Quotes

I don't think much of most of the films I made, but being a movie star was something I liked very much.

[about the attention she was getting as a cast member of the cult series Dark Shadows (1966)] I feel positively like a Beatle.

My film career faded. A man can go on playing certain roles 'til he's sixty. But not a woman.

[in 1984] The "Golden Age" is gone, and with it most of the people of great taste. It doesn't seem to be any fun any more.

[on Hollywood attorney Jerry Giesler] Whenever trouble arose in Hollywood, the first cry for legal help was, "Get Giesler!".

Meryl Streep can act Polish or English or Australian but she sure as hell can't act blonde.

[on femme fatales] Let people hiss. They'll still be sore at the bad woman long after they've forgotten the nice girl who got the man.

[on femme fatales] Few people remember good women. They don't forget bad girls.

[1946] There are hundreds of glamor girls in Hollywood, but actresses who are willing to let down their hair, are always in demand. Getting a salty role is like finding an old friend. One feels the significance of the character.

[1970] To me, Fritz Lang remains one of the great directors in the history of the business, and working with him was a fascinating exercise in the art of making motion pictures. On occasion, whenever he makes a trip to New York from his home in California, we still get together for a delightful evening of do-you-remember-when, and the-trouble-with-you-was.

[1970] Now that I stop to think of it, there are only a scant half-dozen of my own total of seventy films that were acceptable to me and they include Little Women (1933), Private Worlds (1935), Trade Winds (1938), Man Hunt (1941), The Woman in the Window (1944), and Scarlet Street (1945).

[on sister Constance Bennett] Of her fifty-five films, there were only five she considered worthy and she made no pretenses otherwise: Common Clay (1930), The Common Law (1931), What Price Hollywood? (1932), Our Betters (1933), and Topper (1937).

Had it not been for my new darker image, I'd never have been considered for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939).

Nineteen-thirty-nine was also a time of complete transition for my career. That was the year my hair turned prematurely brown. I was scheduled to do another film produced by Walter [Walter Wanger] and directed by Tay Garnett. Tay, who had just viewed Walter's film Algiers (1938), with Hedy Lamarr and Charles Boyer, insisted that Hedy was a brunette edition of me, and he and Walter thought it would be a great joke if they put me in a dark wig for Trade Winds (1938).

[on her change of appearance from blonde to brunette] No one anticipated the reaction, least of all me, but the resulting publicity went wild. An avalanche of mail poured into the studio; later, one of the national magazines did a cover story on the three lookalikes: Hedy, Vivien Leigh and me. A national hairdresser's association expressed its wholehearted approval and predicted a new trend of brunette-ism would sweep the country. Always the comments noted the striking resemblance between Hedy Lamarr and me. I could never see it myself. To me I just looked like Joan Bennett with dark hair, but there must have been something to it because often after Trade Winds (1938) was released, in dimly lit restaurants I was greeted as Miss Lamarr. Personally, I liked the idea of escaping from all that bland, blonde innocence and thought the whole thing was very funny, but I don't think Hedy found the comparisons very amusing.

For ten years, with the exception of Little Women (1933) and Private Worlds (1935), I'd played the insipid blonde ingenue, short on brains, long on bank accounts, the victim in a love triangle, and, for some reason that now escapes me, I was often English. Suddenly, I found myself filming Trade Winds (1938) in a dark wig, and with eyes at half-mast and voice lowered an octave, I positively smoldered all over the South Seas.

[on her sister, Constance Bennett] That beautiful sister of mine was an overwhelming and volatile mixture. One had the feeling that she'd been shot from a canon and showered her sparks over an incredulous world with no thought or care where they fell, a carbon copy of Father (Richard Bennett). She was like some silvery comet who streaked through life with daring speed, the wellspring of which was an inner confidence that I deeply admired. At times, particularly in childhood, I was intimidated by her but she dictated from an aura of affection for me that was never threatening.

I'm aware of the priceless privilege of having been born into the theater. Although it was a career I rejected at first, the profession has given me an incredibly varied life and more than my fair share of success, failure, love, laughter, and despair. I've not a single regret for any of it.