Hollywood: the Oral History by Jeanine Basinger

Author:Jeanine Basinger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

The Product

FRANK CAPRA: What’s remarkable is how many of our old pictures can be played today. Think of the names of some of them, and you’ll see what I mean. I’m happy to say that It Happened One Night and It’s a Wonderful Life are among them. But think of the vehicles created for the stars that were the famous Hollywood movies that everyone talks about and writes about. Casablanca, Stagecoach, Mrs. Miniver, The Awful Truth, High Noon, and Shane, My Man Godfrey, How Green Was My Valley, Rebecca . . .

RICHARD SCHICKEL: . . . The Adventures of Robin Hood, White Heat, Public Enemy, Cover Girl, Top Hat, Swing Time . . .

ROBERT WISE: . . . I like to think West Side Story and The Sound of Music will endure . . .

VINCENT SHERMAN: . . . Now, Voyager, Mildred Pierce . . .

GEORGE CUKOR: . . . Camille . . .

VINCENT PRICE: . . . Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man . . .

ARTHUR KNIGHT: . . . Singin’ in the Rain, Some Like It Hot, Double Indemnity . . .

ROBERT WISE: . . . Citizen Kane, The Cat People . . .

MERVYN LEROY: . . . The Wizard of Oz . . .

OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND: . . . Oh, so many, so many, and let’s not forget Gone with the Wind.

FRANK CAPRA: The Hollywood Product. Made to make money and last for one season. Still alive and being watched and respected today. Old Hollywood: America’s definition of itself.

MERVYN LEROY: Oh, don’t get me started! We all remember the pictures we made, the successes and the failures! It was our life . . .

MITCHELL LEISEN: . . . all the things that happened on set and the ups and downs, the big plans that went to hell and the poor little project that caught on.

HAL MOHR: I remember every minute of it, and I would be ready to do it all over again right now. It was a great life, and the films were great, the memories even better.

I. A. L. DIAMOND: Everybody can quote half a dozen good lines from Casablanca, from Ninotchka, from The Maltese Falcon and any number of other pictures. Now, the two big laughs in Shampoo, as far as seeing it in the theater, were “I want to suck his cock” and “Do you want to fuck?”

BILLY WILDER: Now, having got that off our chests . . . I’m kind of surprised that you used such language.

I. A. L. DIAMOND: I’m just quoting.

KATHARINE HEPBURN: Sex, pornography, and obscenity have always sold better than anything else. Now you make it respectable and you make it sort of an art form. . . . [Sam Peckinpah] knew better than to make Straw Dogs. This is the rottenest piece of work that I ever saw . . . it’s laughable and cheap. It is brutality . . . I think it’s phony. I think A Clockwork Orange is phony. I think that Sunday Bloody Sunday is phony.

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