Feud (TV series)

Feud (2017-) is a anthology series, airing on FX, that concentrates on well-documented rivalries.

Bette and Joan

Pilot [1.01]

Robert Aldrich: Bette, I've made my share of steaming piles of shit, but every now and again I get a chance to work with an artist like you. Someone who isn't afraid to leap off a cliff. Most people are terrified to go anywhere near the edge. Now, that gets me excited. I'm a kid again. Everything's possible. Bette, I promise you this is gonna be the greatest horror movie ever made. And Baby Jane's the greatest part you'll play since Margo Channing.

Bette Davis: All right, answer this question, and don't lie. Why this picture?

Robert Aldrich: Honestly? I'm not being offered anything else.

---

Joan Crawford: She actually claimed she coined the term "Oscar." Can you believe that? Back when she nabbed the award for "Dangerous" in '35, she told the press that its posterior reminded her of her first husband's ass. His middle name was Oscar. No one ever called him that. It was just more of her bullshit. His name was Harmon. Everyone called him Ham.

Peter: Joanie, do you have to keep doing that?

Joan Crawford: [thinking he's talking about her nighttime routine] What? It keeps my elbows supple.

Peter: I wasn't talking about that. Do you realize from the time we got in the car tonight, all through dinner and now, all you've done is complain about Bette Davis?

Joan Crawford: Oh, that is not true.

Peter: It is. And I'll be honest, I don't understand it. You two have so much in common. More than any two other people on the planet. Why can't you just get along?

Joan Crawford: Don't you think I've tried? Back when she won that Oscar, I was the first person to send a congratulatory note and a bouquet. And you know that I never heard back. Not a word. Radio silence. And this after she tried to screw my boyfriend. Franchot was her co-star in that picture, you know.

Peter: Yes, you mentioned that at dinner.

Joan Crawford: She knew he was mine. That's why she tried to take him away. But he rejected her advances, of course. Told me everything. So then I married him, out of spite. Do you realize that Bette Davis is responsible for one of my failed marriages? Personally responsible.

Peter: And yet you still wanted her to do this picture with you. I think it's because you two survived all that and you realize that you really should be friends.

Joan Crawford: Friends? You think it's friendship I want from her? Is that what you think? You're wrong. It's respect. It's the only thing I have ever wanted from her. Or any of them, for that matter. And it's the one thing I've never gotten. It took me until "Mildred Pierce" to be taken seriously as an actress. And when I won my Oscar, do you think I received any congratulatory notes or bouquets?

Peter: No.

Joan Crawford: But I did. From men. Men whose admiration I already had and whose respect I never craved. But not the women. None of the bitches in this town. Least of all Queen Bitch, who always thought she was better than me, more talented than me.

Peter: You admire her.

Joan Crawford: I admire her talent and her craft. And I will have her respect. Even if I have to kill both of us to get it.

The Other Woman [1.02]

Reporter: Miss Davis, care to comment on the fact that Miss Crawford says you look old enough to be her mother?

Bette Davis: What's your name, sweetheart?

Reporter: Sylvia.

Bette Davis: Fuck off, Sylvia.

Mommie Dearest [1.03]

Joan Crawford: I know what you think of me, Bette. I know what you've always thought of me. I know what you think of my mothering. Well, I just want to say that if I appear to be overprotective or worry too much about my children, it's only because I had a mother who didn't care whether I lived or died. Threw me out like a pair of old shoes. Shipped me off to convent school when I was twelve.

Bette Davis: Maybe she was trying to protect your virtue.

Joan Crawford: Oh, no. No, no, no. That ship had sailed. She knew that.

Bette Davis: You lost your cherry when you were twelve?

Joan Crawford: Eleven.

Bette Davis: Christ! I didn't even get a tingle till I was twenty-five, and then I waited another two years before I did the deed, and that was on my goddamn honeymoon.

More, or Less [1.04]

Joan Crawford: It's just like 1937 all over again.

