- Hollywood is a lovely place to get knifed in. Today's stars are deadheads compared to the Doug Fairbanks, Errol Flynns, and Clark Gables of my day. Whatever happened to the strong leading man with no hang-ups? And today's child stars? I don't see the ability of any of these kids to carry a picture by themselves... I think their ability lasts as long as a commercial; on, off, hey, wasn't he cute?
- I drank milk from my own ranch. I had a 65' by 80' room filled with toy trains and my own golf course and football field in my backyard. Other boys went to see Babe Ruth. Babe Ruth came to see me.
- [Asked about what gratified him most after a long life] The thing I am proudest of is that I've never been beaten at Scrabble.
- There were 300,000 people waiting on the clock at Southhampton to meet me. And thousands more outside my hotel in London. Every hour I would go out on the balcony and wave.
- It was the lowest point in my life because my stepfather was related to many people and was blackballed by the studios. I found out then the only thing anybody respects in this world is a dollar. Without money, you're nothing.
- I had the flu in New York and pushed the President of the United States off the front pages.
- I was very close to my father. Very close. My father wanted me to have the money.
- [on meeting Charlie Chaplin] It was around 11 at night, in the Alexandria Hotel. I talked with Mr. Chaplin a while, then fell asleep in a chair in the hotel lobby.
- Normal boy? How would I know what a normal boy would do? When I was 7, we bought a big house at the corner of Wilshire and Western and put in one of the earliest swimming pools in Southern California. Being who I was, I had the best swimming instructor - Duke Kahanamoku the year after he won the Olympics. When I was 10, I was playing golf exhibitions with Gene Sarazen and Walter Hagen. I surfed from Baja California to San Francisco when there were only nine or 10 surfers on the entire Pacific Coast. I spent three-month summer vacations in our High Sierra cabin 60 miles from the nearest road. I drank milk from my own ranch. Other boys went to see Babe Ruth. But Babe Ruth came to see me.
- Mr. Chaplin took me to a Barnum and Bailey circus right after we finished 'The Kid.' I never saw him much after that. I stopped at his studio once when I was 21. When I mentioned I'd never seen 'The Kid,' he shut down the picture he was shooting, took me to lunch, and then to a projection room where he played the organ to accompany the picture. I never had seen the picture. I'd gone to the premiere, but I fell asleep.
- I gave Douglas Fairbanks the idea of doing 'The Black Pirate.' I sat with Doug and Mary at the Photoplay Awards. I had just read Howard Pyle's 'Book of Pirates,' and I told Doug all about the book. After dinner Doug said to my father, 'Big Jack, can I borrow Jackie? He's got a book we want to talk about.' So I spent the night at Pickfair. While Doug wrote out a descriptive script from the book, Mary and I had a pillow fight. She was very short, only about 4 feet 11 inches, and I used to think she was a kid. I used to think Chaplin was a kid too because he was so much smaller than the people who surrounded him. Doug gave me a check for $10,000. When I showed it to my dad, he said, 'You don't want to take that. Isn't Douglas a friend of yours?' I said, 'Yes." Well, do you sell things to your friends?' I told my dad, 'You pay me a dollar every time I invent something for one of my movies!' But I gave the check back.
- You could walk down the street and meet the top 10 box-office stars; and if Doug and Mary and Tom Mix weren't on the street, they were having a hamburger at the White Spot; and on Monday nights all Hollywood went downtown to see their old friends in vaudeville at the Orpheum.
- I was with Mr. Chaplin for one year and three days, an enormously long time to make a movie then, but he was writing the picture as we went along and sometimes we would close down for 10 days or two weeks while he got an idea. The picture was Chaplin's supreme effort, the test of whether he was a baggy pants comic or a real fine actor. After the picture was made, his fame was greater than anybody's in Hollywood.
- I was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital when I was 6. A car accident. My head was split in five places, a double basal fracture. I was out of the hospital 14 days later. And then seven trips behind the Jap lines and not a scratch on me.
- There's nobody left alive today from one picture I made. 'Oliver Twist.' 1922. We paid Lon Chaney $10,000 a week to play Fagin. My dad took me aside and said, 'You've got to protect yourself against this man.' I wanted to excel at everything I did. I loved my work. I had a fierce competitive spirit; and Chaney and I did everything but pick our noses to steal the scenes from each other. Today, in television, the idea is to hire $300-a week good-looking kids. When Peter Duel killed himself, the blood wasn't even dry before they had his part [in "Alias Smith and Jones"] recast.
- [on the Addams Family] I used to be the most beautiful child in the world and now I'm a hideous monster!
- We pioneered the commercial tie-up market, at one time my name was on 50 or 60 different items.
- Ask anyone, public adoration is the greatest thing in the world.
- Fester never talked in the Charles Addams cartoons, so I raised my voice an octave and gave him a beetling look. Fester has a lot going for him, but his only trouble is that he's one of the great losers of our time. Still, he's my kind of people. He's an irascible old goat.
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