Quotes

At heart, I'm really a harmless and calm person.

[Discussing how he enjoyed playing villains] Purely in an academic way. At heart, I am a kind man.

[Referring to a part he played on Four Star Playhouse (1952)] I play a mad--a maniacal--killer. Fun.

[Explaining how he got a lucky break onstage when his leading lady forgot her lines] I managed, somehow, to give her lines and my own, too. Then came the finale when a rope, manipulated by pulleys and concealed from the audience, was to assist me into "heaven." It darned near did--it broke. I wasn't hurt, fortunately, but a very famous stock company manager was in the audience--Jessie Bonstelle. She came backstage and said, in substance, that any young actor who could play both leading man and leading lady in the same play at the same time, and make such an abrupt descent from heaven with such good grace, ought to be good enough for her company.

My freshman year [at Brown University] I tried out for the dramatic club. I have been interested in the theater ever since I could remember. I worked diligently over "Friends, Romans, Countrymen . . . " and when it was my turn to try out for the club, I got to my feet and began Antony's lines. After I finished, the president of the organization turned to another member, and I heard him ask, "What in the world was he saying?" My name did not appear on the list of dramatic club fledglings the next morning when I hopefully went to look for it.

There's a much more friendly atmosphere on a movie set than there is on a Broadway stage. New York stage hands are snobbish and seldom speak to actors. What a difference in Hollywood! Here prop men and cameramen and script girls all feel they're part of the family. They give you little suggestions, tip you off to things you should know, beam at you when they like the way you play a scene.

[Describing his years in college and immediately thereafter, when he was trying to convince his father that he didn't want to be an engineer] I was biding my time. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I was sure it wasn't engineering. After college I gradually persuaded my father that I wasn't cut out for an engineer. First I went to work in a bank in our home town of Providence, R.I., which at least was business--and therefore acceptable, you see, to my father. Then I got a position in the traffic department of the Daily News in New York--also business, which meant that my father was pleased but I wasn't. At the News I started out as a typist, got to be second assistant traffic manager and finally slid up to the manager's job more or less by default. I was the only one around the office who could find records and correspondence--because I had set up my own secret filing system which no one else understood--and I also was the only one who spent much time in the office. The other fellows wanted to be out on the road, which meant that they depended on me to do the office work. I was lazy and preferred to stay in the office, so I eventually found myself manager after the people above me had resigned or were transferred.

[Discussing a 1928 stage production of "Macbeth" in which the scene design proved to be problematic] [The settings] appeared to be huge packing boxes painted white and piled in different formations one on top of the other. These created chaos on the first "performance" in Philadelphia . . . when I tried to make my entrance in the battle scene and found every entrance blocked by these ghastly boxes. I never did make it.