Quotes

[in the 1950s] What happened to the laughter? It used to be so much of it.

Pioneers are seldom from the nobility. There were no dukes on the Mayflower.

The joke of life is the fall of dignity.

We never make fun of religion, politics, race or mothers. A mother never gets hit with a custard pie. Mothers-in-law, yes. But mothers, never!

[on his comedy technique] It's got to move!

I called myself the king of comedy, but I was a harassed monarch. I worked most of the time. It was only in the evenings that I laughed.

Anyone who tells you he has invented something new is a fool or a liar or both.

[on Harry Langdon] He was a quaint artist who had no business in the business.

It is infinitely easier to do comedies with men than with women. The latter are inclined to giggle and generally destroy the value of what they are attempting to put over by being too obviously frivolous. Men, on the other hand, take their work seriously and give it the attention it really requires.

The public is steadily getting harder to please, particularly so far as comedies are concerned. The time is past and almost forgotten when you could be sure of a laugh by merely making one of your actors walk up behind another and suddenly push him down or trip him, or do any one of the scores of stunts the old slapstick comedian was able to get away with.

The more Keystone comedies I make, the more convinced I become that comedy is an art, and a high one at that. If those who are inclined to scoff at me will try their hand at directing just one of those comedies they designate as anything but art, I am pretty certain they will concede me my point.

We have no scenario--the chase . . . is the essence of our comedy.

All creative intellectual work consists of the development of individuality. The very essence of motion picture making is to encourage originality. To bring out individual characteristics. The famous stars of the stage, film and literature have been great because, at some point, they differed from every one else. They had a flavor all their own.

There is no form of American industry which experiences such rapid and sensational changes as the motion picture business. There is no other business that has made such enormous strides in so short a time.

There is no American who, as a boy, has not dreamed of caving in the helmet of a cop with a mighty swat that will send it around his ears. Most of us have never gotten over the feeling. Nearly every one of us lives in the secret hope that some day before he dies he will be able to swat a policeman's hat down around his ears. Lacking the courage and the opportunity, we like to see it done in the movies.

[on D.W. Griffith] He was my day school, my adult education program, my university . . . [but] he was an extremely difficult man to know.