"Frankly, My Dear, I Don't Give a Damn" and Other Great Movie Quotes

There are so many great movie quotes that echo in my mind and have special meaning for me.

Like nearly everyone in America, Clark Gable's famous pronouncement, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!" as he exited Tara in "Gone with the Wind" seemed the very essence of manly disdain. His complete contempt for the manipulative Vivien Leigh's cries of "What shall I do? Where shall I go?" show that he has reached the limits of human endurance with Scarlett O"Hara's perpetual scheming. Men everywhere applauded his sheer bravado in telling Scarlett O'Hara where to get off.

Another film that resonates with nearly every American is "The Wizard of Oz" and I think we all share Judy Garland's sentiment "There's no place like home." It reminds of that other famous literary quote that says, "Home is the place where, when you have nowhere else to go, they have to take you in."

Because I grew up only 60 miles away from the movie set of "Field of Dreams" I have always held dear "Is this heaven? No, it's Iowa," and, as a fledgling entrepreneur in 1986, I often muttered to myself, "If you build it, they will come." The W.P. Kinsella novel on which the movie was based was a hymn of praise to Iowa, my birth state, and Kinsella was a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Implausibly, the film about a son coming to terms with his dead father worked on so many levels, showcasing stars like Kevin Costner, Burt Lancaster, James Earl Jones and Ray Liotta.

Most of us have internalized the Italian family saga that is and was "The Godfather" and the saying, "I'll make you an offer you can't refuse," Marlon Brando's veiled threat, has certainly made its way into the pantheon of contemporary American sayings. Brando also uttered one of the best and most famous lines in American cinema when he told his brother Charlie (Rod Steiger) that he "shoulda looked out for him" and added, "I coulda' been a contender, instead of a bum. Which is what I am." This famous exchange, set in the back of a car in "On the Waterfront," earned Marlon Brando's Terry Malloy an Oscar and takes us back immediately to the Elia Kazan film, co-starring Eva Marie Saint.