Some of the Greatest Insults Are Delivered Dry

Is Eva LeGallienne a lesbian?

Why she's the bucket in "The Well of Loneliness"!

Lillian Gish (apparently, when asked!)

OP, that's "the actress, Coral Browne" to you.

Oh, more! Wonderful topic!

Isn't that "lesbian actress Coral Browne"?

"I don't see why not. Everyone else has."

-- Noël Coward, upon seeing a billboard outside the Odeon in Leicester Square that read, "Michael Redgrave and Dirk Bogarde in THE SEA SHALL NOT HAVE THEM," 1954.

"They said you weren't fit to eat with pigs - but I stuck up for you, and said you were."

Kenneth Williams, British actor best known for his appearances in the "Carry On" films, authored a book entitled "Acid Drops." The title is a reference to a hoary/hairy old joke about an actress. The book is filled with stinging, witty and outrageous insults, asides and humiliations. To whit..... Noel Coward warned a friend about a mutual acquaintance with this guarded advice: 'He's a little man, that's his trouble. Never trust a man with short legs... brains too near their bottoms.'

Fabulous! More more more of these verbal acrobatics dipped in strychnine.

Between George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill:

SHAW: "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play, bring a friend...If you have one."

CHURCHILL REPLY: "I cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second...If there is one."

Eugene O'Neill once received a telegram from a Hollywood executive asking him to write a screenplay for Jean Harlow. Reply in twenty words or less, the executive said.

O'Neill telegraphed back: No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. O'Neill.

That is glorious, R9.

A whispered aside from Dorothy Parker to a dinner party companion about a newly minted female movie star at the party:

"Isn't she wonderful and I hear she speaks 15 languages, but doesn't know the word for "no" in any of them."

(Something like that.)

"Madame, do you have any unexpressed thoughts?"

Love it.

[quote] "Isn't she wonderful and I hear she speaks 15 languages, but doesn't know the word for "no" in any of them."

Was Jenny her name?

Do you think I could buy back my introduction to you?

John Gielgud about Ingrid Bergman, whom he directed in a play: "Dear Ingrid, speaks five languages, and can't act in any of them".

This dry jab always makes me giggle...

The Baroness: "Why didn't you tell me?"

Max: 'What?'

The Baroness: 'To bring along my harmonica.'

Lady Astor to Winston Churchill: “If you were my husband, I’d poison your tea!”

Churchill: “If you were my wife, I’d drink it.”

"There are the remains of a fine woman about her." Gilbert & Sullivan.

And in response to: "Do you have any unexpressed thoughts?"...

"Yes, I'm having one now." Dead eyed stare.

Tired of watching an inebriated Winston Churchhill, a guest said, "Winston, you're drunk!"

Churchill replied: “You're right, Bessie. And you're ugly. But tomorrow morning, I'll be sober. And you'll still be ugly.”

Edna Ferber was fond of wearing pants. Noel Coward said to her one day:

Why, Edna you almost look like a man."

Ferber looked Coward over and said: "So do you."

Voltaire was invited by his friends to attend an orgy. Though rather shy, he did. Afterwards they asked him if he'd like to go again. He declined, saying:

“Ah no, my good friends, once a philosopher, twice a pervert.”

Upon hearing that Claire Booth Luce was kind to her inferiors, Dorothy Parker replied, "Where does she find them?"

Let's not forget Truman Capote ... He was confronted by a jealous man whose wife asked Capote for an autograph. Unzipping and pulling it out, the man said, "Perhaps you can autograph THIS!"

"Well, no," Capoted said. But perhaps I could initial it."

Thank you for a memorable afternoon, usually one must go to a bowling alley to meet a woman of your stature.

Claire Booth Luce (holding the door open): Age before beauty.

Dorothy Parker (going in): And pearls before swine.

You look like a birthday cake. Too bad everyone's had a piece.

My response to "Fuck you"...

"You'd fall in love and I'd fall asleep"

If you don't have anything nice to say about anyone, come sit by me, dear.

