You will never work again in this town: a celebrities' all-out slugfest

Wordpress messed with my access to Opinion Renegada, so I asked April Camus and Dr. sipmac to post this here in the meanwhile. Enjoy:

Glamour aside, working in Hollywood is like being stuck in the most uncomfortable cubicle of the meanest soul-sucking corporation. So much for leaving it all to follow your celluloid dreams… today I found this article, and I wanted to share what the fray had to add.

Let the festivities begin!

• “Like sleeping in bed with a girl” – Ava Gardner on ex hubby Frank Sinatra
• “Go shave off your goddamn mustache you c**t” – Judy Garland to Ginger Rogers, inscribed on a stein beer mug
• “She knew how to sleep with the right people” – Liza Minnelli on Grace Kelly’s Oscar win
• “Her singing voice can peel paint off walls” – Judy Garland on Kathryn Grayson
• “She had so much ice water in her veins that she was pissing it” – Ramon Novarro on co-star Jeanette MacDonald
• “I am aware of how Miss Davis felt about my makeup in Baby Jane, but my reasons for appearing somewhat glamorous were just as valid as hers, with all those layers of rice powder she wore and that ghastly lipstick. But Miss Davis was always partial to covering up her face in motion pictures. She called it ‘Art.’ Others might call it camouflage- a cover-up for the
• absence of any real beauty. ” – Joan on Bette in ‘Baby Jane’
• “I’d wring her neck if I can find it” – Noel Coward on Claudette Colbert
• “It should have been called ‘All About Me’, dahling!’ – Tallulah Bankhead on Bette Davis in ‘All About Eve’
• “When she married him [Vincente Minnelli], I told Judy Garland directly to her face that I’d never shed another tear for her.” – Butterfly McQueen
• “It was the most shocking display of bad taste I have ever seen. Look, there’s nothing wrong with my tits, but I don’t go around throwing them in people’s faces.” – Joan Crawford on Marilyn Monroe
• “That little Barbra Streisand turned out to be a big ol’ shit” – Vivian Vance
• “I could smell his dentures when we were doing a kissing scene, which reeked of cigar smoke.” – Vivien Leigh on Clark Gable
• “My mother told me to only speak good of the dead. Joan Crawford is dead. Thank God!” – Bette Davis
• “”He played my father in my first picture [A Bill of Divorcement]. His attentions were very unfatherly. When we finished shooting I went up to him and said ‘Thank God I don’t have to act with YOU anymore!’ and he simply said ‘I didn’t know you ever HAD, darling!’” – Kate Hepburn on John Barrymore
• “Who does she think she isn’t?” – Yves Montand on Shirley MacLaine
• “Elvis not only dyed his blonde hair black, which he thought was more butch, but in some of his movies he wore more eyeliner than his leading ladies” – former co-star Alejandro Rey
• “I did a movie with Duke Wayne and was shocked to learn he had small feet and wore lifts and a corset. Hollywood is seldom what it seems” – Rock Hudson
• “Brando used to be a huge star, now he’s just huge” – former co-star Brian Keith
• “Bob Hope would attend the opening of a supermarket” – Marlon Brando
• “I saw this empty taxcab pull up and out hopped Sam Goldwyn” – Bob Hope
• “Marilyn was smart for only 10 minutes in her life, and that was the time it took to sign with Darryl Zanuck” – Anne Baxter
• “That broad’s got a great future behind her” – Betty Grable on Marilyn Monroe
• “THAT DYKE!” – Liz Taylor on Marilyn Monroe, in Marilyn’s prescence
• “She is a spoiled, indulgent girl, a blemish on public decency” – Joan Crawford on Liz Taylor
• “God it was awful. He can sing but he can’t do much else” – Natalie Wood on her brief fling with Elvis
• “Duke Wayne had 4 inch lifts in his shoes.. he was probably buried in those goddamn lifts” – Robert Mitchum
• Tony Curtis about kissing Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot. Take it away, Tony! “It was like kissing Hitler”.
• The costume designer, when he was making adjustments to Curtis’ female outfit, told MM that Curtis had a better ass than she did. She opened her blouse and shouted “Yeah, but he doesn’t have t**s like these!”
• “I found out that Carole Lombard wasn’t a natural blonde. We’re in her dressing room talking while shooting Bolero and she starts taking her clothes off. I didn’t know what to do!… then she starts mixing peroxide in a bowl and with a piece cotton began to apply the liquid to dye the hair around her honey pot. She glanced up at me and said ‘Relax Georgie, I’m just making my collars and my cuffs match’” – George Raft
• “Orson Welles always carries a little suitcase around with him because he’s ashamed of his small nose. He always puts a little putty or something on it.” – Jeanne Moreau
• “Think what my brother would’ve acheived if he had been celibate” – Shirley MacLaine
• “Woody Allen… is an evil man.” – Maureen O’Sullivan
• “I worked with Gig Young once in a film. You don’t get to know a man and you never know what he’s going to do. He had a bland personality, good looks, somewhat sad smile, and years later after he remarries for the second or third time he kills his wife! And I always thought the best of people!” – Joan Blondell
• “George C. Scott. Great actor. Big drinker. Wife beater. What else do you want to know?” – ex-wife Colleen Dewhurst
• “The least couth actress I’ve ever worked with? Bette Davis” – Helen Hayes
