Original subtitles

(Route 66 theme song by Nelson Riddle)

- Is it Kaplan I'm looking for, or myself?

And if I find him, will I tell him or will he tell me?

Has he run away only for himself or for all of us

and what he's done?

Is this a retreat or an advance?

I don't know.

I only know I have to find him.

No Kaplan there, that makes four places so far.

Where has he gone?

Where would he go?

Think back when all you knew of his world was what

Anna told you, and Lorre.

I don't know, Lorre, he looks pretty tough.

- The holster stand is adjustable.

I don't know, Daddy invented Mr. Top Gun.

- What else did he invent?

- Have you got a coin?

Put the coin in and Mr. Top Gun will give you the order.

- You mean he talks?

- As fast as you can, draw and fire.

If he's faster, or if you miss, he'll insult you.

- People really need this?

- Well I think it's the most important invention

since the steam engine.

Just think of all the pent up hostilities it releases.

And nobody gets hurt.

(coin clinks)

- [Machine] I'm the marshal of this here town,

and I'm gonna referee this shootout.

To load your gun just push the muzzle down on

one of the corks in front of you.

You cock the gun when you draw.

Ready?

Alright, go.

(gun bangs)

- [Mr. Top Gun] Alright you green horned dude,

I told ya I was the fastest draw.

Gun reloaded?

You ready to try again?

- This town ain't big enough for the both of us.

- [Machine] Draw.

(gun bangs)

- [Mr. Top Gun] You miserable pole cat.

You're not as fast as you thought you were, are you?

- So I'll leave.

- [Mr. Top Gun] Reload, you have one more shot.

- [Machine] Draw.

(gun bangs)

- [Mr. Top Gun] Oh, he got me.

I had a little dust in my eyes.

- Who said it's a man's world?

You know, I have a feeling I'd hate your father.

- Oh, I'm so glad you'd like to meet him.

- Good evening, Lorre.

- Hi, Tommy.

Oh, Tommy, this is Tod. - Hi.

- How are you, sir?

- Hey are you in a betting mood?

- Oh dear, oh dear.

Is five dollars too rich?

- I'll hold the money.

We are going to double this in ten minutes.

Come on Tod, give me five.

- Okay, come on.

- Come on.

- Now remember, just talking to him doesn't count.

He's got to actually step outside the lab, okay?

- Or let me come in.

(Tommy laughs)

- You don't stand much of a chance, son.

Elephants don't lay eggs, you know.

- I have a surprise for you. (laughs)

Do you realize, Daddy, you could have a heart attack

or starve to death, or maybe have rickets,

and nobody would ever notice?

- [Larry] Well let's imagine for example I were to

fall on the floor, a victim of a raging attack of rickets.

If that were to happen a series of alarms would sound

in Mr. Anderson's office, and at the same moment

in the dispensary.

Both Mr. Anderson and nurse Estherbrook have keys.

- Don't you care about my surprise?

- [Larry] Very deeply.

- Well why don't you come out and meet him?

- [Larry] Well I can see him from here.

- Oh, Daddy.

- [Larry] How do you do, son?

- How do you do, sir?

- [Larry] Fine looking young man.

What do you do, son?

- At the moment I'm trying to figure out how you can

see through a door.

- [Larry] Oh, just look above the speaker.

Yes, you look fine, son.

What else do you do?

- As of two days ago I work for your wife.

- [Larry] You seem quite young to be a dontist.

- Did he say a dontist? - Yes. (laughing)

- I'm not actually a dontist.

I'm in the orientation section, pre-treatment interviews

and post-treatment treatment, you know?

- [Larry] No, I don't know.

- Mother says he has a great future in child engineering.

- [Larry] Nevertheless, bring him home for dinner

some night your mother's not accepting an award.

(loud explosion and glass shatters)

- Daddy?

Daddy, Daddy, speak to me.

Daddy, daddy!

- [Larry] Bones seem intact.

I don't seem to be missing anything.

- Daddy, good night.

- No Sir, elephants don't lay eggs.

- Good morning Dr. Martin, when will you need it?

- Good morning, Johnny, oh about 12:30 I think.

- Another speech?

- No, just lunch alone today.

Am I looking forward to it.

- Oh, good morning Mrs. Bradley, good morning, Mark.

- Do you have a toothache?

