"There'll happen to be a little floor show later on around here. It might get on your nerves... Ever have the DT's?... You will, brother... After all, you're just a freshman. Wait'll you're a sophomore. That's when you start seeing the little animals. You know that stuff about pink elephants? That's the bunk. It's little animals! Little tiny turkeys in straw hats. Midget monkeys coming through the keyholes. See that guy over there? With him it's beetles. Come the night, he sees beetles crawling all over him. Has to be dark though. It's like the doctor was just telling me: delirium is a disease of the night. Good night."

"That's my novel, Nat...I was to start writing it out in the country. Morbid stuff. Nothing for the Book-of-the-Month Club. A horror story! Confessions of a booze addict. The log book of an alcoholic...You know what I'm gonna call my novel? The Bottle. That's all, very simply, The Bottle. I've got it all here in my mind. Let me tell you the first chapter. It all starts one wet afternoon about three years ago. There was a matinee of La Traviata at the Metropolitan..."

"The Screen Dares To Open The Strange And Savage Pages Of A Shocking Best-Seller!"

"How daring can the screen dare to be? No adult man or woman can risk missing the startling frankness of The Lost Weekend."

"Ray Milland - Don Birnam"

"Jane Wyman - Helen St. James"

"Howard Da Silva - Nat, Bartender"

"Doris Dowling - Gloria"

"Frank Faylen - 'Bim' Nolan, Male Nurse"

"Mary Young - Mrs. Deveridge, Birnam's Landlady"

"Anita Sharp-Bolster - Mrs. Foley, Cleaning Lady"

"Lillian Fontaine - Mrs. Charles St. James"

"Lewis L. Russell - Charles St. James"

"When it's hot like this, you know what I do? I put my undies in the Ice Box!"

"Doro Merande - Waitress in the vegetarian restaurant"

"Carolyn Jones - Miss Finch"

"Victor Moore - the Plumber"

"Donald MacBride - Mr. Brady"

"Marguerite Chapman - Miss Morris"

"Oskar Homolka - Dr. Brubaker"

"Robert Strauss - Kruhulik"

"Sonny Tufts - Tom MacKenzie"

"Evelyn Keyes - Helen Sherman"

"Tom Ewell - Richard Sherman"

"Marilyn Monroe - The Girl"

"Waitress: Nudism is such a worthy cause. We must bring the message to the people. We must teach them to unmask their poor suffocating bodies and let them breathe again. Clothes are the enemy. Without clothes, there'd be no sickness, there'd be no war. I ask you, sir, can you imagine two great armies on the battlefield, no uniforms, completely nude? No way of telling friend from foe. All brothers, together."

"Until you are able to commit a simple act of terror, I strongly advise you to avoid anything as complex as murder."

"My 3:00 patient jumped out of the window in the middle of his session. I have been running fifteen minutes ahead of schedule ever since."

"Miss Morris, I'm perfectly capable of fixing my own breakfast. As a matter of fact, I had a peanut butter sandwich and two whiskey sours."

"This thing about women and me. I walk into a room. They sense it instantly. I arouse something in them. I bother them. It's a kind of animal thing I've got. Really quite extraordinary."

"Your imagination! You think every girl's a dope. You think a girl goes to a party and there's some guy in a fancy striped vest strutting around giving you that I'm-so-handsome-you-can't-resist-me look. From this she's supposed to fall flat on her face. Well, she doesn't fall on her face. But there's another guy in the room, over in the corner. Maybe he's nervous and shy and perspiring a little. First, you look past him. But then you sense that he's gentle and kind and worried. That he'll be tender with you, nice and sweet. That's what's really exciting."

"Oh, do you feel the breeze from the subway. Isn't it delicious?"

"So he lured me down to his apartment. He made me sit on his piano bench. Then he made me play Chopsticks. Then suddenly he turned at me. His eyes bulging. He was frothing at the mouth. Just like The Creature from the Black Lagoon."

"Oooooooohhhh! This feels just elegant!"

"[in Richard's fantasy] It shakes me! It quakes me! It makes me feel goose-pimply all over!"

"We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!"

"Nancy Olson - Betty Schaefer"

"Erich von Stroheim - Max von Mayerling"

"William Holden - Joe Gillis"

"Gloria Swanson - Norma Desmond"

"I just want to tell you all how happy I am to be back in the studio, making a picture again! You don't know how much I've missed all of you. And I promise you I'll never desert you again because after Salome we'll make another picture and another picture. You see, this is my life! It always will be! There's nothing else! Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark!… All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."

"Without me, there wouldn't be any Paramount studio."

"The stars are ageless, aren't they?"

"They took the idols and smashed them, the Fairbankses, the Gilberts, the Valentinos! And who've we got now? Some nobodies!"

"There once was a time in this business when I had the eyes of the whole world! But that wasn't good enough for them, oh no! They had to have the ears of the whole world too. So they opened their big mouths and out came talk. Talk! TALK!"

"No one leaves a star. That's what makes one a star."

"Harry Wilson — Spats's henchman"

"Beverly Wills — Dolores"

"Edward G. Robinson Jr. — Johnny Paradise"

"Mike Mazurki — Spats's henchman"