The Main Thing is Not to Let Go of the Vine

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The secret of a happy life is to accept change gracefully. – James Stewart

An actor is successful when he can create a character with the minimum of gesture and words. That is what I strive for. – Donald Sutherland

I never allow myself to be bored, because boredom is aging. If you live in the past you grow old, and dull, and dusty. It’s very nice, of course, to be young and beautiful; but there are other qualities, thank God. – Dame Marie Tempest

I remember when I was three and unknown – Shirley Temple

A confirmed bachelor is a guy who believes in wine, women, and so long. I’m a confirmed bachelor. – John Travolta

The main thing is not to let go of the vine. – Johnny Weissmuller

It seems the brighter you are, the deeper the hole you get into. – Tuesday Weld

You can pick out actors by the glazed look that comes into their eyes when the conversation wanders away from themselves. – Michael Wilding

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The Pleasure Stops - But the Self Contempt Stays

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I hate the word “star.” Do you know what “star” spells backwards? “Rats.”

I’m going to buy a castle and live like any other GI. – Elvis Presley

This isn’t exactly a stable business. It’s like trying to stand up in a canoe with your pants down. – Cliff Robertson

An actor is not quite a human being – but then who is? – George Sanders

Dear World, I am leaving because I’m bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool – good luck. – George Sanders

Sometimes the photographers would pose me in a low-necked nightgown and tell me to bend down and pick up the pails. They were not shooting the pails. – Jane Russell

After a while the pleasure stops, but the self-contempt stays. – George C. Scott

All I want, all any of the real pros want, is a decent script, a competent cast, and a good director. The rest is a crock of shit. – Barbara Stanwyck

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A Cross Between Two Pounds of Halibut and an Explosion in an Od Cothes Closet

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Three by Maria Montez
My pectures are getting nakeder and nakeder.

My legs are so good pipple theenk they must be American.

Each time I look in mirror, I vant to scream; I am so beautiful.

“Oh, if only I was a star!” the girls used to say. I never said that. I said, “When I’m a star - ” – Colleen Moore

Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age. – Jeanne Moreau

To age well it helps to have two things: fame and money. – Jeanne Moreau

I have often thought it might very well appear in my obituary or on my tombstone or somewhere that, “Here lies Paul Newman who died a complete failure because his eyes suddenly turned brown.” – Paul Newman

I once described my face as a cross between two pounds of halibut and an explosion in an old clothes closet. – David Niven

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Creatures with Two Legs and Eight Hands

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If you don’t have an orgasm daily, you become very nervous, very uptight. I do anyway. – Linda Lovelace

In Hungary acting is a profession. In America it’s a decision. – Bela Lugosi

Three by Jane Mansfield
I love candlelight, music, artistic things, squirrels, and rabbits, my Great Dane, and my pink jaguar.

I got married, and we had a baby nine months and ten seconds later.

Men are those creatures with two legs and eight hands.

One of the good things about getting older is that you find you’re more interesting than most of the people you meet. – Lee Marvin

Listen, I got three expressions: looking left, looking right, and looking straight ahead. – Robert Mitchum

I’ve never been an actor – and I’ve got seventy movies to prove it. – Robert Mitchum

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It’s All Hard Work, Aspirins, and Usually Purgatives

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To be a star is to own the world and all the people in it. After a taste of stardom, everything else is poverty. – Hedy Lamarr

I guess I’m the guy who always went to bed with the girl – even if it was only after the movie had finished. – Burt Lancaster

One thinks of a film star as a kind of gaily colored bird, forever giving itself a final preening under the bright lights. Whereas it’s all hard work, aspirins, and usually purgatives. – Elsa Lancaster

I never liked Scarlett. I knew it was a marvelous part, but I never cared for her. – Vivien Leigh

My behavior has been impeccable; I’ve been unconscious for the past six months. – Oscar Levant

I drink only to make other people interesting. – Oscar Levant

People either dislike me or detest me. – Oscar Levant

Everything you see I owe to spaghetti. – Sophia Loren

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Frankenstein and My Fair Lady Are the Same Story!

