Quotes

[on working with Zsa Zsa Gabor in Queen of Outer Space (1958)] [She] was very difficult all through the picture. The producer, Ben Schwalb, went to the hospital with ulcers halfway through the picture. I was left to cope with her alone, and she damn near gave me ulcers! It always bothered me that here on this planet Venus, she was the only one who spoke with a foreign accent.

[on Buddy Adler, the head of 20th Century-Fox Pictures when Bernds shot Return of the Fly (1959) on the Fox lot] I knew him from Columbia [Pictures], and as a matter of fact I directed a couple of second units for him there--and I considered him an all-American no-talent. In shooting second units I simply could not get a decision from him. He was so afraid of [Columbia Pictures head] Harry Cohn that he was afraid if he made a decision and something went wrong, that Harry Cohn would rip his hide off.

[about Valley of the Dragons (1961)] That film has tremendous vitality on TV--I get checks that surprise me. I also get residuals on the Elvis Presley picture Tickle Me (1965) that Elwood Ullman and I wrote, and it seems to me that "Valley of the Dragons" makes me more money in residuals than "Tickle Me" does!

[about Queen of Outer Space (1958)] If the picture's shown on TV I won't watch it, because Zsa Zsa Gabor still gives me a swift pain.

[on Robert L. Lippert] . . . a rough, tough customer . . . if there were any such thing as reincarnation, that man would have been a pirate in an earlier incarnation.

[on directing an ill Curly Howard in A Bird in the Head (1945), his directorial debut] It was an awful tough deal for a novice rookie director to have a Curly who wasn't himself. I had seen Curly at his greatest and his work in this film was far from great. The wallpaper scene was agony to direct because of the physical movements required to roll up the wallpaper and to react when it curled up in him. It just didn't work. As a fledgling director, my plans were based on doing everything in one nice neat shot. But when I saw the scenes were not playing, I had to improvise and use other angles to make it play. It was the wallpaper scene that we shot first, and during the first two hours of filming, I became aware that we had a problem with Curly.

[on his decision to retire] I wasn't getting any work. Elwood Ullman and I decided to offer ourselves as a team to write comedy. Elwood had a lot of good credits. He had written for Martin and Lewis and Ma and Pa Kettle. I had all my feature credits. The day Elwood decided to quit, we went to Columbia to be interviewed by a producer. I went into a building where I had once had an office. And here was an arrogant young guy, about half our age, very condescending, wondering what these old guys wanted and explaining to us about the new kind of comedy. When we got outside, Elwood said, "That does it! When that punk can condescend to us, tell us about comedy....I'm going to call it quits and take my Writers Guild pension." After a bit, I decided too. I got both my Writers and Directors Guild pensions.