Movie Quote of the Day (‘Paper Moon,’ as a Con Man Gets More Than He Bargained For)

[The recently orphaned eight-year-old Addie Loggins has just overheard traveling con man Moses Pray, who had recently shown up at her mom’s graveside service, bilk a third party out of $200 meant for her. Instead of driving Addie to her aunt in Missouri, as he had promised her relatives, “Moze” plans to use the money to fix his car while putting Addie on a train alone with just her ticket. As they sit in a café later, Addie has something else in mind.]

Addie Loggins [played by Tatum O’Neal]: “I want my two hundred dollars.”
 
Moses Pray [played by Ryan O’Neal]: “I don't have your two hundred dollars no more and you know it.”
 
Addie: “If you don't give me my two hundred dollars, I'm gonna tell a policeman how you got it and he'll make you give it to me because it's mine.”
 
Moses: “But I don't have it!”
 
Addie: “Then get it!”
 
Cafe Waitress [played by Jody Wilbur]: [walks over solicitously after Moses slams his fist on the table] “How we doin', Angel Pie? We gonna have a little dessert when we finish up our hot dog?”
 
Addie [sullenly]: “I don't know.”
 
Waitress [to Moses]: “What do you say, Daddy? Why don't we give Precious a little dessert if she eats her dog?”
 
Moses [annoyed]: “Her name ain't Precious!”— Paper Moon (1973), screenplay by Alvin Sargent, adapted from the novel Addie Pray by Joe David Brown, directed by Peter Bogdanovich
 
I’m not sure why, but I not only never saw this movie when it came out, but managed to bypass it in all the years since—until last week, when I caught it as part of TCM’s tribute to the late Peter Bogdanovich.
 
I’m glad I waited, as I was finally able to appreciate this droll black-and-white road comedy set in the Great Depression. The sub-teen Tatum O’Neal won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for this—only, Bogdanovich insisted later, because Hollywood would never award Best Actress to someone so young.
 
Ryan O’Neal, the story goes, was so annoyed that his daughter was nominated while he wasn’t that he refused to accompany her to the ceremony. That set the stage for decades of turbulence between the two.

(Not that there hadn’t been tension between them already on the set: In interview excerpts included in the blog, Cinephilia and Beyond, Bogdanovich related, “I had to keep Ryan from killing her” over the child’s inability to learn her lines.)

 
No matter. The people who give us classic film comedies are often terribly complicated people who, in spite of themselves, give us a few hours of laughter and light that they don’t experience. Cherish their gifts to us, anyway.