Fred Shapiro has a fun piece in the New York Times magazine about movie misquotes:
Why do we so frequently get the lines wrong?
One phenomenon at work, as in the cases above, is compression. Even Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations falls prey to this type of error. It cites “Apocalypse Now”: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning. It smells like victory.” What Robert Duvall really says is: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn’t find one of ’em, not one stinkin’ . . . body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like victory.”
Treasure of the Sierra Madre... Later spoofed in Blazing Saddles
[1] I have always equated that quote with Blazing Saddles. Thought it was an orginal. I've never seen this old movie.
Mishearing occurs in baseball press conferences too ...
I misheard "We found a sucker to take Luis Castillo off our hands" when what was actually said was "Beltran will be out til May"
Treasure of the Sierra Madre is one of the all time classics. The old man, Walter Huston, was an accomplished actor and the father of John Huston who directed. It is about old fashioned avarice and you'll find another famous bit that was lampooned, this one in the form of a begger (John Huston), that appeared in Warner Bros cartoons.
[4] Was that the one where Bugs Bunny was trying to send the baby penguin back to his home and a Bogart-lookalike kept walking on saying, "Pardon me, can you help a fellow American who's down on his luck?"
[4] Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a great movie.
[5] Yep.
Another famous line (from literature, not the movies) that never actually appeared in text is "Elementary my dear Watson". Sherlock Holmes frequently says "Elementary" and "my dear Watson", but never together. I am not sure if the current movie makes the same mistake because I refuse to watch it. As a self proclaimed Baker Street irregular, I refuse to take the chance that Robert Downey Jr. won’t desecrate the character.
I think the problem with the Duvall line from Apocalypse Now was that it was condensed in the TV ads and trailers, if memory serves, so people *did* actually see him say it the way everyone quotes it. I think it was odd the Times elipsed the racial epithet from the quote...I mean, it's a movie quote after all.
[6] I'm not afraid of Downey as Holmes, I'm afraid of Guy Ritchie. I won't see it either.
[4] I always found it odd that Tim Holt, who mainly acted in B Westerns, found his way into both Sierra Madre and Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons.
So Cary Grant never really said "Judy, Judy, Judy"??
[7] Is it the thought of Holmes & Watson as a pair of mockney geezers cause I've heard they're more Hinge & Bracket