Mamacita: When Hitler took Austria?

Joan Crawford: No, when they labeled me box-office poison.

And the Winner Is... (The Oscars of 1963) [1.05]

Olivia de Havilland: [examining Bette's first Best Actress Oscar] Bette, what happened to this one? Did all the gold plating fall off?

Bette Davis: Rubbed off, you mean. Every night when I watch television in bed, I hold it. He's the perfect companion. He doesn't talk back. He listens. He's patient. And sometimes, when I need it, he reminds me of that perfect night when I won him, and the whole world stood up and cheered. And I was loved. God, that's sad.

Olivia de Havilland: Actually, as a woman heading toward her second divorce, I get it. I get it completely.

Hagsploitation [1.06]

Joan Crawford: Oh, Hedda, darling. I don't have a quiet minute today. I have to convert this dust bowl look to a desert look, work out this awful crick in my neck, and then back on the road for that goddamn Lizzie Borden routine.

Hedda Hopper: You're not having a gay old time greeting fans coast to coast?

Joan Crawford: Does a Ringling Brothers elephant have a gay old time?

---

Joan Crawford: What do you want me to do, Mamacita? What, sit here by myself, toasting my memories?

Mamacita: There are many pleasures still to enjoy. New friends. You are invited to parties all the time.

Joan Crawford: I can't show my face without having a picture to discuss. If I'm not working, I might as well be dead.

---

Robert Aldrich: The crazy irony is that we were all going to be together on this picture. You know, the kids have all got parts. Adele's working on helping with the script. Harriet was supposed to be here enjoying it with me. Now I'm just looking around and I'm thinking, This has ruined my marriage.

Bette Davis: I'm not going to candy-coat it. Harriet is a wonderful woman. Losing her is going to be bad, it always is. I know, I've been through it four times. But I survived. And so will you.

Robert Aldrich: Twenty-four years, Bette. I don't know how to be alone.

Bette Davis: We'll be alone together.

Abandoned! [1.07]

Bette Davis: How did it feel to be the most beautiful girl in the world?

Joan Crawford: It was wonderful. The most joyous thing you could ever imagine and it was never enough. And what about you? How did it feel to be the most talented girl in the world?

Bette Davis: Great. And it was never enough.

---

Robert Aldrich: You know, Joan, the last time I let an actor call all the shots, I made 4 for Texas. I can't afford another bomb. If Charlotte doesn't work, I'm back making crap TV. So, I suggest you put down your fucking script, and pick up your fucking contract and give that a close fucking read.

---

Adam Friedman: And do you feel guilty at all about ending Joan Crawford's career?

Olivia de Havilland: Time did that all on its own. As it does to us all.

You Mean All This Time We Could Have Been Friends? [1.08]

Adam Friedman: How did you come to reconnect with Joan Crawford?

Pauline Jameson: I ran into her at LaGuardia. She was wearing a Pepto pink dress and a mask of chalk-white foundation, being wheeled through the airport with broken ankles, drunk. Alone. And for all our past difficulties, when I touched her arm, she cried. She called me "old friend" and asked me to visit her in Manhattan. She seemed very much tossed away.

---

Joan Crawford: Have you talked to your sister?

Cathy Crawford: Cindy and I speak all the time.

Joan Crawford: Oh, no, darling. I know you and Cindy do. Of course you do. No, I ... I was referring to your elder sister. To Christina.

Cathy Crawford: No, not recently.

Joan Crawford: My editor tells me she's been writing a book. It's about me, evidently. Alleging the most vile things. You have to understand I was at the height of my career when she was little. We never enjoyed the quality time together like I had with you and Cindy. The little time that I did have, I worked so hard at instilling the proper values in her. I only wanted her to appreciate her advantages.

Cathy Crawford: Of course, Mommie, of course.

Joan Crawford: My editor asked if I wanted to read an advance copy of the galleys, but why spend the days of your life reading something that could only hurt you?

