- Dorothy Donnelly: You have talent. That's very rare in the theater.
- Sigmund Romberg: You have a warm smile. That's even rarer.
- Dorothy Donnelly: You don't know how to handle this.
- Sigmund Romberg: But you do, eh? I took your advice once. "Wait until you get in a bargaining position," you said. How long do I have to wait to get in it, until I'm too old to bargain?
- Dorothy Donnelly: You're in it now, but you shouldn't talk to Townsend; talk to Schubert. Meet me at the Astor for lunch tomorrow.
- Sigmund Romberg: I'm dying, and she's talking about eating.
- Dorothy Donnelly: On Broadway, Romy, you should've learnt by now lunch is not for eating... lunch is for conniving.
- Sigmund Romberg: This time I'm really through.
- Bert Townsend: You'll be back.
- Sigmund Romberg: Only for "Maytime"; nothing else. Only "Maytime".
- [Pulls papers from pocket.]
- Sigmund Romberg: Read it once.
- Bert Townsend: Who needs it?
- Sigmund Romberg: I do!
- Bert Townsend: Look, Romy, if I want to do a Viennese operetta, all I have to do is send a cablegram and get the whole works. Composer, book sets, costumes, everything. Why should I gamble on a new production?
- Sigmund Romberg: Because with a new production, maybe you could have a work of art.
- Bert Townsend: I'm only interested in making money.
- Sigmund Romberg: People who collect garbage also make money.
- Bert Townsend: I deserve better than that from you.
- [Walks away.]
- Lazar Berrison, Sr.: Pull down your vest and gaze at the music. The clients want modern, up-to-date, uptown stuff, not that Viennese um-pah-pah.
- Anna Mueller: Romy is an accomplished musician. A graduate from the Vienna conservatory yet. And a composer. You should hear the songs he makes up.
- Lazar Berrison, Sr.: I got other fish to fry, miss Mueller.
- Anna Mueller: One tune won't give you the willies.
- Sigmund Romberg: Music is like vests or ladies' wear? It should be stylish?
- Lazar Berrison, Sr.: Don't be such a high roller! You're doing good. It's the novelty, it'll wear off. This place has a chance to get in the hotsy-totsy time, like Shanley's, Bustanoby's, if you give the people what they want. This kind of stuff I've sold to the best publishers in town.
- Sigmund Romberg: [reads sheet music song title handed to him by Berrison] "Choo Choo to Chicago." "Hennessy Hop." "Boiled Shirt."
- Lazar Berrison, Sr.: Best catalog I represented and I'm a kind of agent like this. I not only sell songs for my boys, I try to get them played.
- Sigmund Romberg: Baboons play songs like this. Also write them.
- Lazar Berrison, Sr.: Baboons with rhythm! Baboons who like to do the bunny hug and the squeeze. The way they're dancing now isn't 1-2-3, 1-2-3. It's 1-2, 1-2. Gotta be that way with the hobble skirts! Otherwise the ladies hit the grid when they tinkle their toes. Today a song's gotta be a grizzly bear stepping on a tack - with the kind of zip that will make a leg of mutton dance.
- Sigmund Romberg: How does a leg of mutton dance?
- Sigmund Romberg: Give me a listen.
- [singing]
- Sigmund Romberg: You jazz to the left, Then you jazz to the right, Then you tickle your toe, You tickle your toe and. Then you go into a bunny hug, Hold her tight as a bug in a rug and, Then you step on the tack, Like you're balling the Jack, With the grizzly bear in your stance and, If you be my honey lamb, We can yammy yam, The leg of mutton dance...
- Gaby Deslys: Perhaps Mr. Romberg has something for me. Something wonderful, Mr. Romberg? Play it for Gaby. Play it for Gaby, yes?
- Anna Mueller: Romy's only the greatest composer in the whole world.
- Sigmund Romberg: Whoever heard of a slouch like Beethoven?
- O'Brien Brother - Performer in 'Dancing Around', O'Brien Brother - Performer in 'Dancing Around': [singing] I love to go swimmin' with women. And women love swimmin' with me, I pretend that I'm a crab, And their pretty ankles grab, Who wouldn't be a lobster in the sea, For peaches all fall on the beaches And picking 'em's my specialty
- O'Brien Brother - Performer in 'Dancing Around': I get those Navy notions when I see floating queens
- O'Brien Brother - Performer in 'Dancing Around': I dive right in the ocean and I play submarines
- O'Brien Brother - Performer in 'Dancing Around', O'Brien Brother - Performer in 'Dancing Around': Oh, I love to go swimmin' with women...
- Bert Townsend: Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot. You don't care anything about money. That's why you spend it so fast. You can't bear to hold it in your hands.
