Citations

A star is when someone says, "To hell with it, let's leave the dishes in the sink and go see Joan Crawford in a movie".

First I want everything an actress knows. I get her interpretation, then we talk.

Maurice Tourneur was my god. I owe him everything I've got in the world. For me, he was the greatest man who ever lived. If it hadn't been for him, I'd still be selling automobiles.

[on Greta Garbo] She has this great appeal to the world because she expresses her emotions by thinking them. Garbo does not need gestures and movements to convey happiness, despair, hope and disappointment, joy or tragedy. She registers her feelings literally by radiating her thoughts to you.

Working with [Greta Garbo] Garbo was easy because she trusted me. I never directed her in anything above a whisper. She was very shy, so we'd go through the changes I wanted in a little quiet whisper off in the corner, without letting others know what I was telling her. I learned through experience that Garbo had something behind the eyes that told the whole story that I couldn't see from my distance. Sometimes I would be dissatisfied with a take, but would go ahead and print it anyway. On the screen Garbo multiplied the effect of the scene I had taken. It was something that no one else ever had.

I direct children as I direct adults, always trying to understand their personalities, and to make them trust me wholeheartedly. Children have a very keen mental perception. They know when you speak to them condescendingly or try to trick them into doing something.

[on the first movies he ever saw c. 1912] In those days movies were nothing more than penny arcade entertainment. During my lunch hours I used to go into"'shooting galleries", as we called theaters then, and look at pictures. Gradually I had the feeling that I would like to try them.

[on Rudolph Valentino] He impressed me as a rather shy man who in private life had none of the exuberance of his film roles. I remember his love of sports cars. We had that in common.

[on The Trail of '98 (1928)] . . . the hardest film I ever made.

[on Elizabeth Taylor] She has a face that is an Act of God.