- Oh, nobody has a toothache.

- I got a toothache.

- You only think you have a toothache.

But you mustn't think about it any more.

We're going to have fun, aren't we?

(laughs) Mr. Stiles is waiting for you, Mrs. Bradley.

Good to have you back, doctor.

- Thank you, Nona.

Would you call Larson's and have them frame that for me?

- Which wall?

- The same wall, the trophy wall of course.

- Well I'm afraid last week's plaque from

Young Matrons for Sibling Improvement

finished that wall, doctor.

- Well ask Mr. Larson to start a new wall then.

Nona, did my husband phone?

- No, doctor.

- Would you get him for me, please?

(rotary phone dialing)

- Tape recorder.

Do you like to dream, Mark?

- I like cartoons.

- [Tod] What kind?

- Chipmunks.

- We have a fine selection of cartoons we run

while a child is having his T-E-E-T-H F-I-L-L-E-D.

- Takes all the barbarism out of it, doesn't it?

- Mm.

I'll bet you like music.

- How much?

- Well the way you're rocking, fine sense of rhythm.

- Mashed potato.

- Mashed potato?

- New twist song.

- Oh, well we'll order several sides.

We like to play the child's favorite music

before he gets into the C-H-A-I-R.

Now Mrs. Bradley, there are several things only

you can answer, I'd like to run over possible early traumas,

familial relationships, sibling rivalry,

sleep habits, enuresis.

- He's never been sick a day in his life.

Lean something new every day, don't we?

No, he was trained very early, stopped when he was two.

- Hm, is that a fact?

- But Larry, I'm giving the party for you.

Lorre in love? Heavens no.

What young man?

Oh, Tod.

Yes, as a matter of fact she's bringing him to the

party tonight that you'd better be sure an attend.

Alright.

Just try not to blow yourself to pieces before tonight.

Yes, eight o'clock.

Goodbye, dear.

Nona, bring in the diary and the charts and the tape

for the three days I've been gone.

- Anna darling, come being authority.

My husband is agreeing with Max Mayberry,

who agrees with Phillip Wylie that women

are destroying America.

It's the thing, a revival of of the Momism indictment.

I want you to tell him your secret.

How a woman can have a happy marriage

and a successful career.

Actually, it's the only reason I brought him tonight,

so you could convince him.

He has a mono mania on the subject.

If you can't straighten him out, into the pool he goes.

The deep end, I have him heavily insured.

- Well he may be right, you know.

I remember something that a prominent woman said,

I'm glad that I'm not a man because then I

should be obliged to marry a woman.

- Anna, you are literally handing him the atom bomb.

(laughter)

- Hi, come here.

Come with me, I want you to meet some

moderately exciting people.

- Where's the bar?

- Tod, I'm serious.

- So am I, where's the bar?

Last week we had dinner at the beach

and I said to the waiter two salads please

and you said both with Roquefort, just like that,

straight from the hip.

Lorre, I don't like Roquefort.

- Well why didn't you say something?

I would have.

- Mm-Hm.

Come on, let's have a drink.

- Oh honey, you go ahead I'll wait for Daddy.

As soon as I set him on the right track, believe me,

this party is so important to Mother.

She's trying to expose him to more people, open him up.

He's so locked up in himself.

Go ahead, get your drink, I'll find you.

- Martini.

- Two, real dusty.

- Here (laughs).

- Thank you.

Yale?

- It shows?

- 59, 60?

- 60, my third and last year I didn't finish.

- Nobody finishes.

We end, but we never finish.

- My name's Tod Stiles.

- How do you like the party, Tod Stiles?

- I like the dusty martinis.

- How would you like to buy the whole shebang?

You know what a party like this costs?

Liquor, 750 dollars.

Food, say 500.

Help, 250 dollars.

That guitar player, what does a guitar player earn?

Well, let's say 50 dollars.

There are two boys out front parking cars,

20 dollars apiece.

That's precisely $1590.

I used to teach at Yale.

Cybernetics among other things.

$1590 is almost two months salary.

- Dust or gold dust?

- Anna Martin was a dental assistant in the town.

A little underweight but not at all bad looking.

She earned $33.62 a week.

Now she earns a hundred thousand dollars a year.

What is it worth to you?

- The hundred thousand?

- No, the party.

A hundred dollars?

Fifty?

Ten?

