Quotes

No triumph of either my stage or screen career has ever rivalled the excitement of trips down the Mississippi on the river boats with my father.

[Comedy] demands more timing, pace, shading and subtlety of emphasis. It is difficult to learn but once it is acquired it can be easily slowed down and becomes an excellent foundation for dramatic acting.

Whenever I have to weep for the cameras, I prefer to cry real tears, provided I have enough time to recover my emotions before I make the take. But if I have to do another and greatly different scene afterward, it frequently is easier on my emotions just to put glycerin or some other tear substitute in my eyes.

When we have learned to love our neighbour, not just ourselves, no matter where we come from, then America will be perfect.

Trying to build the brotherhood of man without the Fatherhood of God is like having the spokes of a wheel without the hub.

I don't know why the public took a liking to me so fast. Popularity is a curious thing. The public responds to a dimple, a smile, a giggle, a hairstyle, an attitude. Acting talent has less to do with it than personality.

I appeared with many leading men. But working with Cary Grant was different from working with other actors - he was much more fun! I think we were a successful team because we enjoyed working together tremendously, and that pleasure must have shown through onto the screen. I will always remember two compliments he made me. He said I had perfect timing in comedy and that I was the sweetest-smelling actress he ever worked with.

I love beautiful things, but a woman who considers herself best-dressed usually spends all of her time at it.

[1983, on being asked if she would ever write her memoirs] The Lord never wrote a book, not that I knew about. Not really. And I don't think Abraham Lincoln ever wrote a book. So I have put it off again.

I drifted into acting and drifted out. Acting is not everything. Living is.

[1974] I never formally retired. That would have been presumptuous. But an awful lot of the girls my age soldiered on in bad vehicles. I'd do a TV half hour drama every year just to keep my hand in it. But I couldn't run around with an axe in my hand like Bette [Bette Davis] and Joan [Joan Crawford] did to keep things going. The difference was I had a family and they didn't have one - only the all-mighty career.

[1974] MGM wanted me to play Grace Kelly's mother in The Swan (1956), which ironically would be her last movie although nobody knew that. The part was choice but I'd have to settle for fourth billing and my husband said to forget that. "Go out number one," was his advice. Well, Jessie Royce Landis finally took the part and was very funny. And then MGM wanted me as Leslie Caron's dotty aunt in Gigi (1958) but the subject matter was distasteful. The family was raising their precious to be a courtesan. If they'd offered me one great song I might have reconsidered.

[1974] The latest offer was to be in one of those "Airplane" movies - Universal said they'd donate my six figures to a Catholic charity but I didn't want to be stuck inside a crippled airplane for several months of shooting.

For six years I was known as a long-suffering heroine. I certainly wanted to get out of that, but I never thought of doing straight comedy. It wasn't as satisfying to the serious actress in me as a tear-jerker like Magnificent Obsession (1935), a part I could get my teeth into.

An audience is a totally impartial and unprejudiced critic.

[1985] I find it so boring to talk about myself. I don't remember the last time I did an interview. Somebody came to my house and I thought I'd never get rid of him. That sort of cooled me off.

[on Ernst Lubitsch and Preston Sturges] They were extraordinary. Their screenplays were full of wit and literacy, and they brought those qualities to the screen with such flair.

[1985] Many of those early melodramas we took so seriously don't play well at all today. I took my two grandchildren to see Cimarron (1931) once, and it was laughable in places. On the other hand, The Awful Truth (1937) stands up marvelously. I have cassettes of some of these older films, and they have a good look.

In 1936, RKO decided to loan me to Columbia to do a picture called Theodora Goes Wild (1936), about a zany woman who writes a book that scandalizes the town. I tried every way to get out of doing it. My husband and I even sailed off to Europe. But when I came back, the studio was right there to meet me, script in hand. So I did it, and now I'm glad I did.

[on the powerful matriarchs on such television soaps as Falcon Crest (1981)] I would play such a role altogether differently. I would be very charming, very sweet; and then put the knife in the back, twisting it a little. A heavy is really very predictable. But a heavy with a veneer of sweetness keeps the other characters - and perhaps the audience - off guard.

Leo [Leo McCarey] was a very fast director. George Stevens was just the opposite, very slow. But he came well-prepared. When I did Penny Serenade (1941), which is still one of my favorites, we would have rehearsals on the set, and before rehearsals we would meet to discuss details of how a scene would be played.