---

Mamacita: It made me sad.

Adam Friedman: To say goodbye to her?

Mamacita: No, because they all showed up to say goodbye. But when she was alive, when she needed them most, no one was there.

---

Bette Davis: [after learning Joan has died] My mother always said, "Don't say anything bad about the dead. Only say good." Joan Crawford is dead. Good

Capote vs. The Swans

Pilot [2.01]

Truman Capote: I know about you. I know about your car accident. Shattered your cheekbones. How, when they rebuilt your face, you were suddenly more beautiful than ever. You became a swan from an ugly duckling, am I right?

Babe Paley: How do you know about all that?

Truman Capote: Well, my point is the accident was a blessing. And now there's something else. You have a new best friend.

---

Ann Woodward: I don't know why you started this. I mean, we ... We were close. Just tell me why. No, l-let me go, Slim. No, he's ... He's... I mean, it's, it's torture. I hear it everywhere! I don't even know how you can be sitting here with him. Just tell me why, Truman.

Truman Capote: Well, you know, I liked you once. I liked you quite a bit. But then I heard behind my back you called me fag. So, I thought I'd be a fag and show you what a fag can do when he's angry. When he's very angry. And when he's been betrayed by someone he actually liked, even though I knew what you were.

C. Z. Guest: Truman, sit down. Ann, you sit down, too. Even if you are a killer as he says, he has a typewriter and you don't.

Ann Woodward: I never ... I never called you a fag, Truman. What I called you was a venomous little faggot. Now get your quotes right. Isn't that what you're supposed to be good at?

Ice Water in Their Veins [2.02]

Lillie Mae Faulk: So, son, you got fat, didn't you? God, and you were so ... You were so, so beautiful, too beautiful. A normal boy would have outgrown the beauty and hardened, but you? You got soft. And the booze, Christ.

Truman Capote: It's all in the blood, mother. It's in the blood. And it ran in the Faulks, didn't it?

Lillie Mae Faulk: You really can let go, dear. You've done the work. You did it. And you did it all for me. So you can let go.

Truman Capote: What did I do for you exactly?

Lillie Mae Faulk: You avenged me, of course.

Truman Capote: Did I? I wasn't aware.

Lillie Mae Faulk: All those people I wanted to be part of, all those people that had no time for me, those women of New York society who would have no part of me, just like your Swans. You knew how I felt. Southern, odd, a little trashy, a spectacle. Just like you did. So you took them out, didn't you? And you did it so brilliantly with such surgical precision. With so much deep hatred.

Truman Capote: So what now, mother?

Lillie Mae Faulk: I think it's time for you to join me, isn't it? Come on. Let me be your mother again. Truman, where I am and where you are going, a mother can be a very important guide. Come on, darling. You're almost there already. Your poor little heart is encased in fat, and your liver is riddled with cirrhosis. In this pocket, you have Halcion. In a little Tiffany pillbox that Babe gave you with all the phenobarbitals and the pretty pastel little Valium. Just jiggling around in there. And the vodka, oh my God! You could go right now, go to that little guest room here that you love so much, just lie down under that piñata, that Day of the Dead piñata. Have your little Day of the Dead celebration.

Truman Capote: No. You may be real, you may be ghost, you may be risen from the grave, mother, but I am not ready. I am not on your schedule. I still have a masterpiece to finish, and they're waiting for it. They're waiting. So I'm not going anywhere with you.

It's Impossible [2.04]

Truman Capote: What are you living for if not the spotlight, if you ever left it for one second? And I held that spotlight right on you and illuminated every pore.

Slim Keith: You think you can get back in before she dies, and all your sins will be forgotten in tragedy, washed away by shared grief, and back you will be sitting pretty in in a cottage on Long Island? I assure you, this will not happen. Babe loathes you, Truman. You're not in the picture. You're not in her life. You're not in the will. And none of that will ever change. Because you are incapable of change.

