Rita Moreno

Rita Moreno in Westside Story

I see that it's Rita Moreno's birthday - she was born on 11th December 1931. Moreno is the Puerto Rican singer, dancer and actress whose versatility has won her membership of a highly exclusive club - during her long career she won an Oscar, a Tony, and Emmy and a Grammy.


I have always thought that Moreno had a role opposite Robert Redford in Sydney Pollack's 1975 thriller Three Days of the Condor; but I've just looked up her filmography to find that in fact she didn't. Who was it that played the girl behind the bar, to whom Redford's character turned in the movie? She was another CIA operative, but of a dangerous kind, and her mission was to kill Redford. I'm going to have to send for it.

Mention Three Days of the Condor and I think, 'I just read books!' because I have a sad tendency to associate movies with lines of dialogue - not necessarily famous ones. This particular line, Redford manages to infuse with anger, exasperation, confusion and raw fear all at the same time.

Here are ten more, to test your knowledge of movie trivia (in some cases I've probably misremembered the quote, but hopefully, as they say around here, if I didn't hit it I staggered it). Please feel free to add your own. The 'answers' are at the end:-

1. "Well I'll be damned."
"I doubt that. I doubt that very much."

2. "Gettin' dark Chelsey.."

3. "Old man didn't make it."

4. "Are you one of the good guys?"
"Yeah I'm one of the good guys."
"You don't eat people?"
"No. We don't eat people."
"Do you carry the fire?"
"Do I what?"
"Here. Do you carry the fire here."
"Yeah, I carry the fire."

5. "You're my knight in shining armour."

6. "Look at that Andy! It's disgusting! It's perverse! On a football field! That's the sort of thing gives the game of football a bad name."

7. "Look at the sky McIntyre. Tell me what you see."

8. "Who are those guys?"

9. "My, she was yar!"

10. "This is reality, Greg."

Answers:
1. Yul Brynner and, I think, Warren Oates, Return of the Magnificent Seven (1966)
2. Henry Fonda, On Golden Pond (1981)
3. Paul Newman, Sometimes a Great Notion (1970)
4. Kodi Smit-McPhee and another, The Road (2009)
5. Katherine Hepburn, On Golden Pond (1981) - my favourite movie, slips in twice
6. John Gordon Sinclair, Gregory's Girl (1981)
7. Burt Lancaster, Local Hero (1983)
8. Paul Newman, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
9. Katherine Hepburn, The Philadelphia Story (1940)
10. Henry Thomas, ET (1982)