Alice Longworth Roosevelt

That wasn't exactly an insult, R30.

Eleanor Roosevelt beat her cousin Alice at her own game by using good manners to deflate Alice's rudeness. When some particularly cutting remarks made by Alice reached Eleanor's ears, the First Lady responded by writing her cousin a note expressing concern that her guest been unhappy over latest visit to the White House. Eleanor urged Alice not to feel in any way obligated to accept any further invitations, kindly assuring her that there would be no hard feelings should Alice prefer to keep her distance.

Of course the idea of it being known that she had been barred from the White House was too much for Alice to bear. She replied with a groveling note insisting that she must have been misquoted somehow. Ultimately it was FDR who banned Alice from any further visits after she publicly compared him unfavorably to Hitler.

"He has Van Gogh's ear for music." - Billy Wilder

"He loves nature, in spite of what it did to him." - Forrest Tucker

"There is nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." - Jack E. Leonard

A theater director to a young Katharine Hepburn - "Don't just do something, stand there!"

Barbara Thorndyke loved to quote Dorothy Parker. She'd get a kick out of this thread.

Violet, the Dowager Countess on Downton Abbey is a master of this.

Violet: You are quite wonderful, the way you see room for improvement wherever you look. I never knew such reforming zeal.

Isobel: I take that as a compliment.

Violet (under her breath as Isobel walks away): I must have said it wrong.

"Oh, dear."

R17. Yeah, closeted gay as a goose John Gielgud...Ingrid Bergman, 3-time Academy Award winner, iconic legend of the silver screen and beloved for generators, couldn't act. Right.

r18

Ingrid Bergman was a generator icon.

At a social gathering, James McNeill Whistler (the guy who painted his mother) said something particularly witty that had everyone laughing.

Oscar Wilde: I wish I'd said that.

Whistler: You will, Oscar, you will.

At a dinner party, Oscar Wilde, as usual, was completely monopolizing the conversation. When he finally paused briefly, W.S. Gilbert (of Gilbert and Sullivan) interjected "I wish I could talk like you -- I'd keep my mouth shut and claim it as a virtue."

"Ah, but that would be selfish," Wilde replied. "I could deny myself the pleasure of talking but I could never deny the others the pleasure of listening."

R39, you twat. Gielgud was so far past an "Oscar" that when they gave him one he roared. His comment may have been unfair, but your ignorance of his skill and capacity for judgment is compounded by your insolent assumption that in a difficult time he was closeted. He never was closeted. And he handled being arrested for tea-room sex with dignity.

So fuck you, you homophobic asshole. "Gay as a goose"? Do you know where you are, you cunt?

F&F this person.

I feel the need to correct this:

Lady Astor to Churchill "Winston, if you were my husband I would flavour your coffee with poison" Churchill: "Madam, if I were your husband, I should drink it"

This hoary old story has been around for decades because I first heard it back in the '70s. Over the years I've heard the lady in question given variously as Dorothy Parker, Libby Holman, Judy Garland, Sylvia Miles, Cherry Vanilla, Bette Midler, Liza, etc., etc. etc.

At any rate our Famous Diva is out on the town with her usual entourage and eventually they pile into a restaurant or coffee shop for a bite to eat. When the waiter asks her how she takes her coffee, she eyes the muscular black server up and down and purrs "I like my coffee the way I like my men." He glances around the table and says "We don't have gay coffee."

Dorothy Parker was visiting some phony young actress, when Parker was a writer in Hollywood...

The actress had her three year old son on her lap, continually kissing him and touching him, stroking his hair and stopping him from leaving her lap. She made a huge display of her affection for him. She said "I know I am being silly but I can't help myself. He really is the most precious little man, isn't he?"

"Yes", replied Parker. "Strange he never married."

"I thought she was beautiful. And she's very happy in Alaska. I hope she'll stay there."

--Barbara Bush, asked to comment on Sarah Palin

And in response to: "Do you have any unexpressed thoughts?"...

"Yes, I'm having one now." Dead eyed stare.