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I don’t really know who I am. Quite possibly, I do not exist at all. – Alex Guinness

Some of my best moments are spent with me. – Laurence Harvey

I’m leaving this turmoil for the tranquility of war. – Sterling Hayden

Jewellery takes peoples minds off your wrinkles. – Sonja Henie

I found the greatest sleeping pill in the world; this script. – William Holden

Frankenstein and My Fair Lady are really the same story. – William Holden

I need a script to order a sandwich. – Rock Hudson

If you’re fourteen and reading this, take solace: you probably look a lot better than you think. And nobody looks like Miss January. – Margot Kidder (about her appearance in Playboy)

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Never Dally with a Scandinavian

Mia Farrow via last.fm

You don’t need nudity. A real actress should have her clothes on. Besides, you should leave something to the imagination. – Anita Ekberg

If I weren’t doing what I’m doing now, the actress thing, the star business, if you want to call it that, whatever it is, I’d be in an asylum. – Mia Farrow

The rest of my life will be devoted to women and litigation. – Errol Flynn

Son, it isn’t what they say about you – it’s what they whisper about you. – Errol Flynn

Deep down, I’m pretty superficial. – Ava Gardner

I’ve made fifty-five movies. I’d say forty of them were dreadful, and the four I made in Hollywood were probably the most dreadful of all. – Vittorio Gasman

Never marry or even dally with a Scandinavian – it’s the latitude. – Hermione Gingold

I got all the schooling an actress needs. That is, I learned to write enough to sign contracts. – Hermione Gingold

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I’m not mean, I’m Scottish

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Girls have an unfair advantage over men. If they can’t get what they want by being smart, they can get it by being dumb. – Yul Brynner

I’m not mean, I’m Scottish. – Sean Connery

But in the end, all we hope to reach is a high standard of compromise. – Joseph Cotton

I hope that in a few years I’ll have enough security so I can drive around in an old battered station wagon if I want to. – Tony Curtis

All men are Arabs. – Catherine Deneuve

Virtue isn’t photogenic. – Kirk Douglas

Be nice to people on your way up because you meet ‘em on your way down. – Jimmy Durante

There’s nothing wrong with glamorizing the gun. – Clint Eastwood

I Suck My Thumb - a Lot

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How does it feel to be a star? I suck my thumb a lot. – Julie Andrews

Success is the result of a collective hallucination stimulated by the artist. – Charles Aznavour

Many a man owes his success to his first wife – and his second wife to his success. – Jim Backus

I’m going back to New York, where an over-sized bosom doesn’t take priority over reading your lines. – Anne Bankcroft

Best to have failure happen early. It wakes up the phoenix bird in you. – Anne Baxter

Happiness is good health a- and a bad memory. – Ingrid Bergman

I can say “whiz the” or I can say “with zee.” But “with the” is impossible! – Charles Boyer

I’m not one of my favorite actors – Charles Bronson

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I’ve had Six Juleps, and I’m Not Even Sober

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Tallulah Bankhead (1902-1968)

Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.

It’s the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time.

I’m a single-standard girl. I found no surprises in the Kinsey Report.

Daddy warned me about drinking and men, but he never said anything about women and drugs.

I’ve had six juleps, and I’m not even sober.

When I was sixteen, dahling, I had a shoebox full of cocaine.

About Tallulah – A day away from Tallulah is like a month in the country. – Howard Dietz

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Putting Skin on Baloney

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Where you spend more than you make, on things you don’t need to impress people you don’t like. – Ken Murray

Hollywood impresses me as being ten million dollars worth of intricate and highly ingenious machinery functioning elaborately to put skin on baloney. – George Jean Nathan

Hollywood – the land of yes-men and acqui-yes girls. –

If all those sweet young things present were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be at all surprised. – Dorothy Parker

Standing in the midst of a gay Hollywood party the other evening, an ancient Oriental proverb that goes like this flashed through my mind. “Dignity begins where boasting ends.” – Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr.

