- Honey Swanson: [about Frisbee] Yes, I love him. I love those hick shirts he wears with the boiled collars and the way he always has his coat buttoned wrong. It looks like a giraffe, and I love him. I love him because he's the sort of a guy that gets drunk on a glass of buttermilk. And I love the way he blushes right up over his ears. I love him because he... he doesn't know how to kiss, the jerk.
- Professor Magenbruch: Is this the music here?
- Mel Powell: Oh, no. We don't use any music.
- Lionel Hampton: We haven't got anything written down, Professor.
- Professor Magenbruch: Well, we can't play without music.
- Lionel Hampton: Well, Benny Goodman used to.
- Professor Magenbruch: Benny Goodman? I never - Frisbee, did you ever hear of him?
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: No, no, I haven't.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: Yes, what is it?
- Miss Bragg: The taxi is here.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: Taxi? What taxi?
- Miss Bragg: Miss Swanson's or mine?
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: It's all yours, Crabapple Annie!
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: What are you gonna do?
- Honey Swanson: I'm going to show you what yum-yum is. Here's yum.
- [kisses him]
- Honey Swanson: And here's the other yum.
- [kisses him again]
- Honey Swanson: And here's yumyum.
- [gives a long kiss that knocks him backwards onto a chair]
- Professor Traumer: Wonderful thing: research.
- Professor Oddly: It is the searchlight of truth.
- Dr. Elfini: Without research, people would still think the earth was flat.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: Oh, that's ridiculous.
- Dr. Elfini: And they would still look upon the tomato - as a poisonous fruit.
- Honey Swanson: There, you see! And I want you to look at me, Professor Frisbee, as another tomato.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: What?
- Honey Swanson: Just another tomato.
- [turns around, sashays up the stairs]
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: The Germans, of course, use the letter H for our B natural, meaning B flat when they say B.
- Professor Traumer: Has this boogie-woogie been going on for some time?
- Bubbles: Man alive!
- Dr. Elfini: And are there any other forms of this new folk music besides that?
- Buck: Sure. There's Swing, Jive, Jump...
- Bubbles: Blues, Two-Beat Dixie, Rebop
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: If you'll just stand here, Miss Totten, and when I give you the mating call...
- Miss Totten: Yes!
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: You - give it right back to me.
- Honey Swanson: [singing] Do you hear me, Daddy-O? I'm gonna teach you some blues, However you wanted it, I sang your song, Whenever you wanted me, I tagged along, But that lipstick on your shirt isn't mine, So I'm gettin' off, it's the end of the line, Do you hear me, Daddy-O? I'm gonna teach you some blues...
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: I actually heard Rimsky-Korsakov played on a washboard...
- Professor Gerkikoff: A washboard?
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: A bicycle pump...
- Professor Traumer: Bicycle pump?
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: A plunger of some sort and pots and pans.
- Dr. Elfini: I once went backstage to see Pavlova.
- Professor Gerkikoff: Imagine ballerinas and all that.
- Professor Twingle: In tights, I suppose.
- Professor Gerkikoff: Naturally in tights.
- Professor Oddly: And that ineffable smell of rice powder.
- Professor Gerkikoff: On bare shoulders.
- Honey Swanson: Oh, foo, Professor, let's get ourselves a couple of drinks. You light the fire maybe, and you could start working on me right away.
- Honey Swanson: I'm fine. Except, I've got a run in this stocking. Well, when do we start, Professor? What's your method?
- Honey Swanson: Okay, where do I sleep?
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: I beg your pardon.
- Honey Swanson: Where do I sleep?
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: I don't know. Where do you usually sleep?
- Honey Swanson: I'm usually in Brooklyn, but tonight I'm going to sleep here.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: What are you reading here, Magenbruch?
- Professor Magenbruch: That's one of the books I procured this afternoon.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: "Jazz: Hot and Hybrid". That's very interesting. I should like to read it after you're through with it.
- Professor Magenbruch: Yeah. I particularly like the chapter on hot rhythm. Holds strange fascination for me.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: That's good. Now that we're all agreed, in the vernacular I heard last night, let's start on the down beat and take off. Is that the correct way of phrasing it?
- Louis Armstrong: That's a good deal.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: Miss Honey, may I present Miss Bragg, our housekeeper.
- Honey Swanson: Hi. This must be your apron I'm wearing.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: Oh, this suitcase came for you with a message.
- Honey Swanson: Yeah? What message?
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: I don't know.
- Miss Bragg: The message was it's getting hotter and hotter and stay in the icebox like a good little salad.
- Honey Swanson: What are you talking about? This is research, isn't it?
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: Is it?
- Honey Swanson: Sure and I'm the guinea pig.