"Frasier" used this, with Niles' being the wit.

“Ronald Reagan doesn’t dye his hair - he’s just prematurely orange."-- Former US President Gerald Ford

“So boring, you fall asleep halfway through her name” -- Alan Bennett on Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington

Bette Midler on Princess Anne: "She loves nature, in spite of what it did to her."

Churchill never said any of the putdowns to Lady Astor that have been attributed to him.

I loved Dorothy Parker's assessment of a Kate Hepburn performance on the stage:

"She ran the gamut of emotions from A to B."

I don't know who the fat man was who looked at George Bernard Shaw and remarked, "You look like you've been through a famine. And Shaw replied, "you look like you would have caused it."

At the height of his boxing success, Muhammad Ali and his entourage boarded an airplane and took their seats in first class. The stewardess came by and asked Ali to fasten his seatbest.

"Superman don't need no seatbelt!" The champion joked to his hanagers-on.

"Superman don't need no airplane." Replied the stewardess. "Fasten your seatbelt".

Ali fastened his seatbelt.

Christ, R43, do you know where YOU are? Has DL ever been a bastion of learned cinephiles and historians who would know that Gielgud was out within the theatre community, closeted everywhere else, because being closeted was almost a necessity at the time in Britain? No. That's not a level of discourse DL achieves or aspires to.

Get a cold compress and lie down, hon. You expect too much from the commentariat.

"I wish I could be more like you and not care what people think"

"Let them eat ̶c̶o̶c̶k ̶c̶a̶k cake."

Well, that was just his wife's opinion.

Barbara Bush shades Nancy Reagan at a genteel First Ladies' conference:

[quote]I loved my little office because it was—besides being Nancy Reagan’s beauty parlor, which she didn’t like me to say, but it was—the dogs were born here and you could look out the window at Jackson Place and Lafayette Square and you could see all sorts of wonderful things.

The legendary actor actor John Barrymore was also a noted wit, womanizer and drunkard. He once stumbled blotto into the ladies room at a bar to take a piss. While peeing, a woman came in and exclaimed "Sir! This is for ladies!" Turning around, dick in hand, he said "So, madame, is this."

Once while performing Richard III, he was heckled from the balcony after saying "My horse, my horse, my kingdom for a horse!" He pointed to the offender and replied in nearly perfect iambic pentameter "Make haste and saddle yonder braying ass!"

[quote]Isobel: I take that as a compliment. Violet (under her breath as Isobel walks away): I must have said it wrong.

From BUtterfield 8

Mrs. Wandrous: "That's a beautiful suit dear, is that from one of your modeling shows ?"

Gloria: "No, I borrowed it from Steve's girlfriend Norma."

Mrs. Thurber: "There's a girl who won't have a boyfriend for long."

Gloria: "A compliment from you Mrs. Thurber ?"

Mrs. Thurber: "I must've said it wrong."

[quote]R61

They used those anecdotes in MY FAVORITE YEAR though the Alan Swan character was allegedly based on Errol Flynn.

Alexander Woolcott pointed out Robert Benchley to a newcomer. Indicating the vivacious brunette with him, the newbie said, "And that would be Mrs Benchley?"

"It would," agreed Woolcott. "Unfortunately for her, it IS Mrs Parker."

Unclench, r43.

Eat R39's shit if you're so approving of it, R65.

On the one hand, we have the general theme of this thread. On the other, R65 and R66's alternative.

So true, R67. Please pardon my offense. Implicit homophobia on a gay site, for some reason, tends to remove the dryness from my speech. Perhaps the delightfully free-of-discrimination lives of most of the people quoted here (and Wilde is the exception) permitted them a better environment for their wit.

And then there's aiming at the level of one's audience.

A film critic on the leads in THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS: "Miss Taylor is exceptionally beautiful and cannot act which gives her (a) one up on her co-star Van Johnson."

When approached by reporters and told that former president Calvin Coolidge was dead, Dorothy Parker commented, "How could they tell ... ?"