- Throw in a gift wrap?

- I wouldn't buy it either.

Have you heard any of the conversations?

Of course if you could see your way clear to buy the party

I'd take you around and introduce you as the host

and the inventor of Kaplan's Law.

That's what they're really celebrating tonight.

Dr. Martin and his wife, Dr. Martin,

have been celebrating it every April

for the past three years, ever since he left Yale and

got into machines.

Ever since she became whatever it is she's become.

You'd like Kaplan.

- That depends on his law.

- One part science, nine parts hope.

Man, states Kaplan, is and always will be

superior to the machine.

- Well I should have had Kaplan with me last night.

I got shot down by a machine.

- But machines cannot make that creative leap.

No matter how hard we try, we can't make them think.

They cannot produce anything new, man can.

- What does Kaplan have to say about man versus women?

- On that issue Kaplan, alas, is silent.

If you see Dr. Martin, that is the major Dr. Martin,

would you please tell her I was here?

- Whom shall I say?

- Kaplan.

- Tod.

Will you run me over to the factory?

Mother and I are really burned up about Daddy.

He still hasn't arrived.

There's no answer in the lab, and the door is locked.

Daddy was here and Daddy has gone.

We had a lovely dusty drink together.

In the morning he was gone, and I was looking for him.

Had he run away for himself or for all men?

Was he running toward Kaplan and from Martin?

Was this a retreat or an advance?

- Thank you.

- You may take the plates away if you would, Martha.

How about a game of gin, you used to like that?

- No, it's only fun three-handed.

- Well wasn't your young man going to stop by?

He could play the third hand.

- No, he said he was going to try down toward San Diego.

- How about a movie, something light?

- Good night, Mother.

- Lorre.

Do you blame me for this?

- This is not a contest, Mother.

And I don't intend to cast the deciding vote.

So please don't start campaigning.

- You do blame me, don't you?

- Last night at the party, a boy I like very much

the boy who works for you, Tod Stiles,

he said to me,

"I hate Roquefort dressing."

In all this time, without ever asking him,

at dinners he's taken me out to,

I've been ordering Roquefort dressing for his salad.

Mother, how many dressings

on how many salads

at how many dinners have we decided for Daddy

without ever once asking him?

- Like there's ten guys between me and the title.

All the same if I do say so myself,

I'm a pretty classy little fighter.

Now she comes on the scene.

She comes on like a lamb, but after the wedding ring goes on

I know I got myself a tiger.

You got no ambition she says, Tommy, you're a bag of oats.

Get in there and bard some for baby.

I says look, honey, to me you know it's just a job.

Am I supposed to get my kicks caving guys in?

Hiya kid.

So I wake up one morning.

It was very clear to me I married myself an animal trainer.

- Some walnuts, raisins?

- I'd just about given up on you.

- Why didn't you?

- I guess I want to try to understand.

- So do we all.

So we come here from some enchantress fleeing.

Sit down.

- I says to her honey, why, huh?

What's with you?

What is this get in there Tommy and kill them, huh?

Well you know how those things work.

When you're ready to ask yourself a question like that

you're already halfway to the answer, right?

Huh, right?

So I figured it out for myself.

Every time I clobber a guy she thinks it's for her, huh?

It gives her a big charge.

Yeah.

So I nail her with it.

She says yeah, yeah it makes me feel high.

It makes me love you.

I say to her honey if I ever stop hitting people

would you love me?

Just don't try stopping, she says.

Yeah. (laughs)

So here I am.

- You know what a model husband is?

That's a man who wears a white flag for a suit

and every day he negotiates peace.

And always he winds up in the same position.

Unconditional surrender.

I'm a model husband.

In addition I'm a movie producer.

But lately, nobody comes to see my pictures.

Of course when I think about some of my pictures,

I don't blame them.

My wife, may I tell you about my wife?

Listen, she's a good woman.

She raised our children.

You can eat off our floors.

And she never looked at another man, but

when I married her she was a cashier in a

second run theater in Buffalo.

Today she's an expert on box office figures.

Do you want to know what Moon on the Caribbean grossed

first run, opening week, Detroit?

She'll tell you, to the penny.

I say to her Marian, I'm doing the same pictures I did

20 years ago and they don't work any more.

Let's go make a picture in Europe that

nobody will understand except you and me.

