Quotes

During Double Indemnity (1944), Fred MacMurray would go to rushes [viewings of daily completed shots]. I remember asking Fred, "How was I?" [Fred's response was] "I don't know about you, but I was wonderful!" Such a true remark. Actors only look at themselves.

I'm a tough old broad from Brooklyn. I intend to go on acting until I'm ninety and they won't need to paste my face with make-up.

[referring to director Frank Capra] Eyes are the greatest tool in film. Mr. Capra taught me that. Sure, it's nice to say very good dialogue, if you can get it. But great movie acting - watch the eyes!

Put me in the last fifteen minutes of a picture and I don't care what happened before. I don't even care if I was IN the rest of the damned thing - I'll take it in those fifteen minutes.

My only problem is finding a way to play my fortieth fallen female in a different way from my thirty-ninth.

[in 1939 on the fact that her fiancé, Robert Taylor, was four years younger than she] The boy's got a lot to learn and I've got a lot to teach.

It's perhaps not the future I would choose. I still think it's possible to make a success of both marriage and career, even though I didn't. But it's not a bad future. And I'm not afraid of it.

I couldn't remember my name for weeks. I'd be at the theater and hear them calling, "Miss Stanwyck, Miss Stanwyck", and I'd think, "Where is that dame? Why doesn't she answer? By crickie, it's me!"

Egotism - usually just a case of mistaken nonentity.

There's nothing more fun in the whole world than seeing a child open a present at Christmas. To have a six-year-old boy stroke a bicycle with his eyes and, not daring to touch, turn and ask, "Is it mine, Missy? Really mine?" That's part of my future. The rest is work. And, I hope, some wisdom.

[1981] I had my job, my work. People talk about "my career," but "career" is too pompous a word. It was a job, and I always have felt very privileged to be paid for doing what I love doing. I still look forward to living. I wake up looking forward to each day. Whatever comes, I'm alive! I'm existing. I'm part of it.

Attention embarrasses me. I don't like to be on display.

I want to go on until they have to shoot me.

[on filming Titanic (1953)] The night we were making the scene of the dying ship in the outdoor tank at Twentieth, it was bitter cold. I was 47 feet up in the air in a lifeboat swinging on the davits. The water below was agitated into a heavy rolling mass and it was thick with other lifeboats full of women and children. I looked down and thought, "If one of these ropes snaps now, it's good-by for you". Then I looked up at the faces lined along the rail -those left behind to die with the ship. I thought of the men and women who had been through this thing in our time. We were re-creating an actual tragedy and I burst into tears. I shook with great racking sobs and couldn't stop.

[in the 1960s, explaining her four-year absence from films after Forty Guns (1957)] Nobody asked me. They don't normally write parts for women my age because America is now a country of youth. We've matured and moved on. The past belongs to the past.

Some kids are born with bad blood just like horses. When a parent has done everything possible, the only solution is to save yourself.

[on performing her favorite title role in Stella Dallas (1937)] The task was to convince audiences that Stella's instincts were fine and noble even though, on the surface she was loud, flamboyant, and a bit vulgar.

[on her character in Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)] Almost from the word go, she is way up there emotionally, and stays there day after day... I decided I'd prefer to jump in, bam, go, stay there, up, try to sustain it all the way and shoot the works.

[on making Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)] Five days I was handling it, starting the next day's work where I'd picked up, sustaining it all, and then I had two whole days to relax and not to worry about the character, and I tell you it was strange. It was really hard to pump myself up on Monday morning to try to feel that desperate tension.

[on stardom] We are all very privileged people. The Good Lord gave us that much more, to walk ahead of somebody, and He showed us how to do it and we did it. But we're survivors. But we didn't do it on our own. We didn't do it on our own. The Man Upstairs was pushing me.

[Cecil B. DeMille had] a style of his own. Something you don't see too much of.

[on Cecil B. DeMille] You certainly knew where his pictures were going [and] why they were made. I loved DeMille and he loved me. We only made Union Pacific (1939) together, but we did lots of radio. We got along great.

[her Cecil B. DeMille Golden Globe acceptance speech] Thank you very, very much. To my beloved television brother, Charlton Heston [in The Colbys (1985)]. As Moses he parted the Red Sea for Mr. DeMille [in The Ten Commandments (1956)], and I helped Mr. DeMille build the Union Pacific Railroad [in Union Pacific (1939)]. And we both loved him. I considered it a privilege to work for him. And to the Foreign Press Awards, I thank them for giving me another privilege: his very own award. I thank the Foreign Press, I thank Mr. DeMille, and I thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you.

I'm not a yesterday's woman. I'm a tomorrow's woman. If I don't have a job, what am I going to give interviews about?

[explaining why she is 10 minutes early to any appointment] I'd rather wait for people than have them wait for me.

[1982] You have to know when you've had your hour. I pity an actor who doesn't understand that.

[on Robert Taylor] Losing somebody you love by death or divorce is hard. But if they decide they want to be free, there's nothing to battle for. You have to let go. Bob and I didn't stay friends. We became friends again. Time does take care of things.

I couldn't stand being passive. I couldn't play the placid girl.

[I was] an interloper, a usurper from the theater in 1932, and Ronald Colman, walking toward me, was the most beautiful man I had ever seen.

[on Samuel Goldwyn] Make all the jokes you want of the way Sam talked, but he instinctively knew what was right. He wanted real flowers on his sets because he didn't want an actress to have to put her face in a piece of wax.

[on the Golden Age of Hollywood] The amount of security that the star had - Crawford, Gable, Tracy, Taylor - was wonderful. Two or three pictures a year written for them by the top writers. It was like a baby being bathed and all wrapped in a blanket. You were safe. Today it's catch as catch can. Today someone buys a book or a play and asks, "Who can we go to the bank with?" not "Who's right for it?" It was a good system for a while, but Hollywood today is like a series of Mobil or Standard Oil stations leased to a distributor.

[on leaving her stage career behind in favor of Hollywood] But I fell in love with film. Besides, how do you keep a marriage together if you're back there and he's here? Now I'm scared to try [to return to the stage]. Now I'm a coward. They keep asking me, and I wish I had the courage, honey.