Harry O (TV Series)

Elegy for a Cop (1975)

David Janssen: Harry Orwell

Quotes 

• [first lines] 

  Harry Orwell : [voiceover narration]  My friend Manny Quinlan called in sick, took the day off, and came north to Los Angeles on family business. Two hours and 10 minutes by the legal speed limit. My friend Manny was a legal man. Behind him was his wife, his children, his job, his mother and his father, his brothers, and his sisters. My friend Manny was a family man. Very few people knew where Manny was going. Only the people who had to know. His mother and his brother Jesus knew what he was trying to do, but they didn't know where he was. His wife knew he was in Los Angeles, but she didn't know where in Los Angeles. My friend Manny was alone.

• Harry Orwell : I came to pay my last respects. I was trying to avoid private grief in a public place. I got there after the funeral was over.

• Harry Orwell : My mother is dead, so's my father. And I never had a sister. Even Sherlock Holmes had a brother, but not me. All I have are my friends. If you take one of them away from me, you steal a piece of my life.

• Harry Orwell : The address and the name on the envelope were mine. The handwriting was Manny Quinlan's. Throw in the bullet holes and you've got a kind of last will and testament and I was the executor. The executor is the one who pays off debts and settles accounts, which is about the way you would have to describe a private detective whose friend is murdered.

• [last lines] 

  Harry Orwell : Every once in a while somebody will come in here and you'll see that you like 'em right away, 'cause they're decent and just good people. So give 'em a drink out of this bottle. Doesn't matter whether they have money or not. Tell 'em the drink's on Manny Quinlan. Maybe they'll remember him. And if you feel like it, tell them he was a friend of mine.

  Leon - Bartender : What'll I do when the bottle runs out?

  Harry Orwell : Nothing. Nobody lives forever.

• Harry Orwell : Any honest policeman knows that if he's shot and killed in another city where he's not supposed to be and his body is found with $2,400 on it, then there has to be a scandal. And people have to question his honesty. But he can't answer for himself when he's dead. He knows that.

• Harry Orwell : $2,400 is a funny amount of money. It's $200 a month; $50 a week for a year; like a cheap and rotten policeman on a weekly payroll. Not a big crook, just a little crook without self respect.

• Harry Orwell : I don't have information. If I want information I go to you. What I have is hunches.

  Lt. K.C. Trench : But I don't trust hunches.

  Harry Orwell : Well then what do you want me to share them with you for?

  Lt. K.C. Trench : That's why I always have mixed feelings.

  Harry Orwell : Put it on my gravestone, like in those old New England cemeteries. Stranger, pass not by for beneath this stone lies a man on whom judgment was passed with mixed feelings.