- Eva Perón: I want to tell the people of Argentina - I've decided I should decline all the honors and titles you've pressed me to take. For I'm contented - let me simply go on as the woman who brings her people to the heart of Perón. Don't cry for me, Argentina. The truth is I shall not leave you. Though it may get harder for you to see me, I'm Argentina, and always will be.
- Ché: Sing, you fools, but you got it wrong! Enjoy your prayers because you haven't got long. Your queen is dead. Your king is through. She's not coming back to you. Show business kept us all alive since 17 October 1945 but the star has gone, the glamour's worn thin. That's a pretty bad state for a state to be in. Instead of government we had a stage. Instead of ideas, a prima donna's rage! Instead of help, we were given a crowd. She didn't say much but she said it loud.
- Eva Perón: What's new, Buenos Aires? I'm new! I wanna say I'm just a little stuck on you - you'll be on me too! I get out here Buenos Aires! Stand back - you ought to know what you're gonna get in me: Just a little touch of star quality!
- Ché: One always picks the easy fight. One praises fools, one smothers light. One shifts from left to right. Politics - the art of the possible.
- Army: Perón is a fool breaking every taboo, installing the girl in the army HQ. And she's an actress! The last straw. Her only good parts are between her thighs. She should stare at the ceiling, not reach for the skies, or she could be his last whore. The evidence suggests... she has other interests. If it's her whose using him... he's exceptionally dim. Bitch!
- Juan Perón: Dice are rolling - the knives are out. Would-be presidents are all around, I don't say they mean harm, but they'd each give an arm... to see us six feet underground.
- Eva Perón: It doesn't matter what those morons say. Our nations leaders are a feeble crew. There's only twenty of them anyway. What is twenty next to millions who are looking to you? All you have to do is sit and wait, keeping out of everybody's way. We'll... you'll be handed power on a plate when the ones who matter have their say, and with chaos installed... you can "reluctantly" agree to be called.
- Juan Perón: There again, we could be foolish not to quit while we're ahead. For distance lends enchantment, and that is why... all exiles are distinguished. More important - they're not dead. I could find job satisfaction in Paraguay.
- Eva Perón: This is crazy defeatist talk! Why commit political suicide? There's no call for any action at all... when you have unions on your side.
- Ché: High flying, adored. Did you believe in your wildest moments all this would be yours, that you'd become the lady of them all? Were there stars in your eyes when you crawled in at night - from the bars, from the sidewalks, from the gutter theatrical? Don't look down, it's a long, long way to fall.
- Well-to-do People: Thus all fairy stories end. Only an actress would pretend. Affairs of state are her latest play, eight shows a week, two matinees. My, how the worm begins to turn. When will the chorus girl ever learn? My, how the worm begins to turn. When will the chorus girl ever learn?
- Eva Perón: The chorus girl hasn't learned the lines you'd like to hear. She won't go scrambling over the backs of the poor to be accepted by making donations just large enough to the correct charity. She won't be president of your wonderful societies of philanthropy. Even if you asked her to be - as you should have asked her to be.
- Ché: And the money kept rolling out in all directions. To the poor, to the weak, to the destitute of all complexions. Now, cynics claim a little of the cash has gone astray. But that's not the point, my friend. When the money keeps rolling out you don't keep books! You can tell you've done well by the happy grateful looks. Accountants only slow things down, figures get in the way. Never been a lady loved as much as Eva Perón!
- Ché: [to Eva] Tell me, before I waltz out of your life, before turning my back on the past - forgive my impertinent behavior, but how long do you think this pantomime can last? Tell me, before I ride off in the sunset, there's one thing I never got clear: How can you claim you're our savior when those who oppose you are stepped on or cut up or simply disappear?
- Ché: Tell me before I seek worthier pastures and thereby restore self-esteem, how can you be so short-sighted to look never further than this week or next week to have no impossible dream?
- Eva Perón: Allow me to help you slink off to the sidelines and mark your adieu with three cheers! But first, tell me who'd be delighted if I said I'd take on the world's greatest problems - from war to pollution, no hope of solution, even if I lived for one hundred years?
- Ché: Oh, what a circus, oh, what a show! Argentina has gone to town over the death of an actress called Eva Peron. We've all gone crazy, mourning all day and mourning all night, falling over ourselves to get all of the misery right. Oh, what an exit! That's how to go. When they're ringing your curtain down, demand to be buried like Eva Peron. It's quite a sunset, and good for the country in a roundabout way. We've made the front page of all the world's papers today.
- Ché: Now Eva Perón had every disadvantage you need if you're going to succeed. No money, no cash, no father, no bright lights. There was nowhere she'd been at the age of fifteen, as this tango singer found out. Agustin Magaldi - who has the distinction of being the first man to be of use to Eva Duarte.
- [Eva now has a long line of former lovers]
- Eva's Lovers: This is a club I should never have joined! Someone has made us look fools. Argentine men call the sexual shots - someone has altered the rules!
- Ché: Yeah, just one shell, and governments fall like flies! Kapow! Die! They stumble and fall! Bye-bye - backs to the wall! Aim high - we're having a ball! The tank and bullet rule as democracy dies!
