42nd Street - Ambition and Determination in Show Business
Julian Marsh: [[w:AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes|American Film Institute's list of the top 100 movie quotations]
* Bolded portion ranked #87 in the ] in American cinema.
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42nd Street - The Weight of Responsibility and Ambition
Julian Marsh:
Sawyer, you listen to me, and you listen hard. Two hundred people, two hundred jobs, two hundred thousand dollars, five weeks of grind and blood and sweat depend upon you. It's the lives of all these people who've worked with you. You've got to go on, and you've got to give and give and give. They've got to like you. Got to. Do you understand? You can't fall down. You can't because your future's in it, my future and everything all of us have is staked on you. All right, now I'm through, but you keep your feet on the ground and your head on those shoulders of yours and go out, and Sawyer, you're going out a youngster but you've got to come back a star!
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42nd Street - Commitment to a Challenging Rehearsal Schedule
Julian Marsh: [He brandishes his cigarette]
All right, now, everybody. Quiet, and listen to me. Tomorrow morning, we're gonna start a show. We're gonna rehearse for five weeks and we're gonna open on scheduled time. - And I mean scheduled time. You're gonna work and sweat and work some more. You're gonna work days and you're gonna work nights. And you're gonna work between time when I think you need it. You're gonna dance until your feet fall off and you're not able to stand up any longer. BUT five weeks from now, we're going to have a show! Now, some of you people have been with me before. You know it's gonna be a tough grind. It's gonna be the toughest five weeks that you ever lived through. Do you all get that? Now anybody who doesn't think he's gonna like it had better quit right now. What do I hear? Nobody? Good. Then that's settled. We start tomorrow morning.
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42nd Street - Marsh's Last Chance for Success
Julian Marsh: [to his financiers]
You'll get your Pretty Lady. You haven't got anything to worry about. I'm not gonna let you down because I can't afford to. I've given everything I've had to that gulch down there and it's taken all I had to offer. Oh, it paid me, sure, in money I couldn't hang on to - fair-weather friends, women, headlines! Hah! Why even the cops and the newsboys recognize me on sight. Marsh, the Magnificent. Marsh the Slave-Driver! Actors tell ya how Marsh drove em and bullied em and even tore it out of em! And maybe there's a few that'll tell ya how Marsh really made em. And they've all got somethin to show for it - except Marsh.Well, this is my last shot! I'll make a few more actors. But this time, I'm gonna sock my money away so hard that they'll have to blast to find enough to buy a newspaper. That's why I'm goin ahead with Pretty Lady. And Pretty Lady's got to be a hit. It's my last show and it's got to be my best. You're counting on me. Well, I'm counting on Pretty Lady, because it's got to support me for a long time to come.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.