Carol for Another Christmas (1964 TV Movie)

Sterling Hayden: Daniel Grudge

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Quotes 

• Daniel Grudge : [looking at girls with faces burned by radiation]  Doctor, I know it's not much consolation, but, at least we can hope that their children won't...

  The Doctor : [incredulous]  Children, Commander? These girls?

• [the Ghost of Christmas Present gorges himself at a banquet table, while barbed wired keeps out starving refugees] 

  Daniel Grudge : Nothing on this earth can force me to eat while starving people watch me.

  Ghost of Christmas Present : Watching makes all the difference. What? You never saw them while tearing into your mashed potatoes. They weren't actually there when you buttered your bread.

  [he snaps his fingers, the lights go out and the refugees disappear] 

  Ghost of Christmas Present : There. Better, Mr. Grudge? Appetite back?

• Daniel Grudge : [not wanting to allow a Polish literature professor come to the United States as part of a foreign exchange program]  Get smart, boy. We've been diggin' his kind out of the woodwork for years. You don't really expect *me* to be a party to inviting one of them in here, now do you? Hahaha, nah. No, he stays on his side of the fence, and Harris stays on ours. Get used to the idea.

  Fred : When you finally go, that'll be your epitaph, won't it?: 'Here lies Daniel Grudge - on his side of the fence.' Well, get used to this idea, uncle: There are certain fences the world can no longer afford.

  Daniel Grudge : Quite a wall through Berlin, I've heard tell.

  Fred : Exactly - a fence. And who put it there? You think it's right?

  Daniel Grudge : [as he intimidatingly approaches Fred]  Alright, Fred, turn it off - right now. There's only one side I'm on; first, last, and always: Our side. Don't you ever forget that, and spread it around. I want all the various members of your domestic and international orders of the bleeding hearts to know precisely where Daniel Grudge stands. 'Cause anytime you, or one of your fuzzy fellow do-gooders tries to get me, or friends of mine - or my city, state, or country - involved in any of your so-called causes, then I intend to be there everytime with a body block that'll throw all of you flat on your... involved butts.

• Daniel Grudge : [bitterly noting the loss of his son's life in war]  I give them a son, and they give me back his affects. That, I submit to you, is a lousy bargain.

  Fred : Nobody could argue that. The point is, that kind of bargaining has got to stop.

• Daniel Grudge : [they are looking at piles of coffins draped in flags]  We didn't belong in that one either. Make the world safe for democracy - did they?

  Ghost of Christmas Past : That's what they were told. They sure as hell gave it a try.

  Daniel Grudge : Look, they change the hats, they update the slogans but it's the same old shell-game. Like clockwork. Every twenty years, somebody rings a fire-bell ten thousand miles away and out come's Uncle Sam's expeditionary sucker brigade.

  Ghost of Christmas Past : Is that what they are? Suckers? Is that what your son's gonna be?

  Daniel Grudge : My son, my son will be a victim just as these men are victims of somebody else's war.

• Daniel Grudge : The President of the United States found it necessary to drop that bomb because there would have been 500,000 American casualties and a couple a million Japanese dead had he not dropped it. Harsh as it may sound, in my book that makes simple arithmetic.

  Lt. Gibson : Commander, I wouldn't debate military planning with you. I'm just suggesting that we are standing in the middle of what was once a city, where on one given morning 100,000 people were killed. People, Commander. That's almost as many deaths as the Confederates had in four years of Civil War. Quite apart from anything else, sir. Doesn't that suggest to you that from this second on, if the world ever decided to go to war again, it could kill itself off in a couple of afternoons. Doesn't it suggest, sir, that maybe - maybe war is obsolete now. Just - just do me one favor, would you, please, Commander? Don't call it arithmetic any more.

• Daniel Grudge : Get out.

  Fred : Merry Christmas, by the way.

  Daniel Grudge : Yes, so it is. And tonight, especially tonight, I'm in no mood for the brotherhood of man. Do you mind? I've heard that speech - and heard it. Oh, I've had it with you, Fred. With all of you, I've had it - right up to here.

  [brings his hand up to his neck] 

  Daniel Grudge : Mind your own business - and let everybody else mind their's! Your responsibility happens to be your classroom. *Not* classrooms in Cracow, Poland; Butte, Montana; or Johannesburg, South Africa. Do you insist upon making it a better world? Won't you die happy until you do? Do you insist on helping the needy and oppressed? Is that some kind of an itch that you can't stop scratching? Then, tell them to help themselves. Let 'em know the cash drawers closed and make 'em believe it! You'll be surprised how much less needy and oppressed, the needy and oppressed turn out to be. But, you've heard that one before - and heard it! No, I can't change you. And you can't change me. So just, stay out of my way, Fred. Out of my house - and out of my life.

• Daniel Grudge : Well, then, nephew, which one of your many causes brings you out into the snowy night, huh? Some Ubangis with the yaws? Some perverted mass murderer whose seen the light and wishes to assume his rightful place in society - as an alternative to the electric chair? No, that was last year, wasn't it? What is it this time? A movement to donate the Mississippi River to the Sahara Desert?

