How to Murder Your Wife (1965)

Jack Lemmon: Stanley Ford

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Quotes 

• Stanley Ford : Good evening, Judge Blackstone. I'm afraid this is a mournful occasion.

  Judge Blackstone : Not at all, my boy, not at all. Been married 38 years myself. And I don't regret one day of it. The one day I don't regret was... August 2, 1936. She was off visiting her ailing mother at the time.

• Harold Lampson : I am speaking to you now not as your lawyer but as your friend. Stan, you are a grown man and grown men simply can't, repeat cannot, go around spreading terror on the New York streets at the height of the noon hour accompanied -will you stop just a minute, Stan?- by naked women.

  Stanley Ford : She wasn't naked. She had a diamond in her navel.

• Stanley Ford : My God, you're Italian!

• Stanley Ford : Push the button, Harold.

• Stanley Ford : Here you are in the prime of life. A handsome figure of a man, successful in business, adored by one and all. In fact, it could be said that you had it made, except for the one thing.

  Harold Lampson : I'm a lousy lawyer, huh?

  Stanley Ford : [scoffs]  No, you're married.

  Harold Lampson : Yeah, but being married is the normal way to live. Isn't it?

  Stanley Ford : Who says so?

  Harold Lampson : Edna?

  Stanley Ford : Oh Harold, I think you've been brainwashed. You're missing a very important point: marriage is not a basic fact of nature, it's an invention. It's like the infield fly rule; it exists only because the women say so and like idiots we just go following right along.

  Harold Lampson : Uh...no, no, no, uh, Stan, I don't know what I would do without Edna. She...she...she plans the meals, sends my shirts to the laundry...

  Stanley Ford : [interrupting]  Harold, you're making another basic common masculine mistake: you're confusing love and laundry.

  Harold Lampson : [rubbing the side of his face]  Love and laundry, ay?

• Stanley Ford : You get-um dressed, me go talk-um Butler.

• Stanley Ford : 'Bash Brannigan, Secret Agent' is syndicated in 463 newspapers. You know why?

  Harold Lampson : Sure, I know... Because it's hard-core pornography, softened slightly, ever so slightly, by excessive violence and SADISM!

  Stanley Ford : 'Bash Brannigan' is enjoyed by millions because my readers know it's absolutely authentic! I'd never ask Bash to do anything I hadn't already done myself!

• Stanley Ford : Gentlemen...

  [looks at Harold Lampson, who gives him a wink and a grin; turns back to jury] 

  Stanley Ford : Gentlemen, I address you not as judge and jury, but as a fellow American male. The crime that you have just seen Harold Lampson commit in his imagination I have been accused of committing in reality. Too long has the American man allowed himself to be bullied, coddled, and mothered, and tyrannized, and in general meant to feel like a feeble-minded idiot by the female of the species. Do you realize the power that you have in your hand here today? If one man - just one man - can stick his wife in the goop from the gloppitta-gloppitta machine, and get away with it! Whoa-ho-ho, boy, we've got it made. We have got it made. All of us.

  Charles Firbank : Hear! Hear!

  Stanley Ford : Gentlemen, I did it.

  [crowd murmurs] 

  Stanley Ford : I killed her. I murdered my wife.

  [judge bangs gavel] 

  Stanley Ford : Every single charge that the district attorney has leveled against me is true. Indeed, I did slip her a Mickey - brrrup-brrrap!

  [smacks rail] 

  Stanley Ford : I cold-bloodedly then fed her into a tomb of goop from the gloppitta-gloppitta machine! I ask you to acquit me! Acquit me on the grounds of justifiable homicide. And not for my sake... for yours.

• Judge Blackstone : Can I be of any assistance?

  Stanley Ford : Don't be silly, Your Honor: you're smashed.

  Judge Blackstone : [obviously intoxicated]  I'm as sober as a judge!