Some last minute advice for tonight’s festivities:

“Dessert is probably the most important stage of the meal, since it will be the last thing your guests remember before they pass out all over the table.”

-William Powell

Marlene Dietrich in Paris, acompanied by her husband, Rudolf Sieber (1933, photo by Imagno/Getty Images)

On true love:

“It’s a flower: Trillium erectum [aka the American True-Love]. Also called birthroot and bethflower. Medicinal use: astringent. 

It is strong enough to survive sub-zero temperatures and its blossoms smell like rotting meat.”

-Dietrich, quoted in Marlene Dietrich’s ABC

Marlene Dietrich in Paris, acompanied by her husband, Rudolf Sieber (1933, photo by Imagno/Getty Images)

On true love:

“It’s a flower: Trillium erectum [aka the American True-Love]. Also called birthroot and bethflower. Medicinal use: astringent. 

It is strong enough to survive sub-zero temperatures and its blossoms smell like rotting meat.”

Leni Riefenstahl’s “Dance to the Sea” in The Holy Mountain (1926, dir. Arnold Fanck) (via)

via The Holy Mountain (1926, dir. Arnold Fanck)

Patty McCormack in The Bad Seed (1956, dir. Mervyn LeRoy) as Rhoda: gifted pianist, rollerskating aficionado, serial killer (photo by Nina Leen for LIFE)

“What would you give me for a basket of kisses?”

Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator (1940, dir. Charlie Chaplin)

“Had I known of the actual horrors of Nazi concentration camps, I could not have made The Great Dictator. I wanted to ridicule their mystic bilge about a pure-blooded race. The English office at United Artists were against my making an anti-Hitler film - until the war had started.”

-Charlie Chaplin, My Life in Pictures (1974)

King Kong (1933, dir. Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack)

Merian C. Cooper had been working on a script about the discovery of a giant ape on a remote island, but he couldn’t think of a good ending. He wanted a “chariot race”, a la Ben Hur - a climax that would nail audiences to their seats. He found his chariot race while in New York when he glanced up and saw a plane flying close to the city’s skyscrapers. 

“I immediately saw in my mind’s eye a giant gorilla on top of the building and I thought to myself, if I can get the gorilla logically on top of the mightiest building in the world and then have him shot down by the most modern of weapons, the airplane, then no matter how great he was in size that gorilla was doomed by civilization. And I remember saying aloud to myself, ‘Well, if that isn’t a chariot race, I don’t know what is.’”

-excerpted from James Sander’s Celluloid Skyline

via King Kong (1933, dir. Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack)

Merian C. Cooper had been working on a script about the discovery of a giant ape on a remote island, but he couldn’t think of a good ending. He wanted a “chariot race”, a la Ben Hur - a climax that would nail audiences to their seats. He found his chariot race while in New York when he glanced up and saw a plane flying close to the city’s skyscrapers. 

“I immediately saw in my mind’s eye a giant gorilla on top of the building and I thought to myself, if I can get the gorilla logically on top of the mightiest building in the world and then have him shot down by the most modern of weapons, the airplane, then no matter how great he was in size that gorilla was doomed by civilization. And I remember saying aloud to myself, ‘Well, if that isn’t a chariot race, I don’t know what is.’”

-excerpted from James Sander’s Celluloid Skyline

A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965, dir. Bill Melendez)

“I’m tired of being thought of as Miss Goody Two-Shoes, the girl next door, Miss Happy-Go-Lucky. You doubtless know the remark dear Oscar Levant once made about me—‘I knew her before she was a virgin.’

Well, I’m not the All-American Virgin Queen and I’d like to deal with the true, honest story of who I really am. This image I’ve got—oh, how I dislike that word ‘image’—it’s not me, not at all who I am.”

-Doris Day (photo by Jimmy Mitchell, circa 1963) (via)

“I’m tired of being thought of as Miss Goody Two-Shoes, the girl next door, Miss Happy-Go-Lucky. You doubtless know the remark dear Oscar Levant once made about me—‘I knew her before she was a virgin.’

Well, I’m not the All-American Virgin Queen and I’d like to deal with the true, honest story of who I really am. This image I’ve got—oh, how I dislike that word ‘image’—it’s not me, not at all who I am.”

-Doris Day (photo by Jimmy Mitchell, circa 1963)

Frederic March & Evelyn Venable in Death Takes a Holiday (1934, dir. Mitchell Leisen) (via Sin in Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood)

To life. And to all brave illusion.

via A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965, dir. Bill Melendez)