Women Born In The 1920s

"It's really splendid, my dear. Are you going to bring it into town?"

"I remember once saying that I'd like to go to university. My father told me: "I would rather see you dead at my feet than have you go to a university." I'm laughing about it now, but at the time I was terribly upset. I didn't even understand what going to university meant."

"I think my parents had visions of me being found in the Thames with six illicit foetuses in my womb and needle marks up my arm."

"I can remember what I ate. Coconut squares dipped in chocolate, wrapped in gold paper."

"[On Norman Wisdom] One knew that he would lay his hands on anybody [...] You had to make sure you nipped about a bit. There's a way of doing it without reprimanding. He obviously had a terrific inferiority complex."

"We'd seen all the rushes, which we thought very funny, but the premiere audience reaction was cold and so were the reviews. However, the moment it was released it made audiences everywhere laugh like anything, and it showed that our original reaction had been right. What a relief!"

"I recall playing practical jokes with John Wayne. I once got a whole bunch of keys and had little tags made that said, "If lost, please return to John Wayne, RKO Studios. Reward." And I just dropped them all over town. [He got a lot of] phone calls, people showing up at the studio. He never learned who did it."

"Ronald Reagan makes me proud to be an American. His intelligence, capability, and Christian brotherhood are so inspiring and his way of leadership is just superb. I consider myself lucky to have been his leading lady in The Bad Man and a short subject reel and as a nation all together we are beyond fortunate to have the leadership of such fine people as the Reagan's."

"(On her role in The Locket) My character was the greatest challenge I ever had – a destructive young woman who's a kleptomaniac. The form of the film – flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks – was criticised by some reviewers of the time as too confusing. Today, though, its style is highly regarded by film historians. . . Many movie fans seem to remember me best from the Dr. Kildare series but, first and foremost, I remember The Locket."

"(On her work in Keep Your Powder Dry) I didn't want to do it, but they said if I did it they would give me Undercurrent with Robert Taylor. Then they gave Undercurrent to Katharine Hepburn, so I left MGM."

"Gary [Cooper] turned out to be the surprise of my young life. He was so convincing with his stuttering, stammering awkward little boy manners. When the action called for Dr. Wassell to kiss me, I got all set for a bashful boy kiss. Well, it was like holding a hand grenade and not being able to get rid of it! I was left breathless."

"Cary [Grant] would arrive on the set and everybody's morale immediately lifted. The crew were crazy about him and so was I. But, curiously, I never felt the male-female chemistry that you sometimes experience on a set. I could have been talking to my best girl-friend."

"Hitchcock was a character. In one particularly scary scene I had to sneak down a dark corridor. When I got to the end there was Mr. Hitchcock, sticking out his tongue and flapping his hands in the back of his ears. I didn't dare laugh, because the cameras were turning. But he certainly eliminated any tension I felt."

"MGM never really gave me a break. They loaned me out for leading roles, but cast me in programme pictures."

"A lot of sources said I was born in 1917. That is incorrect. I was born in 1920. 1917 was the year the studios listed as my birth year to make me appear younger."

"I enjoyed working at RKO more than at MGM. At RKO the parts were better!"

"I am very much a Republican. I think that Richard Nixon is a great man and that he is very dedicated to what he does. I had the pleasure of meeting him when I attended the Republican National Convention in Miami. You can really tell that he is willing to go out of his way to help the American people. I am proud to support him as president and I wish him all the success in the world and may I also say that it was an honor to endorse him."

"Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin."

"in Divorce American style, there was the discomfort of seeing one of the beautiful wasted actresses of the screen, Jean Simmons. Her suggestions of sensibility - what she embodies - were too fine for the world of that movie. Her presence made the movie she was trapped in seem uglier."

"Adam and Evelyne was a charming light comedy in which Jean started off as a teenager who goes away to finishing school in Switzerland and returns a sophisticated young woman [-] It was quite extraordinary playing love scenes with someone you loved and who was in love with you. [-] She enjoyed it thoroughly and when, in the film, I was telling her how much I loved her but that I was afraid I was too old for her, she'd mutter under her breath, "You're telling me, you dirty old man." Later, when she had to tell me she loved me, she'd whisper "and I mean it, too.""

