Sunday, November 20, 2016

Can I Quote You On That?

No big shakes here. Just a rather random assortment of celebrity quotes about other celebrities (or perhaps themselves.) Some of them kind, some of them not. I always enjoy hearing what one star has to say about another and hope one or more of these proves interesting to you! I tried to dig up rare photos whenever possible.
Claire Trevor once went back to see Judith Anderson after a performance of Medea. She had been truly bowled over and she said, "I simply can't find the words to tell you how superb you were." Judith Anderson just said, "Try." - ROCK HUDSON
She is the most uninhibited, sweet actress that I have ever met. She is quite unspoiled by success. Whenever she sees me, she says, "Oliver, you're so funny." She's the only person who's ever said that to me in my life. I'll sit there spilling my beer and she'll say, "You're so funny." - OLIVER REED on ANN-MARGRET
To understand those days you must consider that people believed what they saw on the screen. Nobody had destroyed the grand illusion. Audiences thought the stars were the way they saw them. Why, women kicked my photographs as they went into the theatres where my pictures were playing, and once on the streets of New York a woman called the police because her child spoke to me. - THEDA BARA
All I can say is that when I'm trying to play serious love scenes with her, she's positioning her bottom for the best angle shots. - STEPHEN BOYD on BRIGITTE BARDOT
The most beautiful face of any man who went before the camera - LILLIAN GISH on RICHARD BARTHELMESS
One of the greatest bodies I've ever worked with. But besides that she is rather the opposite, because she is so damned intelligent. It's a strange combination, almost a double personality. - EDITH HEAD on JACQUELINE BISSET
I guess I thought it would be a good film [The Cobweb, 1955] - I had Richard Widmark and Charles Boyer as my co-stars. One as my husband, one as my lover. As it happens Widmark hated me and Boyer was a drunk. It was a disaster. - GLORIA GRAHAME
Actors like him are good but on the whole I do not enjoy actors who seek to commune with their armpits, so to speak - GREER GARSON on MARLON BRANDO
You're doing it the wrong way round, my boy. You're a star and you don't know how to act. - SIR CEDRIC HARDWICKE to RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN
When I look into his face I can see everything he is thinking. But when I look into my own face I see absolutely nothing. I know what I'm thinking, but it doesn't show. - GRACE KELLY on GARY COOPER
I knew Joan during those days. Worked with her and was often at parties at her home; pool parties in the afternoon, when the children were there, and I never saw or heard anything that would give me a clue that the stories were true that the daughter wrote. I think whatever is truth about them has been exaggerated so that it makes her more of a monster than she was. - HENRY FONDA on JOAN CRAWFORD
I even found Bette Davis attractive, when I played Maximilian to her Carlotta [in Juarez, 1939] and, brilliant actress though she is, surely nobody but a mother could have loved Bette Davis at the height of her career. - BRIAN AHERNE
That face that she shows the world - smiling, only talking good, happy, tuned into God - as far as I'm concerned, that's just a mask. I haven't a clue as to what's underneath. Doris is just about the remotest person I know. KIRK DOUGLAS on DORIS DAY
Kirk was civil to me and that's about all. But then Kirk never makes much of an effort toward anyone else. He's pretty wrapped up in himself. The film I made with him, Young Man With a Horn (1953), was one of the few utterly joyless experiences I had in films.
I don't mean to speak ill of the dead, but he was a prick. Pardon my French. He was selfish and petulant, and believed his own press releases. On the set, he'd upstage and actor and step on his lines. Arrogant. But let him alone and he was brilliant. Nobody could touch him. - ROCK HUDSON on JAMES DEAN
I wasn't sure if I was going to encounter a teen idol or a professional, but I'm happy to report that Matt is a professional. He's very dedicated, very conscientious. He is very concerned about being a good actor and I think he's going to be around for a long time. - RICHARD CRENNA on MATT DILLON
I never met anyone with such a demoniacal drive to succeed as an actress - ESTELLE PARSONS on FAYE DUNAWAY
Trying to describe Mia is like trying to describe dust in a shaft of sunlight. There are all those particles. Her conversation is clotted. - RODDY MCDOWALL on MIA FARROW
He was a tough guy. Make one wrong move and he'd never speak to you again. - PHIL HARRIS on BING CROSBY
The reason I drink is because when I'm sober I think I'm Eddie Fisher - DEAN MARTIN on EDDIE FISHER

9 comments:

  1. Good stuff here. From the down right bitchy to the poignant. These are a nice little window into who got along and who didn't...or at least what they really thought of one another.

