Bela Lugosi in Dracula (1931, dir. Tod Browning) Art direction by Charles D. Hall

A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969, dir. Bill Melendez)

Frances Marion (1915), the first woman to twice win an Academy Award for screenwriting & Hollywood’s highest paid screenwriter from 1917 to the mid-1930s

“In her autobiography (Off With Their Heads), Frances Marion recounts how, amused by her letter requesting a screenwriting job at the then outrageous salary of $200 a week, producer William Fox granted her an interview, but when he sees her, he is mystified by her desire to write screenplays since she is good-looking enough to be an actress. 

‘Why does a pretty girl like you want to be a writer?’ he asks incredulously, and goes on to tell her how she would look in ‘the most expensive outfits they got at Saks Fifth Avenue, earrings, bracelets, no phonies, all real stuff.’  ‘Actresses -yes! They got glamour-‘ he says later, ‘but writers, the poor schliemiels! Now if you’re smart you’ll gamble on yourself. Easy, just like tossing a coin.’

‘A coin, Mr. Fox, can only fall heads or tails,’ Frances Marion says she said, and even if it’s staircase wit, it should go down in history as the true shooting script, ‘and I’ll gamble on heads, they last longer.’”

-Molly Haskell, Films of the 1920s

Dean Martin performs at the Copa Room (1957). That’s Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Debbie Reynolds, & Jack Benny at the front table (click to enlarge)

“In 1969, Orson Welles told me that he’d been backstage in his own Dean Martin Show dressing room when, before the taping, Dean knocked, then came in, drink in hand. ‘Hey Orson,’ he said, holding up his glass, ‘you want one of these before we…?’

Orson shook his head. ‘No, no, Dean, I’m fine, thanks.” Martin looked shocked. “You mean you’re gonna go out there alone?!” Welles roared with laughter when he told me the story. ‘Alone!’ he repeated loudly. ‘Isn’t that great!?’ Orson went on, ‘That’s the best definition of addiction I’ve ever heard.’”

-Peter Bogdanovich, Conversations with Hollywood’s Legendary Actors

Ivan’s Childhood (1962, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky)

Clint Eastwood on the set of The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly (1966, dir. Sergio Leone) (photo by Angelo Novi)

On the most important lesson he learned from his work on Sergio Leone’s westerns:

“Never trust anyone on an Italian movie. I know about these things. Stay away from special effects and explosives.”

“She’s disciplined, like all those ballet dames.”

-Humphrey Bogart on Audrey Hepburn (1954)

via Attack Of The Puppet People (1958, dir Bert I. Gordon)

Hello, Monday.

Q: Odd that Charlie Chaplin sends his daughters to a convent. It certainly can’t be said that he has any sympathy with the Church. And why on earth does he send you to a convent?

Geraldine Chaplin: “For the discipline. My father’s fanatical about discipline. Besides I was so wild, when I was ten, that I don’t know what would have happened if the nuns hadn’t brought me up. They were strict, the nuns, as strict as father, but they were so gentle too. And then the nuns gave me something I didn’t have, they gave me religion. You see, we Chaplin kids were never baptized into any religion. That’s the way father wanted and wants it. We’d never heard any talk of God, we’d never heard a prayer and…well, now I’ll tell you a very silly, a very odd thing.

The first day I went into class, all the girls were standing up praying. I didn’t know about praying, you see, and so I thought they were reciting a lesson. But the second day they stood up again and recited the same lesson again, so I thought, that’s odd, didn’t they say the same lesson yesterday? I turned to one of the girls and asked her: ‘What are you doing?’ ‘We’re praying,’ she said. ‘Praying?’ I said. ‘Yes, praying,’ she said. “Praying to whom?” I said. ‘Praying to God,’ she said. ‘God who?’ I said.

Well, the girl looked at me in amazement and didn’t say any more. So then, when the lesson was over, I went to the nuns and asked who God was: was he the head of the school? The nuns said yes, God was also the head of the school. So then I asked the nuns if I could meet this head of the school and the nuns replied that this head of the school was very good and was taking care of me. If I spoke to Him, He would listen and… well, it was like a fairy tale only more beautiful, and I believed it…”

Q: Is it really true that until you were ten you’d never heard religion spoken of?

Chaplin: “No. Never….my father says he’d have liked to be religious, that it would have been a great help to him, but he just can’t be. If he could, he says, he’d put more trust in people. My father is a man with no illusions, and we all grew up without any illusions - except for the early years, when we thought it was Father Christmas who brought us cookies. But by now even the youngest of the children know the cookies come from mother and father, that there is no such person as Father Christmas.”

-1965, published in The Limelighters (Oriana Fallaci, 1967) (photo via)

Oriana Fallaci: So then, Sean, let’s finish with a little test: the names of three men & three women whom you admire, for whom you feel respect & envy.

Sean Connery: The first is Khrushchev. That sense of humor of his, that appetite for living, that non-conformism. Great man. The second is Stanley Matthews, the soccer player. He’s 51, and still plays soccer. I’d like to be him. The third is Picasso: to me he has the same virtues as Khrushchev.

As for women…let’s see…women…let’s see…odd: you know, I can’t think of a single one? Yet I like them a lot, I respect them, I esteem them, I often find them superior to men. I’m one of those who still find women devilishly attractive, irreplaceable…well, that must be why. I mean that, whenever I see a woman, I can never get away from the sex element. The liking and even the admiration, even the respect, I feel for a woman always has sexual origins. A character like me, who loves life, appetite, and strength, can’t get away from sexual desires. And so, when he stops to assess a woman, he can never make out where that thing finishes and pure admiration begins. Do you see what I mean? Khrushchev doesn’t provoke any sexual desires in me, nor does Matthews, nor does Picasso. With them there isn’t that alarming little complication. Alarming. Isn’t it?

Fallaci: Eh, yes. Alarming.

Connery: In fact, I find women very alarming, very worrying. Always. And picking out one I admire and nothing else…let’s see…yes: Greta Garbo. For her talent, her dignity, her silence. And yet, no, even in her case I can’t get away from the fact that if I’d ever been close to her…well…in short…I’d have been very attracted to her, apart from her talent, her dignity, her silence. So, after all, the choice doesn’t stand. Phew! Tell you what we’ll do: we’ll forget about the women for a moment and take the names of two more men. One is Hitchcock and the other is Noel Coward. And now let’s go and have a beer.

-Paris magazine, March, 1965

Catherine Deneuve on the set of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964, dir Jacques Demy)