Forties Quotes

I had an eye job in my early forties. Someone took a photograph of me in a play, after I`d lost a lot of weight, and I did look like Miss Havisham. I thought: "I have to do something - I`m too young to look like this." So I went and had an eyelift once the play was finished, and the doctor said that it would last only about eight years. I imagined after that it would all cave in with a terrible groaning sound, like scaffolding, but it didn`t, and I haven`t had anything done since. I look at women who are my age who look absolutely ravishing and I know they have had something done. Well, why not?

I have mixed feelings about those sorts of things. When I see it done by interesting young people, I think it`s very valid. But when established photographers, people in their forties, copy me and get a lot of money, well, I find that to be very stupid.

Strangely enough, in movie writing I`ve been more influenced by big bands than by any other film composer. The big bands of the `forties and then the carry-over into the modern jazz field - Basie, Ellington, all the way up to Mulligan - these are my influences rather than, say, Franz Waxman or Tiomkin or anyone like that. I don`t think in their terms.

A few of us who are around the sixty mark don`t play that much these days and if you are taking on a couple of guys in their forties it is very difficult.

Every season I buy a double-breasted jacket but it could be fitted, very boxy. It could be oversized. It could be forties-shaped. So I think it`s my job to make it desirable and new for the customer and the customer always has to fill in that slot in their wardrobe.