And she gives me that look, you know that look?

And she says who understands you anyway?

Europe?

Listen Arnie, your last six pictures lost two studios

one million three hundred thousand

so you just better get hold of yourself and come through

with a smash.

You think I want to sit around here and chew raisins?

I want to go back out there.

But I can't live with a cash register.

Maybe I should go into TV.

Those TV guys, nobody bothers them.

- I'm not married.

- A man can lose his wallet and people will

knock themselves out helping him try to find it.

He can lose his arm and they'll cry for him.

He can even lose his wife and they'll click their tongue.

But a man losing himself passes as quietly as a

marshmallow into a cup of hot chocolate.

This young man knows my wife.

Where could anyone find a lovelier woman?

You, Ames, you run from brutality and good for you.

You, Gunter, you run from vulgarity.

But what do I run from?

Because my wife makes twice as much money as I do?

Not at all, I'm proud of her.

Though I was happier with her when she was a dentist

instead of a dontist.

One day, early in our marriage, I bought a little

pencil sketch in a store that sold used books.

I paid fifty cents for it.

I went to the five and ten and got a frame.

Rushed home with it and hung it in my den.

My den.

Anna promptly moved it into the bathroom.

I promptly moved it back.

But the next day when I came home from work

there it was in the bathroom.

I never moved it again.

I like to think I saw in this small incident

a portent of inevitable war.

And all these years I've been postponing and postponing

a counter-attack.

That's why I came here Tod Stiles, friend of my daughter,

employee of my wife,

to decide whether to counter-attack,

whatever the cost,

or surrender whatever the price.

- I think you've decided, doctor.

- Meet me in my laboratory at three o'clock

tomorrow afternoon.

This then faced us with two problems.

First to create a vending machine which in

one form or another was not already on the market.

Second, to create a machine which would offer a service

or commodity so deeply needed that the public would be

willing to pay not ten cents, not a quarter, but

as much as five dollars.

A machine which meets a psychological need so deep,

so great, that five dollars will seem like nothing.

First I asked myself a question.

Lawrence Martin, what was the most enjoyable period

in your life?

And I remember the most wonderful, the most tender time

was when I was courting my wife.

It was then I felt truly alive, most like a man.

Gentlemen I decided my problem was,

the company's problem was,

how can we turn this tender time,

this lovely period, in the life

of all young men, into hard cash.

My thinking over the past two months has led me to believe

that courting a girl today has become an increasingly

fearful, difficult, almost impossible task

for many young men in our society.

And so it follows, there's a vast untapped market

among men today for a machine which would help them

court women.

Also, there's a vast untapped market among women themselves

who might, in time, or for all we know overnight,

might come to prefer the machine to the man.

I asked Tommy to go out in the street,

pick out any young unmarried couple at random

that might come along.

But they will serve to demonstrate both the potential

and the purpose of this love machine.

- The love machine?

- [Larry] Well you could hardly call it Project X.

(audience chatters)

- [Man] Well look at this thing.

(audience chattering)

- Come right up here.

What is your name, my dear?

- Janie, Janie Sanders.

- Well, Janie.

(electronic noises and beeping)

Will you tell it to the machine?

Now ordinarily, except on this pilot model

for the purposes of demonstration, the machine will

have a tiny compartment to one side

shaped probably like a miniature vine-covered cottage

into which the patron will step.

Certain basic information is fed to the machine

by the patron, then--

Oh, Janie, will you hold it just a little closer?

And just answer the questions asked by the machine.

You may whisper, some of them are personal.

- Nobody gets personal with my girl.

- Well wouldn't you like us to land on the moon

before the Russians?

- Well yeah, but...

- Well stop impeding the forward march of science.

(electronic noises and beeping)

Now the machine knows the best way to court Janie Sanders.

The quickest, most sure-fire way to her heart.

- I don't care who gets to the moon first.

Nobody gets personal with Janie.

(violin music)

(hissing steam)

- There are 16 different perfume combinations.

Now based on the confidential information told to the

love machine by Janie, things she would never

tell her boyfriend, the machine makes the ideal

selection for Janie.

(violin music continues)

- Well Larry, I don't quite know what to say.

It is personal, isn't it?

- It's intended to be personal.

- Come on, let's cut out.

- Get lost.

- You see with the love machine, we can completely

eliminate man and give women the self sufficiency

they say they want.

