- Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union.
- A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.
- In two words: im-possible.
- My wife's hands are very beautiful. I'm going to have a bust made of them.
- Include me out.
- Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined.
- When you're a star, you have to take the bitter with the sour.
- If you can't give me your word of honor, will you give me your promise?
- What we need now is some new, fresh clichés.
- [on his longtime friend and partner, Louis B. Mayer] The reason so many people turned up at his funeral is this: they wanted to make sure he was dead.
- Every director bites the hand that lays the golden egg.
- Too caustic? To hell with the costs, we'll make the picture anyway.
- A wide screen just makes a bad film twice as bad.
- Flashbacks are a thing of the past.
- A hospital is no place to be sick.
- I don't care if my pictures never make a dime, so long as everyone keeps coming to see them.
- I'll give you a definite maybe.
- I read part of it all the way through.
- This new atom bomb is dynamite.
- You've got to take the bull by the teeth.
- Don't talk to me while I'm interrupting.
- Our comedies are not to be laughed at.
- Tell me, how did you love my picture?
- I never liked you, and I always will.
- Don't pay any attention to the critics; don't even ignore them.
- If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive!
- I never put on a pair of shoes until I've worn them five years.
- The scene is dull. Tell him to put more life into his dying.
- I was always an independent producer, even when I had partners.
- Go see it and see for yourself why you shouldn't see it.
- I'd hire the devil himself if he'd write me a good story.
- A producer shouldn't get ulcers; he should give them.
- For your information, I would like to ask a question.
- I may not be always right, but I'm never wrong.
- This makes me so sore it gets my dandruff up.
- When I want your opinion, I'll give it to you.
- A bachelor's life is no life for a single man.
- It's more than magnificent; it's mediocre.
- [on Fredric March] I'm overpaying him, but he's worth it.
- Color television! Bah, I won't believe it until I see it in black and white.
- When everybody's happy with the rushes, the picture's always a stinker.
- We'd do anything for each other; we'd even cut each other's throats for each other.
- We want a story that starts out with an earthquake and works its way up to a climax.
- Why should people go out and pay to see bad movies when they can stay at home and see bad television for nothing?
- [upon visiting the set of Dead End (1937), a film about life amid the grinding poverty of a New York City slum] Why do directors always try to make slums so dirty? Clean it up.
- . . . We've all passed a lot of water since then.
- Never make forecasts, especially about the future.
- I don't think anyone should write his autobiography until after he's dead.
- [on William Wyler's films] I made them -- Willy only directed then.
- [on Mary Pickford] It took longer to make one of Mary's contracts than it did to make one of Mary's pictures.
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