42nd Street (film) - Quotes

Quotes

Director Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter) to green chorine Peggy Sawyer (Ruby Keeler) just before she makes her first entrance to replace the star of the show:

"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!"

(The final line in this speech, "Sawyer, you're going out a youngster, but you've got to come back a star!" was voted as the #87 movie quote of all time by the American Film Institute.)

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