Noel Coward on Strasberg's 'Method' actors: "Really, if they must have deep motivation, think of one's paycheck come Friday."

On her father, President Theodore Roosevelt, Alice Roosevelt Longworth said this: "Daddy wants to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral, and the baby at every christening."

At a gathering, actress Jean Harlow greeted the writer Margot Aisquith with a mispronounciation of her first name using a hard T to which Aisquith allegedly responded, "No dear, the T is silent like in Harlow (harlot)."

President Calvin Coolidge was known for disliking small talk, and being a quiet man in general. Some people considered this to be a challenge, like a society woman who was once seated next to him at dinner...

Society Woman: "I've bet our host that I can get you to say more than two words!"

Coolidge: "You lose."

He didn't talk to her again that night.

A modest little person, with much to be modest about.

Instead of being born again, why don't you just grow up?

[quote]They used those anecdotes in MY FAVORITE YEAR though the Alan Swan character was allegedly based on Errol Flynn.

In one of David Niven's funny exposés, he talked about Errol Flynn and John Barrymore being so drunk at a party, they both peed on the sofa.

It might be hard to tell which of the two chronic alcoholics Swan represented.

"I only came to see the asp."

Charles Addams at the premiere of Cleopatra

I just wanted to revive this great thread by posting a set of witty insults from another source online. My favorite in the list:

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts; for support rather than illumination." -Andrew Lang

Thanks for the bump R75. I missed this the first time around.

You're very welcome!

Thou dankish hasty-witted death-token!

Reporter 'How can you play the piano with all those rings on your finger?'

Liberace 'Very well indeed!'

That's from Behind the Candelabra. Don't know if Liberace actually said it.

“Oh, dear God, you don't actually have a brain, do you, it's more a filigreed spiderweb, with little chambers in it where trained monkeys play the pipe organ.” ― Glen David Gold, from Carter Beats the Devil

Is anyone else hearing a choir of sad trombones on this thread?

Bump.

Dorothy Parker reviewed books in her column as "Constant Reader"; her review for "Winnie the Pooh" was "Tonstant Weader frowed up".

I love that rare time when the wit gets outwitted. Here is an exchange of telegrams between George Bernard Shaw and actress Cornelia Otis Skinner, who was enjoying great success in Shaw's "Candida" on Broadway in 1935.

Shaw: "Excellent! Greatest!"

Skinner: "A million thanks but undeserving such praise."

Shaw: "I meant the play."

Skinner: "So did I."

The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.

Sacred cows make the best hamburger.

“You, sir, are an oxygen thief!”

"No brains. A real asshole casserole."

"If you can't laugh at yourself, I'd be glad to do it for you."

“He is dark and handsome. When it's dark, he's handsome.”

"Keir Dullea, gone tomorrow!" -- Noel Coward on the set of "Bunny Lake is Missing" after being really irritated by Keir Dullea's narcissistic behavior

"Oh, the name alone! What does it mean?" -- Carrie Fisher, when asked to say something scathing about Arnold Schwarzenegger

"Miss Hepburn ran the gamut of emotions from A to B." -- Dorothy Parker, reviewing Katharine Hepburn on Broadway in "The Lake"

During the beginning of the filming of Lifeboat Mary Anderson asked Alfred Hitchcock what he thought "is my best side." He dryly responded, "You're sitting on it, my dear."

Re OP: But Jill Bennett was just a teenager at the time.

Some of these aren't dry insults at all. A number of you aren't very clear on the concept.

Gore Vidal to (the very Irish catholic, very social climbing) Dominick Dunne at a very fancy luncheon: "Why is it, do you suppose, that all Irish Catholics are all social climbers? Is it because their mothers are all chambermaids? (Pause.) Oh, of course I don't mean you..."

Queen Victoria on her Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone: "Mr. Gladstone speaks to me as if I were a public meeting."

"A theater director to a young Katharine Hepburn - "Don't just do something, stand there!"

AHHHHHH so Carrie Fisher stole shit too.....this was attributed to her.

Dorothy Parker on Tallulah Bankhead: "She is the proverbial good time that was had by all."

