Quotes

[to the House Un-American Activities Committee, 1951] I would prefer, if you would allow me, not to mention other people's names. Don't present me with the choice of either being in contempt of this Committee and going to jail or forcing me to really crawl through the mud to be an informer.

I remember the one time Jolson visited the set, I was doing a number. And he said, kid, you're moving around too much. So he did the song. And he did everything except bang from the rafters. He had pre-recorded all the songs before the script was ready, and sang every one as if he were going to drop dead at the end of it. Well, that was Jolson. He always sang like that, which was why people loved him. But it was difficult from an actor's point-of-view. In one scene I was supposed to be singing as loudly as I could one second and then collapse in the middle of the song. How do you taper off at the top of your lungs?

[on 'the Jolson Story'] In the beginning Jolson wanted to play himself. Well, that's understandable, but he was too old. He was sixty-eight. So then he wanted James Cagney for the role, but he had just finished playing George M. Cohan. Jolson was never too happy with me. And I had another problem. All of Jolson's movies were for Warner Brothers and we were making 'The Jolson Story' at Columbia. So Harry Cohn, the studio boss, asked Jack Warner if we could borrow the Jolson films so I could study them. And Warner, in a heartwarming display of reciprocity, said no. So I had to do Jolson without seeing him.

[on the changes in racial representation in the movies since the forties]'The Jolson Story' was made innocently enough, without any desire to offend. I think if you start suppressing old films for reasons like this, you're cutting off your own past. I thought Bill Cosby's special on the TV was wonderful, the one tracing the rise and fall of Negro stereotypes in movies. I think that sort of approach to Hollywood's past is the wise one, instead of trying to ignore it or forget it.