---

Babe Paley: I hope you're working.

Truman Capote: I'm trying. It's the most important part, the trying, 'cause who ever really succeeds in the end?

Hats, Gloves and Effete Homosexuals [2.06]

Truman Capote: Answered Prayers, Chapter 20, "Our Time." Being the last will and testament of P.B. Jones. My moment was brief in that time. My body was lithe enough to attract men and women as much as ... As often as they or I needed. And friends, too, came easily. Because when you are in your time, you attract people to your light. You can laugh easily and recover instantly from booze and slights and bruises. I had that with my friends. Now I have only one or two left. Friends. Old together. As I lay here on a hammock in Tangier, alone as far as the eye can see, time zones distant from anyone who knows me, what I remember is mostly the sun and how it felt on skin. That is what friendship, the love of friends, feels like. Luck. Salt when you lick someone's sun-dappled arm. Light. And that is what I miss, because in this desert heat, I do not feel it now.

Beautiful Babe [2.07]

Bill Paley: He said six months? He used that phrase? "You have six months to live"?

Babe Paley: I asked him if I'd make it to Thanksgiving, and he just looked down and shook his head. Why is it, with these doctors, they can't just say it straight? My father, a surgeon, he gave it with both barrels and everyone respected him for it. Of course, it was Boston and stoic.

Bill Paley: Look, there's a new drug. Here's what we do. I've done some research. Tamoxifen. It's just about to get FDA approval. I know who to call...

Babe Paley: Yes, yes, you know everyone, Bill. Yes, we know that. You know everything. It's enough. You keep giving me orders, like I'm the vice president of programming. Which I'm not.

Bill Paley: Jesus, please don't smoke. What can I do to make you stop smoking?

Babe Paley: What can you do to make me stop? How about you don't do a fucking thing? No more jewelry. No more paintings. No more Lucian Freud or Picabia. No more purchasing my forgiveness or my affection.

Bill Paley: You would forgive Truman before me. The fucking smoking! Even after they told you you had to stop. Did you want to die? Was it so bad with me that you wanted to kill yourself?!

Babe Paley: Well, Bill, yes. Could have been worse. Could have been Librium. But, no, it was ciggies and high-end booze. At least I was a coherent hostess. It's how I medicated myself.

Bill Paley: Medicated yourself from what?

Babe Paley: You. The smoking and the Scotch soda that started the very first hint of dusk or sooner. How else could it work? You know what I want? Some quiet. And solitude. And I want to speak to my, my children. I don't know why she won't speak to me.

Bill Paley: Because you're cold. You are. You are a cold person. And your daughter feels that she was a minor consideration in your life and that she came after all the myriad ways you had of showing the world your beauty and your perfection.

Babe Paley: Shut up, Paley! For God's sake, won't you shut up?! Were you a model parent, with your barely disguised contempt for your son, whatever he did? No, she won't speak to me because, because I chose you instead of her. No, actually, we both chose each other.

Bill Paley: Paley. You've been calling me that for a while now. At first I thought it was some sort of tough, affectionate affectation. But then I realized there was ice all around it.

Babe Paley: I think people earn how they're addressed, don't you?

---

Jack Dunphy: [after learning about Truman's death] Did he say anything?

Joanne Carson: He said he was cold. "Mother." "Mama." And then he said, "Beautiful Babe."

Phantasm Forgiveness [2.08]

Truman Capote: Could you ever forgive me for what I wrote about you?

Ann Woodward: Never. There are some things that are beyond forgiveness. And the others won't forgive you either. If you publish the finished Answered Prayers, even if you think you're being kind, it'll just make it worse. Those friendships died with Côte Basque, the golden age of society. Which you ... You helped kill. Perhaps it was a, a subconscious final gift to your mother. And to yourself, for never feeling like you truly belonged.

External links

• Feud (TV series) quotes at the Internet Movie Database