- Performer in 'Maytime': [singing] My dearest one, Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart, Though our paths may sever
- Performer in 'Maytime', Performer in 'Maytime': To life's last faint ember, Will you remember? Springtime, Love-time, May?
- [he kisses her hand, she kisses his lips]
- Sigmund Romberg: Success? What is that? The only important place for a show to be a success is in one's own heart.
- Sigmund Romberg: [singing] Stop your sighs and grievin', All those pretty tears you're sheddin', Wipe away, For my pals shall be gay...
- Ben Judson: In the first scene, he's having his bachelor's dinner.
- Sigmund Romberg: Yes, saying goodbye to all his loose-living friends.
- Harold Butterfield: But, here's the switch. All those loose-living friends are dames.
- Ben Judson: You get it, Bertie? No men! A bachelor's dinner with dames. Dames all over the place! In the corners, on the piano, hanging from the chandelier.
- Sigmund Romberg: [singing] You ought to see my fat, fat Fatima, She is gentle and mild, And not very wild, Fatima's size is really out of bounds, She's a good 200 pounds, This is just a guess, maybe more or less, Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, My Fatima's neat and nifty, Oh, my fat, fat Fatima, She is very voluminous, Fill up a roominous, From top to bottomous, She's a hippopotamus, So ginger-snapable, Sit-on-her-lapable, Fatima's a fabulous girl!
- Sigmund Romberg: It's too bad, really. This is quite the perfect setting for a love scene. A painted backdrop with a canvas sky. And a papier-mâché lake shimmering from the light of a cardboard moon. Music drifting across the water. You, the leading lady with your eyes shining and your heart ready. And mine ready too. It's too bad, really.
- Mrs. Harris: You live in a world of vulgarity. I use the word in the strict Latin sense. An uninhibited world of practical jokes - and jazz!
- Sigmund Romberg: [singing, in blackface] So let me introduce to you, The jazza jazza doo doo doo, It's got me goofy, The jazza jazza doo doo doo, I'm going daffy, The jazza jazza doo doo doo, Mammy! The jazza jazza, Jazza jazza doo doo doo, Yeah!
- Sigmund Romberg: I can hardly look at you. For that matter, I can hardly look in the mirror at myself. I didn't want to do it. I was maneuvered into it. It turned out pretty awful.
- Sigmund Romberg: You've got to get with the 20th century.
- Florenz Ziegfeld: I don't got to get with anything, Mr. Romberg.
- Performer in 'Artists and Models': [singing] The seed of sin, Now at last has been found, By Elinor Glyn, In one word, she defines, The indefinable thing, She calls it "it", Just simply "it", That is the word, They're using now, For that improper fraction, Of vague attraction, That gets the action somehow, You've either got, Or you have not, That certain thing, That makes them cling, So if the boys don't seem to fall for you, There's just no hope at all for you, Give up and quit, You'll never hit, If you have not got "it"!
- Dorothy Donnelly: There are 12 companies of "Maytime" running in the United States. Pretty good for the kid from Vienna.
- Sigmund Romberg: I don't claim that "Jazza Doo" is "The Mikado". "The Mikado" is not "La Boheme." Gilbert and Sullivan and Puccini composed for the people who paid to hear their music, just as I do. I'm not embarrassed by trying to please them.
- Sigmund Romberg: I've just got the heebie-jeebies. I think I'll go to Europe for six months or a year.
- Performer in 'The Student Prince': [singing] Soft in the trees sighs, The echo of my longing, While all around you, My dreams of rapture throng...
- Lillian Harris Romberg: You said I'd come and I have. But where could I go that I wouldn't hear your music and see your face? I don't think anywhere anymore. Men and women and boys and girls - in New York and Iceland and Arabia, too, I guess - will be singing and playing what came out of the depth of you. And I'm so proud I could bust.
- Sigmund Romberg: Music is going to come out of me like it never came out before. Music that will shine like the Matterhorn on a clear day in May.
- Performer in 'The Desert Song': [singing] One alone to be my own, I alone to know, His caresses, One to be eternally, The one my worshipping soul, Possesses, At his call I'd give my all...
- Performer in 'My Maryland': [singing] When at the end, We'll say each mother's son, "The war is done and won," The men from the north, Will greet the southern men, While bugles blow, We're friends again, Your land and my land, Will be our land one day...
- Sigmund Romberg: Well, Anna, this is very groovy. Shall we cut a rug?
- Anna Mueller: Groovy? Such noise. They call it bebop.
- Lazar Berrison, Jr.: We saw your show tonight and we loved it, didn't we?
- Arabella Bell: Fractured me.
- Sigmund Romberg: This is the wonderful thing about music - it is never quite new and never quite the same. And just when you love it best, you think that you have heard it before. And who knows, maybe you have
- Sigmund Romberg: My stuff was not meant for Carnegie Hall. It was meant for singing, dancing, and making love.