- What are you guys, a bunch of nuts?

- [Tommy] Hey, you, come here, come here.

Drop the can, now stop it.

Down I say.

- Gentlemen.

- Martin, I'm going to have you blackballed in

every laboratory from coast to coast.

- I'd appreciate that Mr. Anderson.

(men talking)

Well.

- I just happened to be passing by

thanks to a crash course in Spanish,

two road maps, three tanks of gas and a

burning case of curiosity.

- Well I'm always glad to see a visitor from the

planet of psycho-dontia.

- You know it took me a couple of weeks to find you.

That's quite a sign.

- I bet the extra fifty cents caught your eye.

- Oh, yeah.

The fact that one chair is 35 dollars and

six chairs are a thousand dollars, that--

- A thousand and fifty cents, please.

- That didn't stop me a minute.

What's the fifty cents for?

- Well that's what I had to pay Serafini

for painting the sign.

The thousand dollars is pure profit.

- Do you actually think that somebody's going to

spend 35 dollars for one chair and a thousand for six?

- Well it was fun to make one chair.

It'd be a bore to make six.

- Well, what if somebody buys this one?

- It's a perfect business. (laughs)

- I didn't ask for this job but

between your wife and Lorre I got nominated

and chose to run.

Your wife squared things with the factory about that

love machine, and your name's clear now

and you can come home any time.

- What do you see, Tod Stiles,

when you look at this chair I carved?

- Good workmanship, good design.

- What would Kaplan see if he looked at it?

- He'd see that it was carved by a man's hands

out of living wood.

He'd see it was made in the light of the sun

not under a fluorescent tube.

And he'd see it was one man's declaration of independence.

- You and Kaplan, son.

I'm sorry you couldn't have spent more time together.

You two would get along just fine.

Tell them,

tell them I miss them.

Tell them I love them.

But don't get them all stirred up and sentimental.

Tell them the truth.

I may not come back.

- But doctor you're just not gonna sit here in this chair

for the rest of your life.

- That's tomorrow's problem, and tomorrow is untouchable.

I'll tell you this, Kaplan's friend of the moment.

I'm happy sitting here in my one chair

not knowing if today is Tuesday or Friday.

Knowing only that it's morning, that's all you can tell.

For some reasons, I do not know or care about, I'm happy.

- I'll tell them, doctor.

(car engine starts)

- Here's Mr. Stiles now, just in time.

The children have been asking for you.

This morning is their final pre-treatment treatment

before going into the C-H-A-I-R.

- You mean before they go into the chair?

- Today all four children are scheduled to have their

T-E-E-T-H- F-I-L-L-E-D.

What she's trying to tell you is that in a few minutes

you're gonna go inside and sit in a dentist's chair

and have your teeth filled.

- No!

- Well Mrs. Bradley what are you raising,

a man or an ostrich?

Now who's gonna show him where the sand is when

you're not around?

Now Mark, just take it easy it's not gonna hurt that much.

And what if it does hurt a little?

It's time you started to learn how to take it

in your stride.

- Tod Stiles, if you can possibly explain your actions

I'll listen, otherwise you're fired.

- You asked me to give your husband a message.

Well I told him and the answer is no thanks.

- Well, what's that got to do with terrifying

these poor children?

- Well I'll just tell you, Doctor Martin.

I stood here watching that little boy rocking

surrounded by well-meaning females

insulating him from L-I-F-E.

Maneuvering him, deciding for him, lying to him.

And I said to myself if he's not lucky,

if somebody doesn't tell him now, maybe in 30 years

he'll wind up sitting in a pueblo carving chairs

and laughing out loud with joy to be on his own again.

Now you can fire me, anybody can quit.

- Tod?

You did say Larry was carving chairs?

- One, one chair.

- Tell me, is it a good chair?

I want to buy a chair, please.

You do sell chairs, don't you?

- Well I only have--

- Oh darling. (crying)

Larry, remember the print that's been hanging in

the bathroom all these years?

It's back in your den now.

- Oh.

- Daddy?

Oh good, I need it so bad. (crying)

- Senor?

How would you like to buy a chair?

(Route 66 theme by Nelson Riddle)

- [Announcer] This has been a Screen Gems

film presentation from Columbia Pictures,

Herbert B. Leonard, executive producer.