Hollywood is a town where they place you under contract instead of observation. –

A place where they will shoot too many pictures and not enough actors. – Walter Winchell

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It’s Still a Bewilderness

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Darkly Comical Hollywood Quotes

In 1940, I had my choice between Hitler and Hollywood, and I preferred Hollywood. Just a little. – Rene Clair

Hollywood is no place for a woman to find a husband, especially her own. – Denise Darcel

The only place in the world where a man can get stabbed in the back while climbing a ladder. – William Faulkner

They’ve great respect for the dead in Hollywood – but none for the living. – Errol Flynn

Hollywood is a place where your best friend will plunge a knife in your back and then call the police to tell them that you are carrying a concealed weapon. – George Frasier

Hollywood may be thickly populated, but to me it’s still a bewilderness. – Sir Cedric Hardwicke

Hollywood – where everyone’s a genius until he’s lost his job. – Erskine Johnson

If I ever wrote a book about Hollywood and its inner workings, I know what I would call it – Insincere City. – Mervyn LeRoy

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And Still Have Enough Room for Three Caraway Seeds and a Producer's Heart

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California is a great place – if you happen to be an orange. Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for stars. – Fred Allen

Hollywood is like Picasso’s bedroom. – Candace Bergen

I believe that God felt sorry for actors so He created Hollywood to give them a place in the sun and a swimming pool. – Sir Cedric Hardwicke

Hollywood is a sewer – with service from the Ritz Carlton. – Wilson Mizner

I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They’re beautiful. Everybody’s plastic. No sound at all but the popping of the California poppies. – Adolph Zukor

You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a fruit fly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer’s heart. – Fred Allen

To survive in Hollywood you need: the ambition of a Latin-American revolutionary; the ego of a grand opera tenor; and the physical stamina of a cow pony. – Billie Burke

Los Angeles is a city with the personality of a paper cup. – Raymond Chandler

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The Phenomena of the Soul

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The phenomena on the screen are the phenomena of the soul. – Carl Hauptman

Movies won’t be an art until the materials are as inexpensive as paper and pencil. – Jean Cocteau

Edison is the new Gutenberg. He has invented the new printing. The state that realizes this may lead the soul of America, day after tomorrow. – Vachel Lindsay

When the spirit of the people is lower than at any other time during this depression, it is a splendid thing that for just fifteen cents an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his troubles. – Franklin Delano Roosevelt

What a good idea of mine it was to have taken possession of the film industry on behalf of the Reich several years ago! – Joseph Goebbels

The cinema is for us the most important instrument of all the arts. – Nikolai Lenin

The cinema in the hands of the Soviet power represents a great and priceless force. –Joseph Stalin

Cinema was and remains one of the major battlefields of the ideological struggle raging in the world today. – Nikolai V. Podgorny

The Chinese call movies “Electric Shadows.” – Jonas Mekas

The coming of the Motion Picture was as important as that of the printing press. – William Randolph Hearst

On the spiritual plane, the cinema is an invention every whit as impotant as, on the material plane, the freeing of nuclear energy. – Jean Debrix

It Has No Commercial Future Whatsoever - - -

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I consider that the greatest mission of the motion picture is first to make people happy – to bring more joy and cheer and wholesome good will into this world of ours. And God knows we need it. – Thomas A. Edison

Young man, you should be grateful since, although my invention is not for sale, it would undoubtedly ruin you. It can be exploited for a certain time as a scientific curiosity, but, apart from that, it has no commercial future whatsoever. – Augustine Lumiere

The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself. – Will Rogers

Cinema should make you forget you are sitting in the theater. – Roman Polanski

The camera is a little bit like the knife of a surgeon. – Jean Renoir

The eye hears, the ear sees. – Norman McLaren

In cinema, we must select everything for the camera according to the richness of its power to reveal. – Satyajit Ray

Kinodrama is an opium for the public. – Vertov

Hollywood: A Cruel Town and then there are the Critics

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Two of the cruelest, most primitive punishments our town deals out to those who fall from favor are the empty mail-box and the silent telephone. – Hedda Hopper

If debased art is kitsch, perhaps kitsch redeemed by honest vulgarity may become art. – Pauline Kael

Over the years, the movies have furnished America with its nearest equivalent to Europe’s royalty. – Arthur Knight

There are snake dances, sacrifices, private swimming baths, a Holy Mountain. The Mountain, by the way, has the privilege of belching when it is dissatisfied, something that the well-bred critic must not do. – C.A. Lejeune

Over in Hollywood they almost made a great picture, but they caught it in time. – Wilson Mizner

Some of the greatest love affairs I’ve known involved one actor, unassisted. – Wilson Mizner

Ava Gardner about Rex Reed:
Rex Reed is either at you feet or at your throat.