"The whole thing -[actor Stewart Granger's pursuit of Jean Simmons]- began as a joke but very quickly developed into a romance. [-] One day my agent called and told me the master, Rank, would like me to have dinner with him in his private suite at the Dorchester Hotel. [-] "Now, it's about Jean Simmons," he started in his flat Yorkshire accent. "I like to believe we're all a big family and I regard Jean as my daughter. (Well, you're a pretty damn mean father I thought, knowing the ridiculous salary he was paying to Britain's top female star.) "You're a married man with two children and what I hear is going on is wrong." "It's a disgrace" added John Davis who had been eyeing me balefully [-] I told them I was no longer married and that I had been divorced for six months [and] beat a hasty retreat.""

"No Cricklewood girl would ever admit to being from there."

"In ancient Rome, the gladiators went into the arena with these words on their lips: let me win, but if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt. Today, all of you young athletes are in the arena. Many of you will win. But even more important, I know you will be brave and bring credit to your parents and to your country. Let us begin the Olympics, thank you."

"You are the stars and the world is watching you. By your presence you send a message to every village, every city, every nation. A message of hope. A message of victory. The right to play on any playing field? You have earned it. The right to study in any school? You have earned it. The right to hold a job? You have earned it. The right to anyone's neighbor? You have earned it."

"Without my work I would be a neurotic mess."

"[A] cigar-smoking Barbara Cartland,"

"The Vicomtesse alias Moira Lister - even though she is on the wrong side of 60, is looking like an exquisite, flawless Gainsborough cameo."

"I do feel one learns more from one's failures than from one's successes,"

"Leona Helmsley is a truly evil human being. She treated employees worse than any human being I've ever witnessed and I've dealt with some of the toughest human beings alive."

"Helmsley would lick the dog, tongue to tongue. It was unhealthy, unnatural."

"We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes."

"A food is not necessarily essential just because your child hates it."

"No nice men are good at getting taxis."

"Hats divide generally into three classes: offensive hats, defensive hats, and shrapnel."

"There are some circles in America where it seems to be more socially acceptable to carry a hand-gun than a packet of cigarettes."

"I wouldn't say when you've seen one Western you've seen the lot; but when you've seen the lot you get the feeling you've seen one."

"The main purpose of children's parties is to remind you that there are children more awful than your own."

"The best careers advice given to the young ... is "Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it.""

"Any committee that is the slightest use is composed of people who are too busy to want to sit on it for a second longer than they have to."

"People get a bad impression of it by continually trying to treat it as if it was a bank clerk, who ought to be on time on Tuesday next, instead of philosophically seeing it as a painter, who may do anything so long as you don't try to predict what."

"The Philippines is in a strategic position. It is both East and West, right and left, rich and poor. We are neither here nor there."

"She spent money. No question about that...She is a world-class spender. She is a world-class shopper."

"A cunning child with a remarkable gift for both self-delusion and self-preservation. Marcos, who turned 75 last week, always maintained her childlike sense of entitlement, despite the harsh realities of life."

"I'm the Imelda Marcos of sunglasses."

"The best compliment I ever got in my life came from Chairman Mao of China. When I went there, at a time when nobody wanted to touch China with a 10-foot pole, Mao told me that I'm beautiful because I'm a natural, and he said natural is perfection. So, no character assassination can diminish me and my perfection."

"I've always maintained that the only things to uphold are the good, the true and the beautiful. We have to reject what's ugly."

"Thank God I never lost that childlike innocence and the purity of vision and naivete. …That childlike innocence was most useful, because if I was a bit wiser, I wouldn't have been able to do anything, perhaps. So I'm glad I was not smart."

"’Who is Imelda?’ I come from a third world country, third class province. And I was orphaned—and look, Imelda made it. If Imelda made it everyone can make it. At this age and stage I feel so good I’m still ready to fly.”"

"I am my little people's star and slave. When I go out into the barrios, I get dressed because I know my little people want to see a star. Other presidents' wives have gone to the barrios wearing housedresses and slippers. That's not what people want to see. People want someone they can love, someone to set an example."

"I seem to be able to only see the positive things in life and the beautiful things in life and when I see, for instance, garbage or ugliness, then I turn my back or I seem to be able to skip it."