Wealth & Money Quote by John Barrymore

Barrymore lands this line like a wink over a bruised rib: the world keeps trying to claim him, and he’s too seasoned to pretend it’s tragic. The joke pivots on “attachments,” a word that toggles between legal seizure (writs, liens, the grim paperwork of debt) and the literal add-ons of a household appliance. That double-meaning is doing real work. It turns a humiliating reality - creditors circling, law enforcement looming - into a piece of stage business you can picture: Barrymore as a glamorous object being accessorized, not a man being repossessed.

The specific intent is self-defense through punchline. By making the threat interchangeable (“sheriff” or “finance company”), he flattens two different faces of authority into the same nuisance, an interchangeable chorus of people demanding payment and obedience. It’s not just money; it’s control. The subtext is a celebrity’s resentment at being treated like inventory. When he compares himself to a vacuum cleaner, he’s admitting he’s been reduced to a consumer durable: bought, financed, and, if necessary, taken back.

Context matters because Barrymore’s public image was already a cocktail of prestige and self-immolation: Shakespearean grandeur shadowed by heavy drinking, messy finances, and tabloid-ready decline. The line plays to that mythology. It’s the kind of gallows humor that keeps the legend intact even as the bills arrive. Instead of begging for sympathy, he sells you a laugh - and keeps his dignity by controlling the narrative for one more beat.