- [Eva replaces Juan Perón's sixteen-year-old mistress]
- Eva Perón: [to Perón's mistress] Hello, and goodbye. I've just unemployed you. You can go back to school. You've had a good run - I'm sure he enjoyed you. Don't act sad or surprised. Let's be friends, civilized. Come on, little one. Don't sit there like a dummy. The day you knew would arrive is here. You'll survive. So move, funny face!
- [beat]
- Eva Perón: I like your conversation. You've a catchy turn of phrase. You're obviously going through some adolescent phase.
- [Perón's mistress leaves]
- Perón's Mistress: So what happens now? So what happens now? Where am I going to?
- Juan Perón: You'll get by, you always have before.
- Perón's Mistress: Where am I going to?
- Eva Perón: Don't ask any more.
- Eva's Dressers: Eyes! Hair! Mouth! Figure! Dress! Voice! Style! Movement! Hands! Magic! Rings! Glamour! Face! Diamonds! Excitement! Image!
- Eva Perón: I came from the people. They need to adore me, so Christian Dior me from my head to my toes. I need to be dazzling - I want to be rainbow high! They must have excitement - and so must I!
- Eva Perón: The actress hasn't learned the lines you'd like to hear. She won't join your clubs. She won't dance in your halls. She won't help the hungry once a month at your tambolas. She'll simply take control... as you disappear.
- Ché: Forgive my intrusion, but fine as those sentiments sound... little has changed for us peasants down here on the ground. I hate to sound childish, ungrateful, I don't like to moan. But do you know represent anyone's cause but your own?
- Eva Perón: Everything done will be justified by my foundation.
- Eva Perón: [learning she is dying] Where do we go from here? This isn't where we intended to be. We had it all, you believed in me, I believed in you. Certainties disappear. What do we do for our dream to survive? How do we keep all our passions alive as we used to do? Deep in my heart I'm concealing things that I'm longing to say. Scared to confess what I'm feeling - frightened you'll slip away. You must love me. You must love me.
- Eva Perón: The actress hasn't learned the lines you'd like to hear. She's sad for her country. Sad to be defeated... by her own weak body.
- Eva Perón: The choice was mine and mine completely. I could have any prize that I desired. I could burn with the spendor of the brightest fire, or else - or else, I could choose time. Remember... I was very young then. And a year was forever and a day. So what use could fifty, sixty, seventy be? I saw the lights, and I was on my way. And how I lived. How they shone! But how soon the lights were gone.
- [dies]
- Eva Perón: High flying adored, that's good to hear but unimportant. My story's quite usual, local girl makes good, weds famous man! I was slap in the right place at the perfect time. Filled a gap, I was lucky, but one thing I'll say for me, no-one else can fill it like I can!
- Eva Perón: Did you hear that? They called me a whore! They actually called me a whore!
- Prince Fuspoli: But, Signora Perón, it's an easy mistake. I'm still called an admiral, though I gave up the sea long ago.
- Cinema Manager: It is my sad duty to inform you that Eva Peron, spiritual leader of the nation, entered immortality this evening.
- Ché: [last lines]
- Ché: [as he moves through the crowd while Eva's body lies in state] The choice was yours and no one else's./ You can cry for a body in despair./ Hang your head because she is no longer there/ To shine, or dazzle, or betray. How she lived, how she shone/ But how soon the lights were gone.
- Eva's Dressers: Eyes, hair, face, image/ All must be preserved/ Still life displayed forever/ No less than she deserved.
- [Ché makes his way back into the crowd, but not before he and Perón make one brief, wordless moment of eye contact]
- Eva Perón: Perón has resigned from the army, and this we avow - the Descamisados are those he is marching with now. He supports you for he loves you, understands you, is one of you! If not... how could he love me?
- Well-to-do People: Things have reached a pretty pass, when someone pretty lower class can be accepted and admired...
- Aristo Woman: But our privileged class is dead. Look who they're calling for now.
- Ché: And now she wants to be vice-president.
- Perón's Generals: That was the over-the-top unacceptable suggestion. We didn't approve, but we couldn't prevent the games of the wife of the president. But to give her intentions encouragement - she's out of her depth and out of the question.
- Juan Perón: But, on the other hand - she's all they have. She's a diamond in their dull gray lives - and that's the hardest kind of stone - it usually survives. And when you think about it, can you recall the last time they loved anyone at all? She's not a bauble you can brush aside. She's been out doing what we just talked about - example: Gave us back our businesses, got the English out. And when you think about it, well, why not do one or two of the things we promised to? But on the other hand, she's slowing down. She's lost a little of that magic drive. But I would not advise those critics present to derive any satisfaction from her fading star. She's the one whose kept us where we are.
- [leaves]
- Perón's Generals: She's the one... who's kept *you* where *you* are.
- Eva Perón: Have I said too much? There's nothing more I can think of to say to you. But all you have to do is look at me to know that every word is true.
- Eva Perón: Why are you at my side? How can I be any use to you now? Give me a chance and I'll let you see how nothing has changed.
- Eva Perón: And as for fortune, and as for fame... I never invited them in, though it seemed to the world they were all I desired.
- Ché: Okay, she couldn't act but she had the right friends, and we all know a career depends on knowing the right fella to be stellar!
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