Only in your imagination can you revise.

Sometimes I worked with just a background of a rock or a tree or black velvet, and just had to imagine the whole thing.

Cary Grant and I were doing a play in New York. He had a crush on me. Whenever we went to a party, he would always sit on the floor beside me. I thought that...

When we were making KONG, I went into the sound room and made an aria of horror sounds. I was in charge of it; there was no one there to listen to me. I was...

It was good for us, I suppose. Those kinds of times produce qualities in us that make us better for having had them. My parents were not getting along. My mother was quite intolerant of...

That was’ one time when my technique absolutely deserted me, I must admit. There was a wax face that he had created himself to cover his own ugliness. I was in his clutches and I...

Cary Grant was wonderful to work with on stage. He would move downstage, so that as he looked at me the audience had to look at me, too. He knew a lot about the theater...

It was so satisfying for me-a great reward, just to see it done well. And it was beautifully directed by my daughter Susan Riskin. Imagine, a play about my mother directed by my daughter?!

The fingers were pressed around my waist and then by leverage, they lifted me up into the air, and all the close ups were done that way.

Crawford washed her hands a lot. She washed her arms all the way up past her elbows. She just couldn’t get enough done in that direction. She was compulsive about being clean, clean, clean!

It was such a sweet relief to me, because I had always worked, I had always worked, I had always worked-and it was time to do something else.

There was a friend of my husband, John Monk Saunders, who was in charge of the sound department, which was a kind of reassuring thing.

For the purposes of the play, it was perfect to be able to use that and the stresses and strains that there were. At the end of the play, the mother realizes the terrible things...

Juan Tripp was a friend. Good name for an airline man, huh? Juan Tripp after another?

There were shots of Kong pulling at my clothes, but only in horizontal and never from above. Never from above.

He was just trying to tease me-I knew that later-but he said he’d have to leave because it wasn’t fair to have anyone in the room who was going to make fun of what he...

Lillian Gish thought that there should be a cabinet position for the arts and I think she was right. I think she was right.

They moved him with animation, you know, stop-motion. And then they had a huge rubber arm with a steel cable in side large enough to hold me.

I always admired good writing and read everything that came out. When I was married to John Monk Saunders, he read everything, too.

My children didn’t when they were little because I thought that they had to be of a certain age. I hoped they liked me well enough not to want to see me in that sort...

I think to have done TITANIC would have been a tortuous experience altogether. I feel good about where my life is, now. I feel free and joyous and happy and more liberated than I have...

They were very considerate, I must say. Every time I felt I was about to slip out of these fingers and would yell for help, they’d let me down and re-organize things.

I just imagined I was four miles from help and, well, you’d scream too if you just imagined that situation with that monster up there!

Now the copyright has been extended 20 years, but prior to that they paid no attention to these people, and some of them really need help.

There is a lot of strength and intelligence in Hollywood.

Well, the Empire State was about 40′ high in the studio. King Kong was a little model about 2′ high, and the scenery that he worked in was in proportion to his size.

I think the studio gave me that series on purpose, because they knew perfectly well that Robert Riskin was ill and that I needed to go to work. They gave me that series to do.

Paul Lucas had a particularly amusing accent, so I chuckled. That was terrible; I shouldn’t have done that, but he took it too big. He got up and said he couldn’t work with people who...

When I did try to express myself it came out pretty tinny, but even so they could understand what I was saying. That turned out to be a plus.

I thought I saw him for what he was-or what I thought he was. And he was talented, no doubt about that. But, he thought his talent was based on misery and that if he...

She wanted us to feel we were above everyone in the town. She really did tell us that we were related to Chief Justice John Marshall, and that may have been true. I never did...

Actually, the camera was never overhead at any time. It was always a side view of me. Subsequently, after the picture was released, I saw some scenes from above and my clothes being pulled-and I...

When it was over my daughter said, ‘Oh, I felt so sorry for him – he didn’t want to hurt you, he liked you.’ That was Victoria. When you visualize him up there on top...

I thought maybe he would like me to do WILSON, and he was hoping that I wouldn’t. It was several days before we came to an open understanding.

So I was asked to do horror film after horror film, a series of about five, after that, and some of those were a little too gruesome. I wasn’t too comfortable all the time in...

As far as advice, that will be in my next book, my next collection. I certainly never like to instruct anyone, but just say as I feel. That’s the same as advice, isn’t it?

When the picture was finished, they took me into the sound room and then I screamed more for about five minutes just steady screaming, and then they’d cut that in and add it.

I went to Washington to ask for a little residual payment for the people who had written films in the early, early days, people who never got any residuals on tapes or anything at all.