- Brilliant actress though she is, surely nobody but a mother could have loved Bette Davis at the height of her career. Evidently I failed to make my admiration clear, however, because in her lively and self-revealing book, "The Lonely Life," she says I looked at her with loathing.
- John Van Druten once remarked to a friend of mine, "Brian feels about homosexuals the way most people feel about ghosts; he just can't believe they exist!" and it is true, though I don't actually care what people do with their private lives so long as they do not infringe upon my own.
- One just does not behave in England quite the same as one does in America and Australia, and the Australian girl on the sheep station who thought I was a stuffed shirt has had her counterpart, I fear, only too often in America.
- Make-up in those days was sticks of #5 Leichner greasepaint and heavy lipstick, which we applied so thickly that we looked like clowns and could scarcely move a muscle of our faces... the whole business of silent acting seemed phony and ridiculous, entailing as it did pulling exaggerated faces while a director shouted at one through a megaphone and an orchestra played unsuitable music in the background.
- Most men who become actors do so either because, like myself, they couldn't get a job at anything else or because, as I firmly believe, they are attracted by the prospect of long mornings in bed.
- I was no athlete. I could not jump over haystacks or fight ten men at once, nor could I ever hope to follow Douglas Fairbanks in those glorious parts which he had made his own.
- I have known actresses great and small who would ruthlessly cut ties with home, husband, and children, who would cast aside anyone and anything, and endure any hardship, loneliness, and distress if only they could get a chance to act. What is this demon that possesses them? ...this passion is not based upon anything so slight as vanity; it is a deep, enduring need, and God help the man who gives his heart to such a woman, for the need never leaves them.
- In the main the classes respect each other but do not mingle in England. We are not democratic, in the American sense of the word, but our much-maligned class system has endured for centuries, and we understand it.
- The winds of change have blown through Hollywood and left destruction in their path. Battered by the government's Divorcement Decree, which shut off their lifeblood by taking away their theaters, and by television, which gives entertainment to the public for nothing, the great studios no longer are able to offer continuous employment to artists. Hoping to stimulate business, they have turned to sex and violence. There are no glamorous and beautiful women on the screen today and no legitimate actors like myself, because we can't use sawed-off shotguns or hit each other convincingly, and we don't care to take off our clothes in public.
- If radio was good to actors, it also was good to listeners. Imagination is usually better than realization, and some of the great shows done on the Lux Radio Theater, for example, gave more pleasure than most of the TV "spectaculars" of today, added to which it was possible to listen to them while playing cards, sewing, carpentering, doing the household chores, or driving a car, without having to stay glued to a TV set, watching endless soap and cigarette commercials. Radio is gone, and I, for one, regret it.
- I often think of the great kindness that I received from everyone during my days in the London theater, so very different from the suspicious and defensive attitude of the average Hollywood producer and agent, and I wonder whether it was the English national character or my own youth and obvious ingenuousness which impelled people to help me. Help me they did, and I shall always be grateful to them and remember their generosity.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content