• “I’m Number 10 at the box office right behind HER! [Barbra Streisand]. Get me a bag I think I’m going to vomit” – Walter Matthau
• “C.B. DeMille invited me to a private screening of ‘Samson and Delilah’ Afterward he asked me how I liked it. I replied: ‘I never like a movie where Vic Mature’s tits are bigger than Hedy Lamarr’s'” – Groucho Marx
• “I always thought that Jane Fonda had a stunning figure. Did you see ‘Barbarella’? Why did she need do get a boob job? Just because her husband had an affair with a younger woman? What kind of role model solves her problems by making her bust bigger?” – Sandy Dennis
• “Chuck Heston has made acting in period pictures an art. A minor art.” – Ava Gardner
• “I said to Marilyn on the set of ‘Prince and the Showgirl’, ‘Why can’t you get here on time for f**k’s sake?’ And she replied ‘Oh, you have that word in England too?’” – Laurence Olivier
• “Goddamit, when is she going to be here, she’s going to give me a heart attack.” – Clark Gable about Marilyn Monroe on the set of The Misfits.
• “She was frightened, insecure. During our scenes in ‘How to Marry a Millionaire’, she’d look at my forehead instead of my eyes. A scene took probably 15 or more takes. I couldn’t dislike Marilyn, she had no meanness in her” – Lauren Bacall
• “She was the biggest bitch in show business, thank God I’ll never have to work with her again!” – Tom Bosley on Lucille Ball
• “Bruce Lee was an egomaniac. He thought it terrible that he had to be just a movie star when he really wanted to be a dictator. I’m not kidding!” – Lee Marvin
• “I wouldn’t say she’s dumb, but one time she squealed out loud on set that she had a terrific idea. The director stared at her and said ‘Treat it gently dear, it’s in a strange place.’” – Tony Randall on Jayne Mansfield, who had an above average IQ.
• “Yes I have acted with Clint Eastwood. Or rather I have acted opposite Clint Eastwood” – Geraldine Page
• “Gerry Page is a superb Method actress. I once asked her what her secret is and she replied ‘Talent’” – Helen Hayes
• “I didn’t know what to make of Patty Duke’s erratic behavior. I thought she was a Method actress but then I was informed she was manic depressive” – Elsa Lanchester
• “I loved Bill Holden, but I couldn’t have knowingly married an alcoholic” – Audrey Hepburn
• “Joan Crawford was on the set, knitting. Lana Turner rushed over to her and yelled ‘The Japanese have destroyed Pearl Harbor!’ Joan looked up at her and said ‘Oh… my dear, who was she?’” – Mary Astor
• “I’ve never been a fan of Woody Allen. Many people say he’s the funniest in the world. I find him neurotic” – George C. Scott.
• “Abbott and Costello were famous for stealing furniture from their sets without the directors calling them out on it. But one did and Lou went home one day and saw that his grand piano was missing. The director made them return EVERYTHING they stole from the set.” – Joe Besser
• “I was in one of Woody Allen’s movies [Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask]. When I met him, I wondered how he was qualified to direct this movie”. – John Carradine.
• “On the set with Chuck Heston, we’d be sitting side by side for 20 minutes and finally I’d turn to him and say ‘You know you can’t sit next to somebody for half an hour and not even say hello. He boomed ‘WELL I CAN!’” – Edward G. Robinson.
• “Never mind Arthur, Pomona isn’t Lucille’s town.” – Judy Garland to Arthur Freed after a disasterous preview of Yolanda and the Thief, starring Freed’s mistress Lucille Bremer
• “Barbara Parkins… was so rude and petty all of the time. I just found her behavior to be so silly.”–Lana Wood, her co-star on Peyton Place.
• “John Wayne was the meanest, nastiest man with the worst attitude that I ever worked with.”–Jill Haworth, his co-star in In Harm’s Way.
• “Stella Stevens was a pain in the ass. They [the crew] called her Madame Stella–she thought she was some great stellar star. And she wasn’t really much of anything at the time [1962].”–Laurel Goodwin, her co-star in Girls! Girls! Girls!
• “Raquel Welch was a probelm on this movie and she was a major, major bitch.”–Lori Williams, her co-star in A Swingin’ Summer.
• “Jill St. John is an unbelievably cruel person who I am not fond of in the least!”–Quinn O’Hara, her co-star in Who’s Minding the Store?
• “Joey Bishop knew my husband at the time and he still came on to me. I was so angry at that asshole. I just felt that he was an absolute creep.”–Sharyn Hillyer, his co-star in A Guide for the Married Man.
• Jerry Lewis on Groucho Marx: “He took everything he heard at a cocktail party and turned it into material.”
• Red Skelton at disliked studio head Harry Cohn’s crowded funeral: “Give the people what they want and you’ll always sell out.”
• James Cagney on Horst Bucholz: “I’d like to knock him ass-over-tea kettle”
• After completing A Bill of Divorcement, Katharine Hepburn told John Barrymore, “I will never act with you again,” whereupon Barrymore replied, “you never have.”
• When director Sam Wood said to Groucho Marx, “you can’t make an actor out of clay,” Groucho retorted, “nor a director out of Wood.”
• “Mary Ann Mobley was a phony. She was saccharine, sweet and phony!”–Chris Noel, her co-star in Girl Happy.

Cut!

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