• Fred : Do you know what he teaches? Do you know what Kozinofski and Harris both teach? Eighteenth Century European Literature. What's that got to do with politics?

  Daniel Grudge : I don't know - and I'm not interested in finding out.

• Daniel Grudge : Now, why should a little thing like this sit so heavily in your tender tummy?

• Daniel Grudge : It wasn't his war.

  Fred : No war is anybody's war!

  Daniel Grudge : I'm not talking about anybody. How do we stay out? By getting ourselves involved with the same people, the same problems, the same places? None of them our business. Is that your answer? Involvement? A hop head's pipe dream in which everybody, yellow, black, and white, gets thrown into one pot - and out comes a stew called world brotherhood - which mankind lives forever in peace and putrefaction. Is that your answer?

• Daniel Grudge : I have a Christmas present for you, Fred. Call it a contribution, if you like. To all your causes, involvements, exchanges, cultural and otherwise, whatever terms you apply to international freeloading on our pocketbook. If you have this overpowering concern for everybody, everywhere in the world, here's your answer: Just you put your efforts, sweat, and faith into developing the fastest bombers and the most powerful missiles on earth. They'll provide a lot more security for our young, and for the rest of the world's young, than all your debating societies, forums, treaties, pacts and other forms of surrender and handout.

  Fred : That's quite an answer, Uncle Dan, for today. But, what about tomorrow? Of course, you'll grant all other nations an equal right to put their faith and sweat and effort in trying to make their bombs faster and more powerful than ours.

  Daniel Grudge : Just let 'em try it.

  Fred : Each behind its own fence. Each capable, eventually, of destroying everything and everybody else. And each uninvolved with the other.

  Daniel Grudge : Uninvolved with us? I'll settle for that. Just let 'em know we have the biggest and the fastest. Just let 'em know we're not too chicken to use 'em.

• Daniel Grudge : What is this? Some kind of a troop transport?

  Ghost of Christmas Past : Yeah, you might call it that. On it's way.

  Daniel Grudge : France?

  Ghost of Christmas Past : One of our stops.

  Daniel Grudge : Well, where else?

  Ghost of Christmas Past : You name it. Meet the troops.

  Daniel Grudge : They're dead.

  Ghost of Christmas Past : Killed in action. Château-Thierry. Belleau Wood. Marne. How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm, after they've seen Pari. They saw Pari - very briefly. Lafayette, they were there.

• Daniel Grudge : You talk like the AEF. What's your name?

  Ghost of Christmas Past : I'm all the AEFs. Also BEFs... the Huns, the Ruskies, et cetera. Gallipoli. Crimea. Even Waterloo - if you care to go back that far. You get the picture, chief? I'm all of 'em. I'm the one who rallied around the flag - any flag. All the flags. See what I mean?

• Ghost of Christmas Past : War is also a contagious disease, Mr. G. And until we can stamp it out...

  Daniel Grudge : Nobody - nobody ever found a way to do that.

  Ghost of Christmas Past : Right. But, is that any reason to stop trying? Look, one thing we do know. The only chance to keep this particular disease from spreading is to keep talking. So long as you talk, you don't fight. Simple.

• Daniel Grudge : Are you coming with me?

  Ghost of Christmas Past : No, sir. I'm them. In there is - now.

• Ghost of Christmas Present : I'm the Ghost of Christmas Present.

  Daniel Grudge : Representing what? Gluttony?

  Ghost of Christmas Present : If you like. No, I represent the human race, Mr. Grudge. So does a certain extent, gluttony. Also starvation. I represent that too. You might say that I'm as close to being a walking, eating image of the human race as possible for a man or phantom to be. Part of me feels a gnawing hunger. Part of me is satiating. I'm warm, contented, healthy; but, much of me shivers in the cold.

• Ghost of Christmas Present : Mankind, Mr. Grudge. In there. The hungry part of mankind. The anguished part. The dispossessed. If you shared a loaf of bread with them, how would you be relinquishing your freedom? Or if you joined other nations to administer vaccinations to their children, how would you have desecrated your flag? Or, if you had offered them solace and hope and comfort, how would you have made yourself susceptible to tyranny?

  Daniel Grudge : What are they singing?

  Ghost of Christmas Present : Foreign words. But not necessarily conspiracies to destroy you, Mr. Grudge. Just Christmas songs and of those who do not celebrate Christmas, songs of hope.

• Daniel Grudge : So long as there are children, I suppose there are possibilities.

  Fred : So long as there are children, there has to be possibilities.

• Daniel Grudge : What could have done this? What happened here?

  Ghost of Christmas Future : Time. Time happened here, Mr. Grudge! Attrition. Neglect. Misuse. A few passing catastrophes. Time!

• Daniel Grudge : What about the United Nations? It was supposed to keep the peace.

  Ghost of Christmas Future : The United... Oh, that town meeting hall. Oh, yes. Well, that went some time back, I'm afraid. You see, they dropped out. Or, maybe we dropped out. Anyway, somebody dropped out. Pretty soon everybody was dropping or had dropped out. And before anybody knew it, the talking had stopped.