accosting Mike] This uppity nigger is buying you a drink!
- [flushes his head down the toilet]
- Dixie: What do they call you?
- Sol Weinstein: Nobody calls me nothin'.
- Dixie: Not even your mother?
- Sol Weinstein: I didn't have a mother. They found me in a garbage pail.
- Frenchy Demange: I don't trust no one with a nickname.
- Owney: What about your nickname, Frenchy?
- Frenchy Demange: That's different.
- Owney: Why?
- Frenchy Demange: I'm trustworthy.
- Vincent Dwyer: [on the cotton club] You know they don't let niggers in here.
- Tish Dwyer: They don't let them in this club.
- [last lines]
- Flynn: You know Jews are just jigs turned inside out
- [livid Dutch snatches up a knife and starts stabbing him]
- Dutch Schultz: Hey, that trumpet duel was great, but you beat him bad. He oughta be put away for larceny. He lifted those riffs from King Oliver.
- Sandman Williams: Those Fays at the Cotton Club know what they're lookin' at.
- Clay Williams: They'll be lookin' at us dance! Look, you start givin' white people what you think they want, soon you got no blood left. Today, we audition for the Cotton Club with what we know.
- Dixie: So, where'd you get this money? With a legit job?
- Vincent Dwyer: Well, I do business.
- Dixie: You do business?
- Vincent Dwyer: Yeah, like Jesse James.
- Norma Williams: Ah, you got to do it pretty to get to the Cotton Club.
- [singing]
- Norma Williams: Tell me, honey, Won't you tell me please, Is it love or heart's disease, I got a feelin' in my knees, Oh, this must be love, I got a funny, funny feelin', Oh - That's gonna get you to the Cotton Club.
- Tish Dwyer: Are you ever gonna make any sense out of this life? You've been a baseball player, a boxer, a jazz musician, dance band man? You wind up broke in Kokomo, Chicago?
- Dixie: What do you think about me gettin' in the movie business? Huh? Bein' a movie star.
- Irving Stark: I'm gonna put you in the next show.
- Sandman Williams: We're in the next show?
- Irving Stark: You're in the next show.
- Sandman Williams: We got it?
- Irving Stark: Yeah.
- Sandman Williams: We got it! Thanks. Listen, you white folks are so smart.
- Clay Williams: Stop showin' off.
- Sandman Williams: Showin' off is how you get to be a star up there, brother.
- Dixie: So, you finished the funny business, Dutch.
- Dutch Schultz: I shook his hand. I should have cut it off, the fucker!
- Owney: You're here because it's good for you. It's good for everybody! Bombs. Peoples dead in the street. Arms torn off. People getting tortured. Suddenly we got twice as many cops in Harlem as we had three days ago. This is *not* good for business!
- Lila Rose Oliver: I have too many things I need to do. I want to make it. I mean, really make it. I want to do Broadway.
- Sandman Williams: You want to do white show business.
- Lila Rose Oliver: Well, isn't that what it is?
- Sandman Williams: Listen, we're gonna get an act together. We're gonna go right up to the top of the ladder. Collect all that jack, together.
- Dixie: [while dancing to a tango] I used to dance for a livin'. Did you know that?
- Vera: No kidding.
- Dixie: Yeah... .when I was 18.
- Vera: Tell me all about it.
- Dixie: These old ladies would pay me to put my arms around them and waltz them off their feet. Paid two bucks in the afternoon - plus tips. More for the night work - in *private*. If you could stand it.
- Vera: Could you?
- Dixie: Sure. Look at me tonight.
- [Vera slaps Dixie, he slaps her back]
- Dixie: You got any ideas for me?
- Frenchy Demange: Too bad you ain't colored. We could book you here.
- Dixie: Yeah. Great tragedy of my life.
- Lila Rose Oliver: [singing] Keeps raining all the time, Life is bad, Gloom and misery everywhere, Stormy weather, Just can't get my poor self together, I'm weary all of the time, The time, so weary all of the time...
- Solly: [watching a screen test] Unbelievable. Watch him. Watch him. Dixie Dwyer.
- J.W.: Finally. The first kid you send us since we started talkies that does not sound like a soprano. Thank God.
- Solly: He's the greatest. He'll become the biggest thing you...
- J.W.: Hold it. Hold it. Hold it, Solly.
- Solly: What? What?
- J.W.: This kid can't act. The kid stinks as an actor.
- Solly: Right. I can see it.
- J.W.: He has a good face. He has a good voice.
- Solly: Great face. Great voice.
- J.W.: Does not look like a fruit.
- Solly: Not at all. Not a fruit.
- J.W.: He looks like a gangster. He could be a great - gangster.
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