I saw the notification from Jamie Lee Curtis several days ago that her sister, Kelly, had died Saturday. The first thing I thought of—after (of course) thinking, “that’s too bad”—was the line quoted in today’s post title and spoken by Kelly Lee Curtis in the 1983 film, Trading Places, starring Eddie Murphy, Dan Ackroyd, and Kelly’s sister, Jamie Lee Curtis.

Here’s the scene Kelly appears in. You may remember it. Dan Ackroyd’s down-and-out character shows up at his tennis club, desperately hoping his friends will lend assistance after a catastrophic series of events—orchestrated entirely by the ultra-wealthy Duke brothers around a $1 wager in the name of science—has stripped him of his job, his home, his finances, and his self-worth. The “stepped on the ball” line comes at the very end of this YouTube clip.

Kelly Curtis nailed it! Her delivery of the line is exquisitely vapid and banal, with precisely the level of intelligence one expects from a movie character named “Muffy.”

I laughed during my original viewing of the film, noted the line and remembered it, then rarely ever thought of it again apart from periodic December rewatches (because Trading Places is a stealth Christmas movie in the vein of Die Hard and Catch Me if You Can 🙂 ).

Until . . . fast forward 25+ years. I was sitting at the dining room table doing some grading one afternoon while my kids watched High School Musical 2 in the living room—when suddenly my consciousness registered hearing the words “and she stepped on the ball.”

What???

The quality of this video is not great, and you can barely catch the line, but “stepped on the ball” shows up around the 23-second mark, in the small space between the cut away from the piano playing and the “I did not” finger-pointing denial. What a fun little Easter egg for whoever made that movie to have hidden for movie buffs like me! Such a great use of homage and cinematic shorthand to establish: Look, it’s those empty-headed, country-club snobs again!

After hearing that Trading Places line again in such an unexpected place, I felt compelled look it up, just to see if it was a “thing.”

And, indeed, it certainly is a thing.

Here’s the original line (with one additional word), from the musical Auntie Mame, starring Rosalind Russell (1958), delivered by a WASP-y, debutante-type young woman whose idea of “ghastly” is hilariously, nonplussingly overblown. Just perfect 🙂

Apparently this line also can be found in an episode of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, a show I was not familiar with, although now that I’ve checked it out in connection with writing this post, I have to say looks really good! A (very) brief clip of that show’s incorporation of the line is below.

Obviously the significance of Kelly Lee Curtis’s professional and personal life extends far beyond her blip of a performance in Trading Places, so my post today is pretty trivial.

Still, I thought it was worth noting how beautifully her delivery of that line amplified the original and imortalized a new trope. She was the thread connecting past and present. Without her, the Auntie Mame moment would surely have been forgotten, and this fun throughline in cinematic storytelling would not exist.