The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968)

Milton Selzer: Bart Langner

Photos 

Quotes 

• Bart Langner : Here's a picture she liked very much, a wardrobe still from The Love That Flamed. They were rehearsing for it when they got married.

  Becky Langner : The worst thing he ever did, believe me.

  Elsa Brinkmann : What, not making the picture?

  Becky Langner : No, marrying Lylah. Lewis Zarken is no Boy Scout, but *that* girl - *whew* - tramp, degenerate; there's no other word for her!

• Rossella : [Rossella describes her version of Lylah Clare's death]  Up till then, I mean, before she married Lewis, we had our own quarters together. The day it happened, she had moved her things up there.

  [points upstairs] 

  Rossella : She had gone for a drive along the coast. That afternoon, I was asleep. I heard a scream. Coming back at the front gate, this young man - wild, insane, hysterical - jumped onto her car. She drove fast up the drive to throw him off, but she couldn't: he clung like an animal. She ran up to the door. There, as she burst inside, she was screaming. He caught her on the stairs! She fought to get away from him! She ran to find Lewis; he chased after her. He was like a crazy man - he grabbed her. She cried out for help again and again, but... nobody came to help. Lewis was in another part of the house. At first he couldn't hear her. It was like a... nightmare, an insane dream! He wanted her as an animal wants, as an animal thinks! From somewhere, she found the strength to strike back at him, to push him away.

  [flashback voice of Lylah: 'Let go, keep your filthy hands off me!'] 

  Rossella : Suddenly, there was a knife. He started towards her, defiantly... showing her how foolish it was to try to stop him. Poor Lylah was so afraid, so terrified! 'He could do it, right there and then', he seemed to say as he caressed her stomach with the knife. But Lylah Clare was a movie queen, a love goddess; and he did not come to this house to kill a goddess. 'She must not be frightened of him', the boy seemed to be saying. He wanted her to understand how he felt: that she could trust him, that she had nothing to fear. He just stood there - arrogant, obsessed with lust. But Lylah was not a goddess, just a frightened girl; and in her terror, she stabbed him... stabbed him, again and again! He fell. Lylah couldn't believe what she had done. She stepped forward to look; I called out to her.

  [flashback voice of Rossella: 'Don't look, stop! Stop, stop!' as Lylah also falls off the tall staircase] 

  Rossella : [rushing over to her, the flashback voices of Lewis and Lylah: 'Lylah, I love you.'... 'I love you, Lewis.'] 

  Bart Langner : Her heights made her dizzy, she looked down.

  Rossella : It was their wedding day, Lewis and Lylah's.

• [first lines] 

  Bart Langner : [showing Elsa Brinkmann old studio photos of the late movie star Lylah Clare]  Oh, this lousy projector - I hope it still works. There, I think I've got it. This is the only picture I have of Lylah in color. Despite what you may have heard, this is the only time she ever posed in the nude. You can't imagine what a really big star she was, I mean really big! Everybody loved her, worshipped her.

  Elsa Brinkmann : She had a strange kind of appeal, didn't she.

• Bart Langner : I found Lylah, remember? Maybe you don't want to remember. Too long ago, huh? The first time I saw her in that little Berlin butcher shop, I said that...

  Lewis Zarken : Oh, come on! Butcher shop! You lifted that straight out of he official biogragraphy. You found her in a brothel - and one that specialized in catering to some pretty peculiar fantasies. As a matter of fact, I've always meant to ask you, what were you doing there?

• Bart Langner : You said you were interested in acting.

  Elsa Brinkmann : But as myself. As me. I'm all wrong for her. Wrong. I just wouldn't want to - I couldn't be like her.

  Bart Langner : You don't have to *be* like her, just act like her.

  Becky Langner : God forbid.

• Bart Langner : That's what I've been trying to tell you all night. I found someone. I found someone. I can show her to you.

  Lewis Zarken : No. I've seen it before. Dreary little pussycats come mincing in here like bitches in heart - move over there - billing their dirty little business up-and-down.

  Bart Langner : Don't tell me you haven't enjoyed yourself with them on occasion.

  Lewis Zarken : That's hardly the point.

• Bart Langner : Here's the wedding picture. And they lived happily ever after. But, not for long.

• Bart Langner : Shoulders, hips, cheek bones - just like Lylah's. It's uncanny.

  Lewis Zarken : Stop weeping into your strawberries.

• Lewis Zarken : Nobody ever finds a star. You didn't find Lylah.

  Bart Langner : Then who did? Who?

  Lewis Zarken : You found a moderately attractive piece of clay. I admit she had some basic qualities, but it took my work to bring out the finished product.

  Rossella : You delude yourself. It was all there in the first place. Any one of a dozen competent Directors could have given her the necessary polish.

  Lewis Zarken : On the contrary, any one of a dozen competent Directors would have ruined her before she began.

• Bart Langner : Elsa's measurements are really the same. Lewis says they're identical.

  Barney Sheean : Oh yeah? How does he know? Been fingering the merchandise already, huh?

• Bart Langner : Go after her! Without her, you're as dead as Goldwater.

• Bart Langner : I bet if anybody else had suggested that as the ending for a film, you would have dismissed it as beneath contempt!