Constance Bennett, after seeing Marilyn Monroe in 'Niagara': "Now there's a broad with a great future behind her."

We had hoped that Star would leave with dignity. Star chose another way.

If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.

Dorothy Parker

Response from Dennis Healey, a British Labour Party cabinet minister, on being attacked in Parliament by the Conservative Geoffrey Howe in 1978: "Like being savaged by a dead sheep" .

On Dame Edna Everage's show guest Jeffrey Archer ended a story with 'well, you have to laugh at yourself'. Dame Edna,' 'Well, Jeffrey if you don't laugh at yourself, you're missing the joke of the century!'

John Gielgud was having lunch with Dame Athene Seyler. 'And how are you, John?' 'Oh, my dear, absolutely terrible! I'm doing nothing but wine and dine the old bags of stage and screen! Monday, Sybil Thorndike; Tuesday, Faye Compton; Wednesday, Athene Seyler......but of course I don't mean you, Athene!'

The story behind the name of Kenneth Williams' Acid Drops collection is good: a vicar was sharing his train compartment with a group of actresses appearing in a pantomime of Dick Whittington. He was sharing his bag of acid drops (bitter/sweet English candies) with them as he asked questions of the pretty actresses. 'So which one of you takes the part of the Cat'?, ;Which one of you takes the role of the sweetheart?' etc until he got to 'And which one of you takes Dick?' to which one of the actresses replied 'We all do dear, but not for acid drops'.

r194 Poor, befogged vicars, where would we be without them? Thanks for including the explanation of the title, I re-read the book occasionally, and it is always entertaining and mordantly funny. I'm sorry Williams(a good friend to DL fave Maggie Smith) is no longer with us, but there's a large selection of videos where he shines.

It's 1978, and Joan Crawford is still dead and deserves every minute of it.

Waylon Flowers (speaking through Madame)

Dry insults can be aimed at places as well as people. One that's always makes me chuckle is Maggie Trudeau's comment about 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa where she lived as the unhappy wife of Prime-minister Pierre Trudeau: it's the crown jewel of the Canadian penitentiary system.

My apologies, that r194 should be r104.

A handful of supporting actors in a Noel Coward play were squabbling over the order of their billing on the show's posters. Several were upset that one was demanding the special distinction of having her name appear last, inside a box with the word "and" above it Coward finally declared that if he heard one more complaint about billing, the offending performer's name would appear on the posters inside a box with the word "but" above it.

More, more!

Gene Kelly character's response to a woman offering a place to stay in town...."Madam, I had a nice clean place to stay....and I left it, to come here."

[italic]Wizard of Oz[/italic] munchkin: I'd like to fuck you, little girl!

Judy Garland: If you do and I find out about it . . .

from the 1984 film of A PASSAGE TO INDIA--Dr. Aziz and Mrs. Moore are discussing the wife of the town's main official, Mrs. Turton, who is a snobbish bitch:

DR. AZIZ: (Trying to be nice) "Oh, Mrs. Turton! She is a very nice woman."

MRS. MOORE: (hesitating) "Perhaps... when one knows her better..."

Oh, what fun to revisit these hoary chestnuts!

Me at RTD's place: 'OH, look at that cool sculpture! And it's an award of some kind, too!" ... in my most midwestern accent I could dredge up.

Please welcome to the stage: WHOREY CHESTNUTS

r116, that would be a good name for a Backstreet Boys tribute band...

We do need to credit Gielgud with "I'll alert the media". I often use "the novelty of you has worn off". I work with actors who I often remind that their attitude is disproportionate to their talent.

^He didn’t write “Arthur.”

I've read that catty comment Gielgud made about Bergman but I wonder if it's an urban legend oft repeated. I just read an article about Bergman where Gielgud is quoted as follows: " She was without conceit. She acted in about five different languages and didn't really know any of them."

A dig probably, but a different kind. He directed her in The Constant Wife in London and on Broadway.

Coward was right about Kier Dullea. He faded quickly.