What better number could you buy? It""s a sure winner"), he is persuaded to purchase a minuscule part of a ticket for a drawing hree weeks off: "All right.He held up one of the valuable relics that he had discovered - an old Indian funerary urn - before the cave-in occurred.Gittes"" off-screen assistant, Walsh, thinks that Mulwray is obsessed with water after visiting three reservoirs a day earlier: "The guy""s got water on the brain." This farce was loosely based on George S.Kaufman""s hit musical play, and developed from a screenplay by Morrie Ryskind.The central event was a party scheduled at the sprawling Long Island estate mansion of wealthy dowager Mrs." She was struggling to put her life back together, as she told her mother on the phone.There were some bogus scare moments in Alice""s apartment - during her shower, a hang-up phone call, a banging noise, and a screeching cat that lept through her kitchen window.