Thirties Quotes

I made up my mind that I was going to play a real man to the best of my ability. I felt many of the western stars of the twenties and thirties were too goddamn perfect. They never drank or smoked. They never wanted to go to bed with a beautiful girl. They never had a fight. A heavy might throw a chair at them, and they just looked surprised and didn`t fight in this spirit. They were too goddamn sweet and pure to be dirty fighters. Well, I wanted to be a dirty fighter if that was the only way to fight back. If someone throws a chair at you, hell, you pick up a chair and belt him right back. I was trying to play a man who gets dirty, who sweats sometimes, who enjoys kissing a gal he likes, who gets angry, who fights clean whenever possible but will fight dirty if he has to. You could say I made the western hero a roughneck.

The reason I became a Republican is because (Dwight D. Eisenhower) was running. A hero from World War II, a charismatic individual, a military man, a non-attorney - even then I liked that! I was a very young person voting for the first time. A lot of people joke that a conservative is a liberal who`s made his first $100,000 and then decides,"Wait a second, I want to save this, why are they taxing it away?". Today the country`s in kind of a turmoil over taxing. Being raised in the thirties, watching my parents work hard to make ends meet, with jobs scarce, and then the war years - it tends to make a person a little more fiscally conscious than if you`ve been born into a wealthier family. You know, if you go to most people who are self-made and ask them what their political philosophy is, usually they`re a little more conservative than people who had a better start.

At the Cannes Film Festival in 1979: "We`re on the brink of something new. It will be similar to the invention of the American musical in the thirties. There will be a conceptualized, musical-video product and everyone`s waiting for the first Sergeant Pepper, if you like, on video-disc. The contemporary musical form is about to be discovered."

`Oh God, don`t make me come across as a moaner. I think it`s unacceptable to moan about anything when you`re lucky enough to do what I do. What I`m trying to say is I`m more settled now. The thirties have calmed me down. I know who my real friends are, I know what I want to do. In your twenties, you just do everything. It`s just overload all the time. In the thirties, you learn that it`s OK to go to bed early if you want.

In the Thirties, when I was in New York, I did the first surrealistic ballet in a show of mine.

Maybe the next question you ought to ask is: `Under these circumstances: why do I go on making films?` Well, I still would like you to feel the enthusiasm that all those people felt in the twenties and thirties, that indeed we had discovered, with cinema, the great 20th-century, all-embracing medium. There were extraordinary apologists for what it could become, but I feel it hasn`t become that. Cinema has been dragged down by mimetic association with all the other art forms, predominantly with the 19th century novel, and because of its distribution situation and its apparent desire to appeal to the lowest common denominator, it has gone in directions which have not fulfilled those extraordinary promises, in general terms. But I still have this sneaking, hopeful suspicion that we can return to those optimistic, ambitious days and make something of what could be a most extraordinary medium.

It`s all about cutting your teeth. I would hate to be thrust into the middle of a big film and not deliver. There`s young actors and they`re put into these central roles and they`re commanding armies - but they can`t quite pull it off. I`d much rather do it in small steps and build it from there. But at least now, for me, when they`re casting movies in America, the big question is, "Can he do an American accent?" Well, that`s answered now. He can do one, he can do a Thirties New Yorker.

In my thirties, I felt I had hold of one of the reins some of the time.

I still feel that I am in my prime right now but I think my best fights were in my thirties.

Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich.