A Song Is Born (1948)

Virginia Mayo: Honey Swanson

Photos 

Quotes 

• 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 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] 

• Honey Swanson : Oh, you're cute. Just a little sunlight in my hair and you had to water your neck.

• 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] 

• 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...

• 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 : Music has done a lot for me. And well, here was a chance to do something for music.

• 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 : 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.

• 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...

• 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 : 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!

• Honey Swanson : Maybe it sounds crazy, but to me, you're a regular yumyum type.

  Professor Hobart Frisbee : A yumyum?

• Honey Swanson : A man is a goof to marry any woman.

• Honey Swanson : Remember, Frizzy, no women aboard. Now, above all women, you want to take a dizzy dame like me.

• Honey Swanson : Atta boy, Frizzy, give it to him! Sock him, Frizzy!