MovieChat Forums > The Time of Their Lives (1946) Discussion > What is Gale Sondergaard saying at seanc...

What is Gale Sondergaard saying at seance?

posted 17 years ago by bgh48
13 replies | jump to latest

This is one of my childhood favorite films, and it still holds up and I still love it. However, I can never remember what the housekeeper intones during the seance. It's a jumble of pseudo-esoteric supernatural phrases, something like, "agnostico lazum badar...! This seance scene is actually very eerie, especially when "Emily" is channeling Melody's lover Tom. And I must put in a good word about Ann Gillis in the small but charming role of Nora, Costello's feisty Irish girlfriend. She's very good. And Majorie Reynolds is always appealing and likeable! Now, back to that seance!!

[–] smurky 16 years ago

About 25 or 30 years ago, I met Gale Sondergaard at a nostalgia convention in NYC, she was one of the celebrity guests...and someone on the autograph line asked her the very question you are asking. I hate to tell you this, but Miss Sondergaard herself has no idea what she was saying! In fact, she didn't even remember the scene! She didn't know what the guy was tallking about! Oh well, there goes the mistique....

[–] contradad-1 15 years ago

One of the words Emily uses sounds like "catarrh"
.....which is a fancy medical term for coughing up phlegm!

[–] greenbudgie (2355) a year ago

It is strange how fans think that actors can remember things like that off the cuff. An actor has to remember so many lines during their career that they forget most of the things they have done. They're just concentrating on their latest part.

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] dmnemaine 13 years ago

Here's what she says:
"Analog dos mirabus peeray catar nimbus agnosticus lazum badar".

My guess is that it's some kind of phony Latin-sounding nonsense words that are meant to sound like someting out of an acient book of spells.

[–] lroy77 12 years ago

Mumbo jumbo.

Remember people, it is very wrong to have a REAL seance.

The actress has eyes like a cat.

[–] dmnemaine 12 years ago

Funny that you should mention Sondergaard's eyes being cat-like. She actually played a cat in the Shirley Temple film, "The Bluebird" from 1940.

[–] 12 years ago

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[–] dmnemaine 12 years ago

She would have made a purrrrrfect Catwoman. (Sorry couldn't resist that.) She was also nearly the Wicked Witch Of The West in the Wizard of Oz, but declined the role after she saw what she looked like after the makeup tests.

[–] caladon 12 years ago

In sci-fi productions, when they're spouting off futuristic technical jargon, they tend to refer to it in the scripts as: techno-babble. As good a name as any I suppose. Just words that are picked to fit the occasion.

[–] vpilutis 10 years ago

In THE BLACK CAT Boris Karloff is the leader of devil worshippers here on this page is what he said and the translation.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024894/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv

Gale might have said some like the above

See some stars here
http://www.vbphoto.biz/

[–] scribe1270 12 years ago

I think it was a Mantra. Wikipedia says they are "a sound, syllable, word, or group of words that is considered capable of "creating transformation" and that seems to describe what she was supposed to be saying. Some people believe they aid in meditation and certainly a medium is said to go into a meditative trance while performing so it makes sense that Ms. Sondegaard would say something that sounded mystical while trying to reach the ghosts. I remember her best in The Mark of Zorro opposite Tyrone Powers, and had forgotten that she was the 'medium' in this classic comedy.

[–] EJF 8 years ago

It's a combination of some actual Latin words and (mostly) mumbo-jumbo.