Quotes

Until I came along all the leading men were handsome, but luckily they wrote a lot of stories about the fellow next door.

If you hit the mark with two out of every five movies you'll keep the wheels of the cycle turning.

To get folks to like you, I figured you had to sort of be their ideal. I don't mean a handsome knight riding a white horse, but a fellow who answered the description of a right guy.

People ask me how come you've been around so long. Well, it's through playing the part of Mr Average Joe American.

[in 1931] I haven't read a half a dozen books in my life.

[February, 1942, accepting his Academy Award for Sergeant York (1941) from James Stewart] It was Sergeant Alvin York [Alvin C. York] who won this award. Because to the best of my ability, I tried to be Sergeant York. Shucks, I've been in the business 16 years and sometimes dreamed I might get one of these things. That's all I can say . . . Funny, when I was dreaming I always made a good speech.

[on banning the Communist party in the US] I think it would be a good idea, although I have never read Karl Marx and I don't know the basis of Communism, beyond what I have picked up from hearsay. From what I hear, I don't like it because it isn't on the level.

[in April 1961] Please make sure everyone knows how much their messages mean to me. They have added greatly to my peace of mind. I only wish some of the writers would take a more positive approach to the menace of cancer. I've got it, sure; but I'm not afraid to use the word. Some of them act like it's a dirty word. That's the wrong attitude. We should all bring it out in the open, recognize that it exists - and fight it! Cancer is everybody's enemy. We can't "think" an enemy out of existence by ignoring it.

[1956] A man like Arthur Miller, he's got a gripe against certain phases of American life. I think he's done a lot of bad. Ours is a pretty good country and I don't think we ought to run it down. Sure there are fellows like Willy Loman, but you don't have to write plays about them.

My whole career has been one of extreme good fortune. I think I'm an average actor . . . In acting you can do something and maybe . . . some people think it's fine, but you know inside of you that it can be done better . . . You don't feel that you really attained a goal in the acting business; you always feel that you're still learning.

Nan Collins, my manager, came from Gary, Indiana, and suggested I adopt that name. She felt it was more exciting than Frank. I figured I'd give it a try. Good thing she didn't come from Poughkeepsie.

The only achievement I am really proud of is the friends I have made in this community.

I don't like to see exaggerated airs and exploding egos in people who are already established. No player ever rises to prominence solely on talent. They're molded by forces other than themselves. They should remember this - and at least twice a week drop to their knees and thank Providence for elevating them from cow ranches, dime store ribbon counters and bookkeeping desks.

I suppose one of the most important things about real beauty is intelligence, and real womanliness - it's a combination of intelligence and all the instincts of womanhood, motherhood, and the beauty of girlhood. These things all sort of go in together, and they are in so many people who are not reputed beauties.

[on his fellow actors] I've been with some good ones, but maybe the best was Franchot Tone. I made two pictures with him and he stole both of them. Something went wrong with how he was handled; or who knows, maybe it was Joan Crawford. But he had everything - great at comedy and also at serious stuff if given the chance. Now The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) is one hell of a picture, but you could take me right out of it and it would still be one. But it couldn't be much without Tone.

[on Sergeant York (1941)] I liked the role because I was portraying a good, sound American character.

You've got to have a fire under you, and when you're beginning, you've got one all the time. After you get established, you have to create your own fire, and it's never easy.

All this business about me never saying anything is a piece of crap.

[asked if he ever wanted to act on the stage] Not since I was at Grinnell. When I gave them the story that I was trying to do a Broadway play, I must have been desperate for publicity. I figured it didn't matter what I said. I learned very early that nothing you ever say gets quoted verbatim by the press. So for many years I may have clammed up, but I guess I've reached an age where I don't particularly care. Anyway, I talk.

I put in a call to Clark Gable to tell him about some deer I'd heard were running loose up in the Canadian Rockies. I was told he was on location . . . in Hong Kong. I called Robert Taylor. He was on location, too, in Italy, unless he had finished there and gone to England. James Stewart was in Africa. In the old days a company that went as far away as Texas was thought to be forsaking civilization for good. Today these countries are just part of the Hollywood scene and it's as [William Shakespeare said, "All the world's a stage".

Naturalness is hard to talk about, but I guess it boils down to this: You find out what people expect of your type of character and then you give them what they want. That way an actor never seems unnatural or affected no matter what role he plays.

[in 1960] People hang on after they should quit, because the urge to act stays with you. Sometimes in the middle of a scene I find myself saying a piece of dialog from 15 years ago. I've thought of retiring lots of times, but then I think I would just go nuts, and probably spend all my time searching for a really great Western script.

[on Cary Grant] I say he's a crack comedian, and isn't competition for me at all.