It is the business of art to expand consciousness, while it is the business of mass communication to reduce it. – Richard Schickel

Even the Butler was Poor

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Speaking of screen stars, there’s a mosquito. – Franklin Pierce Adams

There’s an old story about a Hollywood school child (in the days when the children of movie stars went to schools in Hollywood) who was instructed to write an essay on poverty. “Once upon a time,” this moppet wrote, “there was a very poor family. The father was poor, and the mother was poor. The butler was poor; the maid was poor; the chauffer was poor, and the gardeners were poor.” – Alex Barris

American motion pictures are written by the half-educated for the half-witted. – St. John Ervine

Benito Mussolini was paid two dollars a day in Rome for playing an extra in Sam Goldwyn’s The Eternal City; Leon Trotsky made three dollars a day (in 1915) when he played in Rasputin at Fort Lee, New Jersey; the Duchess of Windsor, then known as Wallis Simpson, is reported to have drawn down five dollars from extra work in many pictures in Hollywood. – Leo Guild

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when there’s something wrong with the story – my butt begins to itch.

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Harry Cohn – 1891-1958 – The second most despised producer in Hollywood (Louis B Mayer was the most despised)

I don’t have ulcers; I give them.

Seventy-five per cent of the ideas that people try to sell me are no good. If I turn down every idea at the outset, that makes me right seventy-five per cent of the time. That’s not a bad average.

She’s got talent and personality. Give me two years, and I’ll make her an overnight star.

If you want to send a message, use Western Union.

I always know when there’s something wrong with the story – my butt begins to itch.

Herman J. Mankiewicz about Harry Cohn:
Imagine – the whole world wired to Harry Cohn’s ass!

Norma Kransna about Harry Cohn:
I wish to be cremated when I die and my ashes to be thrown in Harry Cohn’s face.

Nevair, nevair, will I make a talkie

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Nevair, nevair, will I make a talkie. I zink zey are tairibble. – Dolores Del Rio

So long as a woman has twinkles in her eyes, no man notices whether she has wrinkles under them. – Dolores Del Rio

If ants are such busy workers, how come they find time to go to all the picnics? – Marie Dressler

We didn’t have any censors in those days, but we did have our own bosoms and our own eyelashes – and we never took ourselves seriously. – Nita Naldi

My epitaph should read, “She paid all her bills.
– Gloria Swanson

I Knew Doris Day Before she was a Virgin

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Raymond Chandler about Alan Ladd:
Alan Ladd is hard, bitter and occasionally charming, but he is, after all, a small boy’s idea of a tough guy.

I’ve been around so long, I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin. – Groucho Marx

Billy Graham about Jayne Mansfield:
This country knows more about Jayne’s statistics than the Second Commandment.

You survive bad pictures. Look at Rin-Tin-Tin. – Robert Mitchum

Hal Kanter about Omar Sharif
Was that Omar Sharif riding the camel down Ventura last night? It was the one with the bumper sticker that says “Golda Meir is a shiksa.”

Louella Parsons about James Stewart:
James Stewart is the most nearly normal of all Hollywood stars.

Buster Crabbe about Johnny Weissmuller:
Johnny Weissmuller would simply open his mouth, and the studio had a recording of three men, one a soprano, the other a baritone, and the third a hog caller, who yelled together. And that was the great Tarzan trademark.

George Masters about Raquel Welch:
Raquel Welch is silicone from the knees up.

Why it looks like my Uncle Oscar! – Margaret Herrick, secretary to the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, on seeing the distinctive Award for the first time.

