Wagon Train (TV Series)

The Grover Allen Story (1964)

Burgess Meredith: Grover Allen

Quotes 

• Grover Allen : I don't even need to check my watch any more. I know exactly what he's going to do. At exactly 7.15 he's going to unlock the first door

  [with the sign that says: Positively no Admittance] 

  Grover Allen : , at 7.16 he will unlock the cage door. At 7.17 exactly he will unlock the steel door

  [with the sign: Danger! High Explosives! Keep Out!] 

  Grover Allen : . And he will spy exactly one hour hoping that somebody will make a mistake.

• Grover Allen : We have to think about the future. Now, Jeff is gonna grow up in his own new world, not the old tired world that I know. We have to help him stand on his own two feet and not be afraid of the future.

  Della : Are you talking about me or Jeff?

  Grover Allen : Both of you maybe. You worry too much about how it might have been if Johnny was here. But Johnny went off to war, and Johnny is never gonna come m arching home again.

• Della : Now is that what you call living? Breaking another spinster's poor heart?

  Grover Allen : Break nothing! I'm just gonna discover a few smiles where never a smile was before!

• Grover Allen : [in the words of Beaver Smith]  I got a combination you can't beat. I got gumption and I got a smile.

• Grover Allen : I'm running down like an old clock with a weak spring.

• Grover Allen : Murder? It was justice. It was justice for all those people that Duskin had tortured, in misery and pain, and humiliation, all those years.. I saw what he did to the women, I saw what he did to the kids, little kids. And I put up with it myself, 60 hours a week, 52 weeks a year for nearly 40 years. Since I was his

  [Jeff's] 

  Grover Allen : age. Then he fired me. And he was going to fire the rest of the poor, old men because I wanted a minute or two of his precious time. So, for the sake of all mankind, if I had to do it all over again, I would do it a lot sooner! And exactly the same way!

• Jeff : [after a longwinded adventure story with Beaver Smith as the hero]  Grandpa, don't you just miss the gaslights burning at night, or the pedlars working in the street, or maybe the trolleycars ringing?

  Grover Allen : No, sir, atta boy. I say that when you can see the smoke from your neighbour's chimney, it's time to move on.