[after visiting Nazi Germany in 1938] There's no question in my mind that those people want to have a war. They're determined to be a world power and seem to feel that's the only way to become one. Those storm troopers are awesome. The atmosphere in Berlin - well, I've never sensed such tension.

I've had lines on my face since I was twenty. Wind and sun put them there.

In my whole life I've never had a woman so much in love with me as Ingrid Bergman was. The day after the picture [For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) ended, I couldn't get her on the phone.

[after Clark Gable ended up with the role of Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind (1939)] "Gone with the Wind" is going to be the biggest flop in history.

[October 1947] I have turned down quite a few scripts because I thought they were tinged with Communistic ideas.

[1960] Nothing I've done lately, the past eight years or so, has been especially worthwhile. I've been coasting along. Some of the pictures I've made recently I'm genuinely sorry about. Either I did a sloppy job in them, or the story wasn't right.

[1952] I like and admire Carl Foreman and am delighted to be in business with him.

[in 1958, on "Method" actors] It is hard to dig them because they move like hermit crabs - they have to have a shell to crawl into and they don't want anyone to get to know them . . . They are offbeat and strange and always thinking about themselves. They are always asking themselves, "Where do I fit in; what's in it for me?" These youngsters are doing it the hard way. They make a thorough study of being natural and being unnatural. The girls go around looking like they're made up for a death scene in a hospital room. I don't know why if a girl goes out in public she wants to make herself look ugly instead of a little bit attractive.

Naturally, the nearer the character you play comes to the character you are, the more authenticity you give it. You are not acting so much as being. The result is realism.

Movie acting is a pretty silly business for a man because it takes less training, less ability and less brains to be successful in it than any other business I can think of.

Having to work hard never had any real appeal for me, and that may have some connection with me being in the movies.

[on Hollywood] This is a terrible place to spend your life in. Nobody in Hollywood is normal. Absolutely nobody. And they have such a vicious attitude toward one another . . . They say much worse things about each other than outsiders say about them, and nobody has any real friends.

[October 1947] I feel very strongly that actors haven't any business at all to shoot their faces off about things I know we know very little about.

[following a 1943 USO tour to New Guinea] There's no coin in Hollywood, rich as it is, that can pay a fellow the way I've been paid for my little effort on behalf of the G.I.s out there. It was the greatest emotional experience of my life.

[to Robert Taylor after both had appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947] I got a much bigger hand than you did.

(at a Friars Club testimonial dinner in 1961) If you asked me if I'm the luckiest guy in the world, all I can say is, "Yup".

[on Rio Bravo (1959)] It's so phony, nobody believes in it.

[on Josef von Sternberg] It was apparent that von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich had a very close professional relationship. But it was only, in my experience, professional, without any love element. I got along with von Sternberg reasonably well, as all his direction and his instructions were given to Marlene, and the rest of us were left more or less to do as well as we could. I cannot remember that he ever told me how to play a scene.

[on Grace Kelly] She was very serious about her work, had her eyes and ears open. She was trying to learn, you could see that. You can tell if a person really wants to be an actress. She was one of those people you could get that feeling about, and she was very pretty. It didn't surprise me when she was a big success.

[on turning down the role of Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind (1939)] Rhett Butler was one of the best roles ever offered in Hollywood and my screen character saw himself emerging from the film as a dashing-type fellow. But I said no. I didn't see myself as quite that dashing, and later, when I saw Clark Gable play the role to perfection, I knew I was right.

[23 October 1947] Several years ago, when communism was more of a social chit-chatter in parties for offices, and so on when communism didn't have the implications that it has now, discussion of communism was more open and I remember hearing statements from some folks to the effect that the communistic system had a great many features that were desirable. It offered the actors and artists - in other words, the creative people - a special place in government where we would be somewhat immune from the ordinary leveling of income. And as I remember, some actor's name was mentioned to me who had a house in Moscow which was very large - he had three cars, and stuff, with his house being quite a bit larger than my house in Beverly Hills at the time - and it looked to me like a pretty phony come-on to us in the picture business. From that time on, I could never take any of this pinko mouthing very seriously, because I didn't feel it was on the level.

Once in a while I like a good western. Gives me a chance to shoot off guns.

For me the really satisfying things I do are offered me, free, for nothing. Ever go out in the fall and do a little hunting? See the frost on the grass and the leaves turning? Spend a day in the hills alone, or with good companions? Watch a sunset and a moon rise? Notice a bird in the wind? A stream in the woods, a storm at sea, cross the country by train, and catch a glimpse of something beautiful in the desert, or the farmlands? Free to everybody.

I started pictures in the silent days and I took every job that came my way. Often I worked 18 hours steady. I got myself into such a run-down condition that I weighed only 148 pounds, and I'm six feet two.

[on his drawings] I had a mild talent.