James Stewart credited as playing...
L.B. Jefferies
- Stella: How much do we need to bail Lisa from jail?
- L.B. Jefferies: Well, this is first offense burglary, that's about $250. I have $127.
- Stella: Lisa's handbag. Uh... 50 cents. I got $20 or so in my purse.
- L.B. Jefferies: And what about the rest?
- Stella: When those cops at the station see Lisa, they'll even contribute.
- Lisa Fremont: I wish I could be creative.
- L.B. Jefferies: Oh sweetie, you are. You have a great talent for creating difficult situations.
- L.B. Jefferies: Why would a man leave his apartment three times on a rainy night with a suitcase and come back three times?
- Lisa Fremont: He likes the way his wife welcomes him home.
- Lisa Fremont: What's he doing? Cleaning house?
- L.B. Jefferies: He's washing and scrubbing down the bathroom walls.
- Stella: Must've splattered a lot.
- [both Jeff and Lisa look at Stella with disgust]
- Stella: Come on, that's what were all thinkin'. He killed her in there, now he has to clean up those stains before he leaves.
- Lisa Fremont: Stella... your choice of words!
- Stella: Nobody ever invented a polite word for a killin' yet.
- L.B. Jefferies: She wants me to marry her.
- Stella: That's normal.
- L.B. Jefferies: I don't want to.
- Stella: That's abnormal.
- L.B. Jefferies: [into the phone] He killed a dog last night because the dog was scratching around in the garden. You know why? Because he had something buried in that garden that the dog scented.
- Tom Doyle: [voice] Like an old hambone?
- L.B. Jefferies: I don't know what pet names Thorwald had for his wife.
- L.B. Jefferies: When am I going to see you again?
- Lisa Fremont: [angry] Not for a long time...
- [softening]
- Lisa Fremont: at least not until tomorrow night.
- Lisa Fremont: How's your leg?
- L.B. Jefferies: Hurts a little.
- Lisa Fremont: Your stomach?
- L.B. Jefferies: Empty as a football.
- Lisa Fremont: And your love life?
- L.B. Jefferies: Not too active.
- Lisa Fremont: Anything else bothering you?
- L.B. Jefferies: Uh-huh, who are you?
- Lisa Fremont: Today's a very special day.
- L.B. Jefferies: It's just another run-of-the-mill Wednesday. The calendar's full of 'em.
- Stella: You heard of that market crash in '29? I predicted that.
- L.B. Jefferies: Oh, just how did you do that, Stella?
- Stella: Oh, simple. I was nursing a director of General Motors. Kidney ailment, they said. Nerves, I said. And I asked myself, "What's General Motors got to be nervous about?" Overproduction, I says; collapse. When General Motors has to go to the bathroom ten times a day, the whole country's ready to let go.
- Stella: He's gonna run out on her, the coward.
- L.B. Jefferies: Sometimes it's worse to stay than it is to run.
- Gunnison: It's about time you got married, before you turn into a lonesome and bitter old man.
- L.B. Jefferies: Yeah, can't you just see me, rushing home to a hot apartment to listen to the automatic laundry and the electric dishwasher and the garbage disposal and the nagging wife...
- Gunnison: Jeff, wives don't nag anymore. They discuss.
- L.B. Jefferies: Oh, is that so, is that so? Well, maybe in the high-rent district they discuss. In my neighborhood they still nag.
- L.B. Jefferies: She sure is the "eat, drink and be merry" girl.
- Stella: Yeah, she'll wind up fat, alcoholic and miserable.
- Stella: We've become a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change. Yes sir. How's that for a bit of homespun philosophy?
- L.B. Jefferies: Reader's Digest, April 1939.
- Stella: Well, I only quote from the best.
- Tom Doyle: You didn't see the killing or the body. How do you know there was a murder?
- L.B. Jefferies: Because everything this fellow's done has been suspicious: trips at night in the rain, knifes, saws, trunks with rope, and now this wife that isn't there anymore.
- Tom Doyle: I admit it does have a mysterious sound. But it could be any number of things for the wife disappearing. Murder is the least part.
- L.B. Jefferies: Now, Doyle, don't tell me that he's just an unemployed magician amusing the neighborhood with his sleight of hand. Don't tell me that.
- L.B. Jefferies: Those two yellow zinnias at the end, they're shorter now. Now since when do flowers grow shorter over the course of two weeks? Something's buried there.
- Lisa Fremont: Mrs. Thorwald!
- Stella: You haven't spent much time around cemeteries, have you? Mr. Thorwald could hardly bury his wife's body in plot of ground about one foot square. Unless he put her in standing on end, in which case he wouldn't need the knives and saw.
- Lisa Fremont: What's a logical explanation for a woman taking a trip with no luggage?
- L.B. Jefferies: That she didn't know she was going on a trip and where she was going she wouldn't need any luggage.
- Lisa Fremont: Exactly.
- L.B. Jefferies: She's too perfect, she's too talented, she's too beautiful, she's too sophisticated, she's too everything but what I want.
- Stella: Is, um, what you want something you can discuss?
- L.B. Jefferies: Would you fix me a sandwich, please?
- Stella: Yes, I will. And I'll spread a little common sense on the bread.