Quotes

[In a 1986 interview] Charles Laughton was very interesting to watch. Before he went into a scene, he'd go through these gyrations, and huff and puff... I don't know what it did for him, but he was quite amusing to watch! He was often very effective, wasn't he? Marvelous!

[In a 1986 interview about Brian Donlevy] ... a very strange man. He never talked to anybody.

[In a 1986 interview] Claudette Colbert was delightful to me in It's a Wonderful World (1939); she was my favorite actress to work with. James Stewart went to sleep on the set between takes, but what a terrific actor he is!

[In 1986 on Jack Oakie]... a delightfully funny man... I would become helpless with laughter!

[In a 1986 interview] One day I told Bela Lugosi that his daughter had come to call for him, and he said, 'She is my wife'. I wanted to sink through the floor for being so tactless! It might have hurt him, but I wouldn't have done that for the world because he was such a charming man, very soft and very congenial... Lugosi, Frank Lawton and I all had birthdays on that set in October.

[In a 1986 interview] I enjoyed the Hollywood scene. There were lots of parties, and I liked most of the picture people that I met. A funny thing happened to me at a party in Hollywood once. I was introduced to a European man, and he said, 'You give yourself to me, and I give you tremendous pleasure!'

[In a 1986 interview] Several people had warned me that Richard Boleslawski, the director, was difficult and frightening. I did not find him that way at all. I thought he was a wonderful director - he got you in the mood.