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Mathematics Goes to the Movies

by Burkard Polster and Marty Ross

28:20
Guy Haines (Farley Grainger) is in a train carriage, reading a newspaper. At the other end of the carriage, a drunk (John Brown) is singing to himself. It turns out that he is Professor Collins, a mathematics professor who has just given a “speech”. He stops singing and addresses Haines.
COLLINS: What’s your opinion?
HAINES: Well you’ll never make the Metropolitan.
COLLINS: The name’s Collins. On sabbatical, Deleware Tech. Glad to meet ya. I just made a speech in New York, on integration. In differential calculus a function is given and a differential is obtained. Do you understand?
HAINES: Yes, I understand.
COLLINS (astonished): You do?
Collins goes back to his singing.

36:58
Ann Morton (Ruth Roman) is Haines’s lover. She and her family inform Haines that his wife has been murdered. They discuss his alibi, that he was on a train at the time of the murder, and that he talked to someone there.
HAINES: His name was…Co-Co….Collins. He’s a professor.
SENATOR MORTON(Leo G. Carroll): Harvard?
HAINES: Delaware Tech.
Senator Morton looks disgusted.

40:31
Haines tells his story to the police, and meets Professor Collins at the police station, but Professor Collins can’t remember having met him.
HAINES (to Collins): …and calculus. You were going over a speech you’d made.

DISCUSSION: As far as it goes, the mathematics Professor Collins describes is correct, though it sounds too elementary for a “speech” from a visiting professor, and a speech is more likely to be referred to as a colloquium or lecture. Professor Collin’s astonishment at Haines’s understanding is very appropriate (and very funny).