- Believe it or not, teaching is the most rewarding thing I do. It has been the most successful thing I've done in my life.
- [on her father] He hated my mother sufficiently, my mother hated him.
- [on her Oscar nomination for Executive Suite (1954)] I don't think my performance was that good, but I felt that it wasn't fair to put Eva Marie Saint in supporting. Not that I think I would have won.
- [2007] I've been busy in my career and all my life. But I think the biggest thing I've done in life is teach. Breaking down every scene, every line, every beat, and putting the piece together. That's my contribution.
- Now if I'd been a little more ambitious and not so sure I was nothing, the unattractive daughter of a beautiful woman and a distinguished man, I could have fought harder, and I would have gotten further.
- [on her entry into the studio system] I had to do something. I didn't really have a home . . . I was a pitiful child, an unloved child.
- You have a choice. You either get afraid, or you get so afraid that you're angry. It is that anger, that rage, that saved my life, I think.
- You know what Einstein said? "Happiness is for cattle." You're not supposed to be happy, you're supposed to feel that you've achieved something.
- I should have been directing all along, that I should have been doing. Nobody would let me, because I was a woman.
- [on her The Dark Past (1948) co-stars] Bill Holden [William Holden] was a sweetheart. He was lovely to work with. I think Bill's father had made him believe that acting wasn't really a fit occupation for a man, which gave him great unhappiness. But we got along fine. Lee [Lee J. Cobb] was obnoxious. He'd come in every morning and complain about the film and how awful it was. It drove Bill crazy - he'd be dying inside. But that's how Lee cranked up his motor, by bad-mouthing everything. So I'd commiserate with Bill and get his spirits up again.
- [on her early B-movies] It's extraordinary how fast we made them. You'd shoot an entire picture in 10 or 12 days. We worked six days a week. There was no turn-around time back then, so you'd work into the evening, go home for six hours and then come back to work again. The movies were called noir because no one had the time to light anything.
- I've always been an outsider. In America, I've been a European. In Europe, I'm an American. On Broadway, I was from Hollywood; in Hollywood, I was from Broadway.
- I wasn't very happy at Columbia. I didn't like Harry Cohn and his ilk. They wished I was prettier, had luscious lips and big tits, but I didn't. But when you were under contract to a studio, you were stuck.
- [on her role in Executive Suite (1954) she almost rejected] The reason I did it was because of the producer, John Houseman, one of my best friends and a strong influence on my career. Before he sent me that script he said, "Say you'll do it, dear. Just trust me." Then I saw the script -- the part was so terribly small. We had a terrible fight, but he said, "You mark my words, you will be very pleased you did this." He knew that I would be so furious that I would go off and work on it to make it something really good.
- [on filming My Name Is Julia Ross (1945)] Most of us, except for the director Joseph H. Lewis, had worked together before and we knew that we had a better script than we were used to at Columbia. We broke our asses to make it a good film... I have very little memory of our director. I only remember that he took himself very seriously -- even more so when the good reviews came out, hailing My Name Is Julia Ross (1945) as a suspenseful "sleeper".
- [on many roles of hers] Real tough broads... Poor me, I'm a nice lady, with children and a home, but I play castrating broads.
- My father was a well-known orchestra conductor, and Paul Muni, who played Chopin's old teacher (A Song to Remember (1945)), was a good friend of my father's. He was a very serious man but when you look at his performance today he's doing very old-fashioned acting. We all are, really.
- [on her Broadway debut in the play John Loves Mary, by Norman Krasna] In the beginning, the studio told me, "You can act but you're not pretty". Then I played on Broadway and became the toast of the town that year. Some of the critics said I was pretty and sexy, so I returned to Columbia with a new respect as an actress and got some leads in A-movies: The Dark Past (1948) with William Holden, Johnny Allegro (1949) with George Raft, and The Undercover Man (1949) with Glenn Ford. The only drawback was that now that my attractiveness had been validated by New York, I got chased around a few desks in Hollywood, including Harry Cohn's. I solved the problem by telling them that they reminded me of my father!
- [on The Ten Commandments (1956)] I felt it was important to work with Cecil B. DeMille and I'm glad I did. I learned a lot from him about discipline . . . He and I got along simply great.
- [on Cecil B. DeMille] I needed to go back to New York with my husband, who was playing the lead in The Guiding Light . . . And I needed to go back for some reason and I went in to see him 'cause my agent didn't want to go see him, was afraid to go see him about giving me a couple of weeks off. So I went in to see him . . . I would treat him in a very courtly manner . . . And so then I said, "I want this time off to be with my husband" and etcetera. And he said, "Well, all right" and he hit the buttons and said, "Get in here!" and three men came in and he said, "Give this woman what she wants." And he said, "Although I never met a woman who knew what she wanted." And I said, "You have now, Mr. DeMille." I don't know where I got the guts. But he and I got along wonderfully that way.
- [on The Ten Commandments (1956)] We got to the scene where we're going out of Egypt, and he decided that princess Bithiah went out, which . . . who knows if that . . . there's nothing to tell us that that's true, that this Egyptian princess went with them. But there I am and they're making matzah and things, and there's the blood on the door. And I have to say, "They're my people." But he said, "I want the reading, 'They're MY people.'" And I said, "Mr. DeMille, that would be all right but nobody has mentioned 'people' yet in the scene, so whether they're 'my' or 'your' people is not the issue, it's the fact that they're people." "Okay," he said. "All right, you do one [take] your way and do one mine, and we'll look at the dailies and see which one is right." So I went to the dailies that day. He used to run the dailies at 8:00 in the morning in a big theater, and every department head had to be there. It was a huge attendance. And he would edit the dailies before he let the people at the studio see them, at that point. So, the two of them came on and then he said, "Is Miss Foch here?" And I said - I was half made up - I said, "Here I am, Mr. DeMille." He said, "Which one do you like?" Well, you have to be careful because you can't quarrel with him in front of all those people. So I said, "I believe in the second one." And he said . . . to his editor, who was a woman [Anne Bauchens] . . . he said, "Well, use the second one." And then he sat down, and then he jumped back up to his feet and said, "But you didn't do my way as well as you did your way!" And from the back of the house I said, "On the contrary, Mr. DeMille, I was extremely fair!" And he said, "All right" and sat down. That was the end of that story.
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