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  2. Interesting quotes and none I had ever heard before. I had to think really hard about what Ann and Oliver Reed did together in the 60's, but it was the 70's, "Tommy" and a really nice thing for him to say about someone I adore.
    Love the dirty pic of Stephen Boyd.
    OUCH! Roddy on Mia-but just what I thought she would be like.
    This was super fun.

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  3. Hi Scooter! Thanks. I'm glad you enjoyed this one.

    Gingerguy, I'm glad I could dig up some less common quotes. Like I said, not earth-shaking, but also hopefully not the same old ones we're used to. I'll be doing more of these in the future.

    BTW, I didn't like it in the post, but if you click the tag/label: celebrity quotes, you'll find older posts I did that are more snarky than this one! I got those out of a book called The 367 Meanest Things Ever Said (or something close to that... don't have it at hand to check the title!)

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  4. Marvelous and entertaining. I've heard a few of these before, the Judith Anderson quote never gets old and the Doris/Kirk snipe fest, but good quotes are always fun no matter if you've heard them before or not.

    I can see why way back in the early silents that the public's perception would be so closely aligned with the star's onscreen persona as Theda Bara mentioned. But the crazy thing is that in this day and age of over-information many people still believe that the people on the screen are those characters. It's amusing in a way but also scary and rather sad.

    Love the Gloria Grahame quote. The thing about it is though is that I've always read that Richard Widmark was one of the nicest easiest to get along with actors in film and that Gloria while not "difficult" was on the odd side and often remote from her coworkers. So perhaps he was put off by that. The Cobweb is one crazy mess of a movie though, it HAD to read better on the page than what ended up on film!

    Gotta love Greer Garson's directness and that is a perfect picture of the young beautiful Marlon to accompany the quote!

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  5. Joel, so many of us (myself included!) have a tendency to take what's handed to us by arts or the media and accept it at face value. Fanciful people like myself have to try more often to see the truth behind the facade, but the facade is often so much more appealing & desirable than the reality. I hate when my illusions are shattered. LOL Gloria Grahame, by the way, had a fair amount of personal issues. Let's just say that when she did a movie about a mental institution, it was surprising to find her playing a doctor's wife and not one of the patients! Ha! And I do believe I recall hearing of her causing issues during "Oklamhoma!" if not on other projects beyond that. There's a slim book that was written about her final year(s) and she was a bit of a mess. Glad you liked Marlon's photo! To go with the quote, it really ought to have been one from "Julius Caesar" but I couldn't resist that one from his research for "The Men." :-)

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  6. Oh I've read both Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool, the Gloria book you reference and another bio of her, Suicide Blonde. To say she had a messy private life is a massive understatement!! Did you know there is a film version of Film Stars underway at the moment starring Annette Bening as Gloria? If it turns out okay it should be fascinating.

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  7. Excellent collection of quotes and anecdotes. Judith Anderson's is my favorite.

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  8. I had to snicker at Henry Fonda's quote about Joan Crawford. I doubt she would smack her kids around at a party so that's not exactly a ringing endorsement of her innocence! While I have some serious doubts about everything Christina Crawford has blamed Joanie for, I think she was probably abusive to some degree. I read her book My Way of Life (a must have by the way) and I can't imagine living with her was easy and she didn't flip out and bust the kids in the mouth if things didn't go according to her meticulous plans.

    Had no idea Doris Day didn't like Kirk Douglas. I've heard rumors that Douglas is a jerk (and more rumors about him being involved with an extra named Jean Spangler who disappeared and possibly raping Natalie Wood(!)), so I'm not terribly surprised. It's just so odd to hear that the perennially perky and sweet Doris Day didn't like someone!

    Love the Rock Hudson quote about James Dean. I bet being on the set of Giant was nonstop drama!

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  9. Armando, glad you liked this! I love the Judith Anderson quote, too. As an actor of sorts, I love to hear people's compliments! LOL I don't wanna hear how you can't find the words to build up my ego...!

    DevilYouKnow, I sort of got the same feeling about Henry/Joan. I thought it was a bit telling that he added, "more of a monster than she was" !! God knows she had to be hard to live under, but I will never believe all of what Christina wrote. Even she has taken back some of it! As for Doris, I always thought the chilliness had been between Lauren Bacall and her more than with Kirk! But I think they both sort of clicked together and shut her out. And considering the love that poured out for James Dean after his premature demise, it sort of took guts for Rock to offer a dissenting viewpoint, I think. :-)

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