- Tommy Dorsey: It could have been Mel Powell or Hamp.
- Lionel Hampton: Yeah, they're experts at that jive.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: Well, then perhaps you gentlemen could help me.
- Lionel Hampton: Oh, sure. Mel and I used to play a lot of that stuff with Benny Goodman.
- Honey Swanson: [singing] Satchmo, get on that horn, Let's hear, let's hear, Let's hear how jazz was born
- Louis Armstrong: One, two, three, four.
- [singing]
- Louis Armstrong: They took a reet jungle beat, Brought it to Basin Street, And that's how jazz was born, And then someone played a waiI, All up and down the scale, And that's how jazz was born...
- Monte: Only the other day he said to me, "I get a bigger bang out of that Honey than any dame I ever knew. "
- Tommy Dorsey: Can anyone here blow a clarinet?
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: That's quite simple. Our Professor Magenbruch plays the clarinet.
- Charlie Barnet: Well, does he, Professor? I hardly think...
- Tommy Dorsey: He's apt to be a little too square.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: He's quite proficient. I assure you.
- Honey Swanson: What about your work? It isn't even finished. There are a lot of things we haven't even touched on.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: Well, make no mistake, Miss Honey, I shall regret deeply the absence of your keen mind. But, unfortunately, it's inseparable from an extremely disturbing body.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: I'm afraid I must ask you to leave.
- Honey Swanson: Leave here? Why?
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: I want you to look at this project, this history of music, as a voyage, a long, hard tedious voyage. And when the Foundation first launched its vessel, it wisely followed an old rule of the sea. No women aboard. Consequently, they chose a crew of single men with nothing to distract them from the course they were about to sail.
- Honey Swanson: Say, Junior, you couldn't stop walking up and down here?
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: For the last four days, Miss Honey, we have been doing nothing but just drifting. The needle of the compass no longer points to the magnetic pole. It points, if I may say so, to your ankles.
- Honey Swanson: Oh, come now, Admiral, a bunch of grown men. They've all seen a pair of ankles before.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: Not in nine years, they haven't. Except for the singularly uninspired underpinnings of Miss Bragg.
- Honey Swanson: Well, if you think I'm bothering them, I'll sit on my legs.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: I, too, have been acutely aware of your presence.
- Honey Swanson: You have?
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: But fortunately, I'm strong enough to be able to resist its demoralizing effects.
- Honey Swanson: Oh, really?
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: I admit at times it was quite a struggle, but...
- Honey Swanson: Like when?
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: Well, twice to be exact. The first time when you leaned over my shoulder to explain the meaning of the word riff.
- Honey Swanson: And the second time?
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: I'm not finished with the first time. You leaned over my shoulder, and I felt your breath on my ear.
- Honey Swanson: And?
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: And the second time, you were standing up against the window with the sunlight in your hair.
- Honey Swanson: But you didn't do anything about it.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: Yes, I did. I left the room.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: Very interesting gentlemen, but our whole project seems to be suffering from some sort of vibration.
- Dr. Elfini: What do you mean?
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: I'd like to talk to Miss Honey alone.
- Miss Bragg: Professor Frisbee, either that woman leaves this house, or I do.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: Are you speaking of Miss Honey?
- Miss Bragg: I am. Ever since that woman crossed this threshold, a prairie fire of orgiastic events has swept through this house.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: I'm a perfectly normal man with perfectly normal instincts.
- Honey Swanson: An awful high boiling point.
- Honey Swanson: I don't give a whoop if the others went for me. It's you I'm wacky about. Just plain wacky!
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: Miss Honey, I - it will probably be a long time and I thought perhaps - well, that is - I - would you yum me just once more?
- Honey Swanson: Maybe it sounds crazy, but to me, you're a regular yumyum type.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: A yumyum?
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: I always thought I was married to my music. I thought the only thing could stir me was Piatigorsky on the cello, Heifetz on the violin, Toscanini conducting a symphony. And then - then you.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: [pouring coffee in a cup] How do you take it?
- Miss Bragg: Just jav, no cow.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: Just what?
- Miss Bragg: Black.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: Oh. Sugar?
- Miss Bragg: Straight.
- Tony Crow: Baby, you've been floating around on a pink cloud. I want you to take a good look at your friend Frizzy, then maybe you'll come back down to Earth.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: Now, our hope is, in the words of Mr. Armstrong, that this particular music might send you out of this world.
- Professor Hobart Frisbee: You've given us a fine course in the theory and practice of being a sucker.
- Tony Crow: Professor, you thought she was going to marry you, with your 3,000, what is it, a year? She spends that much having her toenails painted. She sulks if she has to wear last year's ermine.