Mrs. Sundance (1974 TV Movie)

Elizabeth Montgomery: Etta Place

Quotes 

• [Mrs. Lee checks the title of one of Etta's textbooks] 

  Mrs. Lee : "Knights of the Round Table" What's it about?

  Etta Place : A way of life - ideas, enemies, friends...

  Mrs. Lee : Lydia Cain didn't teach that in my day. Taught us we's here and they's there and you did Jesus' work with a whip.

• Mrs. Lee : What are you doing here, Miss Johnson? If I were younger, if I looked like you, I wouldn't want to stay here. I'd want to take the first train out. You've got everything in the world and you come here? Well, that doesn't make any sense. No reason - except for one thing I can think of.

  Etta Place : What's that, Mrs. Lee?

  Mrs. Lee : We're simple people, but kind - too kind. Even the deer come in to hide. You could do that here. I've been watching you since the first day you come. Every time a train stops, every time somebody just passes through - the fear in your eyes. Hiding out; never showing till they've gone. Why? Hiding from what? Who wants you?

• Jack Maddox : The whole country's lookin' for you. You know that? They say you know where it's all at: money, people, all the guys that rode with Sundance and Butch from here to the Hole-in-the-Wall. They say what you know could fill a bank. That's what they say. What were you thinkin' about comin' back here?

  Etta Place : It's my home.

• Jack Maddox : What's the matter? I thought you were a rambler?

  Etta Place : I tried.

  Jack Maddox : Shake your feet!

  Etta Place : Not any more. I can't run any more.

• Jack Maddox : Sundance never taught you that.

  Etta Place : Sundance was good at it. Even Siringo couldn't catch him - drove him out of the country, but he couldn't catch him. Took an army to do that. He taught me to hunt and ride and track. He was... oh, how he could take my breathe away. There was never any talk of the future - we both seemed to know what it would be. But, he was true to his name - Sundance. He spent more time in the air than on the ground - but then, of course, you knew him.

• [Etta is surprised when the broke Maddox arrives at Fanny's with two horses and plenty of supplies] 

  Etta Place : Where did all that come from?

  Jack Maddox : I ran into a couple of local fellas who thought they could spell poker.

• Etta Place : What are you doing here with me now?

  Jack Maddox : Well, I thought if I took you through, if I helped you get through, Sundance would show favor for it and take me on.

  Etta Place : You get us up there and I get us through the Hole in the Wall, is that it?

  Jack Maddox : That's it. It's a fair bargain, huh?

  Etta Place : I don't know the way in.

• Etta Place : I'd be in here mostly and I'd hear him ride up, or he'd just be here when I'd come home. Just like that. Sometimes with pockets of money, broke sometimes. Money just ran through his hands... and so did I.

• Etta Place : [reading the names on the tombstones in the Hole-in-the-Wall graveyard]  John Arnold. Bill Cruzan. Harvey Logan. Flatnose Curry? Dead! Here? All the - time, dead. Here! Always dead here. Wasn't he? Never went to Bolivia. Never died with Butch. Sundance died there, just like they said he did.

  Jack Maddox : There's Tom O'Day, Lonnie Logan, Bob Lee. No Wild Bunch. Dead.

  Etta Place : How far is Siringo behind us, Mr. Maddox? That's what its all about, isn't it? Blood money - I lead them up here and they collect the reward for - those that are left.

  [reading another gravestone] 

  Jack Maddox : "I am buried by old Walt Putnam, boys. They are chasing me, but I am in Hell. Ha ha." Nothin'! Nothin' here! Nobody knew - that was their joke. Old Walt bringin' 'em up here to bury. They're all dead and gone!

  Etta Place : Except me, Mr. Maddox.

• Etta Place : What? What was in this for you?

  Jack Maddox : I was, eh, in the Colorado State prison for attempted robbery. Attempted - I couldn't even do that right! Siringo sprung me. I don't know how he did it - he's got a way with these things. The deal was... well, you know what the deal was. Or, eh, rot in hell for the rest of my life. I never want to go back there again.

  Etta Place : Then, you were part of it from the beginning?

  Jack Maddox : Yeah.

  Etta Place : Fanny Porter?

  Jack Maddox : Her too.

• [last lines] 

  Etta Place : There goes Jack Maddox, they'll say. He knew the Sundance Kid and I knew 'em both.

  Jack Maddox : Just shows what a man can do in this country.

• Jack Maddox : You're Etta Place!

  Etta Place : Give it to me!

• Jack Maddox : [Etta hands Maddox a bar of soap]  What?

  Etta Place : I have ridden up trail from you and down trail all day long. Nothing helps. Wash.

  Jack Maddox : No.

  Etta Place : No wash. No dinner.

  Jack Maddox : Look. This don't make sense. There's no tellin' who's been doin' what upstream.

  Etta Place : And not just your hands.

  Jack Maddox : [Maddox reluctantly walks to the stream]  That's for jackasses. You don't see people in that!

  Etta Place : Just think of the flowers we'll have next Spring.

• Etta Place : Boots off! All off!

  Jack Maddox : This is degrading. For sure and certain, degrading!

  Etta Place : We're doing this for your horse as much as for me, Mr. Maddox.

  Jack Maddox : [Wearing his long johns, Maddox walks into the stream for his bath,]  This sure ain't gonna improve my appetite.

  Etta Place : Everything!

  Jack Maddox : [Maddox takes off his long johns]  This just ain't my line.

• Ben Lant : Etta? Etta Place? Oh, lordy, girl.

  Etta Place : Ben.

  Ben Lant : Oh, how you been puttin' the worry in people.

  Etta Place : Just hold me, Ben.

  Ben Lant : Oh, you are a cool green water for tired eyes, if you ain't the real thing.

  Etta Place : I'm me, Ben.

• Etta Place : "What is youth, save promise? What is age, except regret." "The flowers we reap in May are from the seeds of April." "Trust is love unsaid." I always wanted to write. Never could. Only thoughts for bad poems. "Love is a worry of joys."

• Jack Maddox : There gotta be another way outta here!

  Etta Place : That's why they guarded the secret so carefully. There isn't.

• Etta Place : I can almost hear my mother telling us good night. She always smelled like lemons and fresh rain water.