Famous Last Words: ‘Where the Devil Are My Slippers?’

As movies are the common denominator of our culture, we remember certain scenes, certain conflicts, certain endings all our lives.

Who can forget when Clark Gable carried Vivien Leigh upstairs in “Gone With the Wind”? Or when Richard Gere carried Debra Winger out of the factory in “An Officer and a Gentleman”?

We also remember some last lines. Last lines are a critical part of any movie. They often summarize the story and suggest the future. Who has forgotten Humphrey Bogart’s last line in “Casablanca,” as he walks arm in arm with Claude Raines across the airport? “Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

In “The End,” R. Donna Chesher has collected the last lines of 3,000 movies, a labor of love that took 15 years. Most of them will ring a bell in the memory of any moviegoer.

Some are romantic. In “Alice Adams,” Fred MacMurray says, “I love you.”

And some are banal and non sequiturs. In “Above Suspicion,” MacMurray says, “Well, how about some spaghetti?”

In “Adam’s Rib” Spencer Tracy ends the war between the sexes with the cliche, “Which means hurray for that little difference.”

Richard Nixon has the last line in “All the President’s Men”: “So help me God.”

Shirley MacLaine ends “The Apartment” with, “Shut up and deal.”

Some last lines are long and theatrical. Matthew Broderick ends “Biloxi Blues” with this soliloquy. “As I look back now, a lot of years later, I realize that my time in the Army was the happiest time of my life. God knows not because I like the Army, and there sure was nothing to like about a war. I liked it for the most selfish reason of all, because I was young. We all were, me and Epstein and Wykowski, Selridge, Carney, Hennesey and even Sergeant Toomey. I didn’t really like most of those guys then, but today I love every damn one of them. Life is weird, you know.”

By the way, in “An Officer and a Gentleman” the last line is spoken by one of Winger’s co-workers: “Way to go, Paula! Way to go!” she cries as Gere carries Winger (Paula) out of the factory.

As they prepare to leave Ischia, where they have had a brief affair, Jack Lemmon and the pleasingly plump Juliet Mills agree to meet again one year later. His last line: “Miss Piggott, you lose one pound, just one pound, and it’s all over between us. Arrivederci , Carlo.”

At the end of “Children of a Lesser God,” William Hurt tells his lover, the deaf Marlee Matlin, “I don’t want to be without you either. Do you think that we could find a place where we can meet, not in silence and not in sound?”

Absurdly cast as Genghis Khan in “The Conqueror,” John Wayne ends the agony with, “So be it, my brother.” (But his most memorable line in that turkey is when he says to his captive sex object, the spitfire Susan Hayward, “Yore beautiful in yore wrath!”

Perhaps the most poignant and ironic of all last lines belongs to Millie Perkins as Anne in “The Diary of Anne Frank.” Destined to die in a Nazi concentration camp, she says, “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

In both film versions of “The Front Page,” I am happy to say, the immortal line that ended the play is kept intact. Faking acceptance of star reporter Hildy Johnson’s decision to leave the paper and go on a wedding trip by train, his managing editor, Walter Burns, gives Hildy his watch as a wedding present. Then he instructs the police chief of the next stop to arrest him.

In the 1931 version, Adolphe Menjou, as Burns, says: “That’s right. I want you to send a wire to the chief of police there. Tell him to stop that train and arrest Hildy Johnson. Bring him back here. Wire him a full description. The son of a bitch stole my watch.”

In that version, to appease the censors, Burns leans on a typewriter and the carriage bell rings, covering the word bitch .

In the 1974 version Walter Matthau (as Burns) says, “Yeah. The son of a bitch stole my watch.” No bell.

Some will not remember the movie, but I can still see Edward G. Robinson as he is gunned down by rival gangsters in “Little Caesar.” His last words, “Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?”

In “My Fair Lady,” Rex Harrison, as the sexist Professor Higgins, persuades the rebellious Eliza Doolittle to stay in his household, then says, “Eliza, where the devil are my slippers?”

It isn’t in Chesher’s book, but I saw “Starman” the other night on TV. Jeff Bridges, an extraterrestrial, must go back to his planet, leaving Karen Allen, his pregnant earthly lover, behind. Weeping as she watches him board his spaceship, she says, “Goodby.”

Says it all.