Anna Christie
(1930)
In director Clarence Brown's early talkie - an over-rated
and stagy drama -
noted as the film in which silent star Greta Garbo spoke her
first line of dialogue: "Gimme a viskey..." :
- 20 year-old alcoholic ex-prostitute Anna "Christie" Christofferson
(or Gustafson) (24 year-old Greta Garbo, Oscar-nominated), a world-weary
and ailing, man-hating Swedish-American, returned home to New York
after a long absence (including being raised since the age of 5
on a Minnesota farm by abusive relatives and working in a St. Paul
brothel for two years) to locate her estranged and embittered barge
captain father Chris Christofferson (or Gustafson) (George F. Marion),
the alcoholic skipper of a coal barge
- in the famed, immortalized
scene that was about sixteen minutes into the film, she made her
grand entrance into a NY Battery waterfront saloon from a foggy
street. The bar's waiter held open the door to the Ladies Entrance
as Anna struggled in, lugging an old, weighty suitcase. She shuffled
over to a wooden table across from where her father's gruff boozing
companion Marthy Owens (Marie Dressler in a comeback role) sat,
and dropped her suitcase onto the floor
- after Anna took a seat in a chair, she crouched
down and finally delivered her famous opening lines with
a deep and husky, heavily-accented voice: "Gimme
a whiskey, ginger ale on the side. And don't be stingy, baby!"
- she found a sympathetic ear from Marthy (who saw
in Anna an earlier version of herself) and also fell in love with
strong and brawny Scottish seaman Matt Burke (Charles Bickford),
who initially had an idealized and romanticized view of her. Anna was forced to seek redemption and forgiveness
after telling him and her father about her sordid past
Garbo's First Words as Anna Christie: "Gimme a whiskey"