BBC Play of the Month (TV Series)

The Millionairess (1972)

Maggie Smith: Epifania

Quotes 

• Epifania : He has never been married, I have. And I tell you in the very happiest marriages not a day passes without a thousand moments of unfaithfulness. You begin by thinking you have one husband. You find you have a dozen. There is the creature you hate and despise and are tied to for life and before breakfast is over the fool says something nice and becomes the man you admire and love. And between these extremes there are a thousand degrees with a different man and woman at each of them. A wife is all women to one man. She is everything that is devilish, the thorn in his side. The jealous termagant, the detective dogging all his movements, the nagger, the scolder, the worrier. He has only to tell her an affectionate lie and she becomes his comfort, his helper. At best his greatest treasure, at worst his troublesome but beloved child. All wives are all these women in one. All husbands, all these men in one. What do the unmarried know of this infinitely dangerous, heart-tearing life of adventure we call marriage.

• Epifania : [Julius Sagamore has just given her a prescription for poison so that she can commit suicide]  You seem tro take my death rather cooly, Mr. Sagamore.

  Julius Sagamore : I'm used to it.

  Epifania : You mean to say you have so many clients driven to despair that you keep a precription for them?

  Julius Sagamore : I do. It's infallible.

  Epifania : And you're sure they've all died painlessly and instantaneously?

  Julius Sagamore : No, they're all alive.

  Epifania : Alive! The prescription's a harmless fraud!

  Julius Sagamore : No, it's a deadly poison but they don't take it.

  Epifania : Why?

  Julius Sagamore : I don't know, but they never do.

• Adrian Blenderbland : She is the meanest person in England.

  Epifania : That is why I also am the richest.

• Epifania : Are you married?

  Dr. Ahmed el Kabir : I am married to Science; one wife is enough for me... though by my religion I am allowed four.

  Epifania : Four! What do you mean?

  Dr. Ahmed el Kabir : I am what you call a Mohammedan.

  Epifania : Well, you have to be content with two wives if you marry me.

  Dr. Ahmed el Kabir : Is there any question of that between us?

  Epifania : Yes! I want to marry *you*.

  Dr. Ahmed el Kabir : Nothing doing, lady! Science is my bride!

  Epifania : You can have Science; I shan't be jealous of her.

• Epifania : Oh, bother Allah! What did you do with it?

  [referring to the 150 pounds she gave him] 

  Dr. Ahmed el Kabir : Allah is never bothered.

• Epifania : No man can resist a ten-pound note if you crackle it under his nose.