Eileen Heckart credited as playing...
Ma Barbella
- Rocky: [In prison] Don't worry about me, ma. I'm gonna have this joint licked in no time.
- Ma Barbella: Well, aren't you goin' to ask me why I haven't come to see you in six months. Why don't you ask me where I've been? County Hospital. That's where. Tied to a bed. Electric shock treatments. Tryin' to save me from goin' out of my mind.
- Rocky: Ma!
- Ma Barbella: You, Rocky. You're the one who keeps me up all night with worry.so as I can't sleep. I'm goin' out of my mind. I can't go on..
- Rocky: Ma, cut it out, will you? Stop it!
- Ma Barbella: I'm through, Rocky. I can't fight your fights. I can't raise my hand for you no more.
- Rocky: Who've you been talkin' to... the priest?
- Ma Barbella: What am I going to do with you, Rocky?
- Rocky: Don't worry, huh? Just don't worry.
- Ma Barbella: That's all you ever say is "Don't worry." You think I talked to that priest? Yeah, I talked to the father and he told me I'm doin' the right thing. He said nobody can help you, Rocky, but you, yourself. That's what the father said to me. Maybe you think I'm hard-hearted, your own mother, but what I'm going to do is the only thing I can think of.
- Rocky: Going... going to do what?
- Ma Barbella: I am the last person on earth who cares whether you live or die or rot in jail, but if you turn your back on me and go back to that scum you call friends, I turn my back on you. You are no longer my son.
- Rocky: Ma, I tried to turn the leaf but I can't make it. It's something inside me. I try but I can't make it.
- Ma Barbella: I pray to God you try because if you don't, I'll be through with you and I don't want to be through with you, but I don't know what else to do,.
- Rocky: Look, ma. Just don't worry, huh. Don't worry about a thing.
- Ma Barbella: [Gets up to leave] Don't worry about a thing. Don't worry about a thing.
- Yolanda Barbella: [after hearing on the radio that Rocky loses a major middleweight champion fight] Norma, he'll be all right.
- Norma: Sure he will. He's hard and tough. He can take anything. But I can't.
- Yolanda Barbella: He had to lose sometime.
- Norma: It isn't whether he loses or wins. All he has to do is step into that ring and I'd like to run and hide, knowing maybe they'll hurt him, cripple him.
- Ma Barbella: Did you ever tell this to Rocky? Did you ever ask him to stop fighting?
- Norma: It's his whole life, everything he's got.
- Ma Barbella: Then it's your whole life too. Don't ever make the mistake of forgetting that like I did.
- Norma: That's right. I didn't marry a man, did I? I married a middleweight.
- Rocky: I'm gonna get some ice cream.
- Ma Barbella: And maybe stand on the street corner taking bows from the whole neighborhood, Mr. Jack Dempsey?
- Rocky: Oh, how many times I gotta tell ya, Dempsey's a heavyweight.
- Ma Barbella: Heavyweight. Middleweight. As long as they can't put you in jail for it.