James Garner credited as playing...
Cash McCall
- Cash McCall: When I want to lead someone on, I go looking for a woman, not a calculating machine with a hat on.
- Cash McCall: Gil, I may be interested in buying this plastics factory and I may not. I don't know. At the moment, I'm interested in you.
- Gil Clark: I don't even know whether I like you or not.
- Cash McCall: Well, that's your problem. I don't hire people to like me, I hire them to work for me.
- Gil Clark: We're management consultants.
- Cash McCall: That's a prissy way of saying efficiency experts, isn't it? I mean, you go out to a company with a slide rule and an Ouija board and you sit off to one side, in the shade, and tell them how to run it by the book.
- Gil Clark: We can usually see more from the sidelines than they can from the middle of the field.
- Cash McCall: Well, that's nice. It's like going to a ball game and having the players pay you.
- Cash McCall: You do feel my position is slightly unethical.
- Gil Clark: Well, I'm surprised, naturally.
- Cash McCall: In case there's any doubt in your mind, I don't belong to the better circles.
- Cash McCall: When there's a company for sale, there's always a reason. There's always something wrong. The tax structure we have nowadays kind of sets everything up like pins in a bowling alley. You take your small manufacturer, like Mr. Austen, the only way that he can cash in is by selling out. And the tax situation, or rather *because* of it, the country is full of Mr. Austens.
- Cash McCall: You don't seem to understand, I'm pursuing you.
- Lory Austen: That's a wholesome change, isn't it?
- Cash McCall: She's a hardhearted woman. But she's awfully pretty.
- Lory Austen: And she's awfully bored with the conversation.
- Cash McCall: Well, it probably doesn't make much sense, but it's hard for people to make sense when they're in love.
- Grant Austen: Well, well. This is a real pretty place you got here. Who's your decorator?
- Cash McCall: The cheapest one I could find, me.
- Cash McCall: For a military man, you don't have either a logical mind or a very good memory. You do have one very good military talent, though. You're very good at passing the buck.
- Cash McCall: It's supposed to be simple, being a bachelor. You meet a girl on a weekend and the two of you play at love. And on Monday morning, she gets on a train and you get on yours. But this wasn't one of those encounters. This girl wasn't a casual pickup whom you could drop that easily. This was very serious and that made it frightening.
- Cash McCall: Now, as I see it, you have a very wide choice there, General. You can either take my generous offer or go home and cut your throat.
- Gen. Andrew Danvers: And just where is that supposed to leave me?
- Cash McCall: Up the well-known creek, General, without a paddle.
- Cash McCall: I get a wallop out of taking a shaky company and bracing it up. Taking it apart and see that it runs again. But then, after about six months, well, all the fun's gone out of it. I don't enjoy it anymore. I don't belong. I'm just not a company man.