Being a censor is like being a whore; everyone wants to know how you got into the business. – Jack Vizzard, movie watchdog

Irving Thalberg, producer, to a friend about a mutual “blacklisted” friend: There is no such thing as a blacklist – but I’ll see he gets off it.

Dalton Trumbo, screenwriter, who was one of the “Hollywood Ten.”
The right to express ideas, good ideas, bad ideas, wicked ideas, crazy ideas, impossible ideas – this is the most precious right the individual can have.

And Wipe Your Hands on his Canary Bird

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The director is the artist of the cinema.

A Cast of directors and their quotes:

Second chances are as rare in Hollywood as ski tows. – Mervyn Le Roy

If Shakespeare were writing Hamlet for me, I’d make him cut a lot of those speaches – too long. – Mervyn Le Roy

Master Bastard, if you please! – Mervyn Le Roy

I can honestly say that I never made a picture I didn’t like. – Marvin Le Roy

I think the true work of an artist can only be accomplished after he is fifty, when he has enriched his life with accumulated experiences. – Kenji Mizoguchi

You call this a script? Give me a couple of $5,000-a-week writers and I’ll write it myself. – Joe Pasternak

I believe that an influence ceases when the person receiving it becomes aware of it. – Alain Renais

You can’t go around the theaters handing out cards saying, “It isn’t my fault.” You go on to the next one. – John Sturges

The illusion of reality is what I look for, not reality itself. -–Josef Von Sternberg

No, not ten years ahead. I was twenty years ahead of my time. – Josef Von Sternberg

You can seduce a man’s wife here, attack his daughter, and wipe your hands on his canary bird; if you don’t like his movie, you’re dead. – Josef Von Sternberg

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The director is the artist of the cinema.

A Cast of directors and their quotes;

My greatest mistake was ever to have compromised. My greatest achievement has been to survive. – Abel Gance

A film is the world in an hour and a half. – Jean-luc Godard

Directors are people too short to be actors. – Josh greenfeld

I love to copy – myself. – Howard Hawks

I demand of a film what many North Americans demand of drugs. – Alexandro Jodorowsky

I wanted to make a film which would be entertaining enough to eat. – Akira Kurosawa

Directors are often blamed: “Why did you do this? And why did you do that?” But nobody ever says: “Even a director has to eat. – Fritz Lang

I make films the way I make love. I think it is a mistake for a director to trust someone else with the camera work. It’s as though Van Gogh might have given his brush to someone else. – Claude Lelouch

Staring at Life through Fields of Mayonaise

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The director is the artist of the cinema.

A Cast of directors and their quotes;

I stare at life though fields of mayonaise. – Mel Brooks

Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said. – Mel Brooks

After forty, we are responsible for our own faces. – Jean Cocteau

Cinemascope? The next time I write a poem, I shall use a larger piece of paper. – Jean Cocteau

Editing is the most important point in a picture; it is the director, really writing the picture with his editing. – Costa-Gavras

Give me a good script, and I’ll be a hundred times better as a director. – George Cukor

God exists. But his name is chance. – Alexander De Sica

The essential is sufficient. – Carl Dreyer

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The Brillo of Hollywood

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The director is the artist of the cinema.

Billy Wilder

I have a vast and terrible desire not to bore.
I do not believe in wasting money. On the other hand, nobody is going to go and see a picture simply because it came in under budget.

Make the subtleties obvious.

I’d worship the ground you walked on if only you lived in a better neighborhood. Keep it out of focus. I want to win the foreign-picture award.

About Billy Wilder – “Beneath Billy Wilder’s aggressive gruff exterior is pure Brillo.” – Harry Kurmitz

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Cue the Red Sea!

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The director is the artist of the cinema.

Cecil B. DeMille (1881-1959)

The public is always right.

The way to make a film is to begin with an earthquake and work up to a climax.

Cue the Red Sea!

The Bible has been a bestseller for centuries. Why should I let two thousand years of publicity go to waste?

When the banks came into the picture, troubles came in with them. When we operated on our own money, there was joy in the industry. When we operated on Wall Street money, there was grief in the industry.

My next activity is in the hands of the Lord—and Paramount.

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