My Dear Miss Aldrich (1937)

Edna May Oliver: Mrs. Atherton

Photos 

Quotes 

• Mrs. Atherton : [as the phone rings]  Shall I answer the phone?

  Martha Aldrich : Oh, you might as well - that's why they ring it. When they don't want you to answer, that's when they don't ring.

  Mrs. Atherton : That's another thing - that sarcastic sarcasm of yours.

• Mrs. Atherton : Just one moment. Things are starting to become very clear to me, particularly since the one thing in New York you can count on is that nothing is what it seems to be.

• Mrs. Atherton : [to Martha when they arrive in New York]  We've got eight pieces of luggage -- countin' the umbrella. See that everything gets off. Everybody in New York is a thief!

• Mrs. Atherton : You've got a gun?

  Ken Morley : A gun? No.

  Mrs. Atherton : How long have you been in New York?

  Ken Morley : About twenty years. Why?

  Mrs. Atherton : I've only been here a week. I'm smarter than you are.

  [pulls small revolver from purse] 

  Mrs. Atherton : I don't live in New York without carrying a gun.

• Mrs. Atherton : You'd live in that school if they'd let you.

  Martha Aldrich : I like to teach school.

  Mrs. Atherton : Nonsense. Nobody likes to teach school - anybody that isn't homely. I'll say this for you - you may be crazy, but you're not homely.

• Mrs. Atherton : Out in Nebraska, when they give a place a name, the name means something.

  Martha Aldrich : Lincoln was never in Nebraska, Aunt Lu, and yet that's the name of the capitol.

  Mrs. Atherton : He could have come if he wanted to - it was there.

• Mrs. Atherton : Well, it seems a funny name to call a place that's free of locusts, Locust Valley.

• Mrs. Atherton : A thing makes sense, or it doesn't make sense.