Virginia Woolf, from a diary entry written in October 1920, featured in The Diary of Virginia Woolf: Vol.2, 1920-1924
"Mother's connection with her fans was special. On the whole, their devotion to her, even when the headlines were unflattering, didn't waver. In fact, her ups and downs seemed to endear her to them all the more. They saw that she had her problems, too. There were some stars that seemed unreal, but for all her glamour, Mother retained an approachable side that her fans sensed. I think she was seen by them as Cinderella, who through a combination of luck and beauty of face and form, landed in movies. These qualities, combined with her personality, were embraced by the public and produced an enduring star.
"For her part, Mother respected her fans and recognized that the public makes a star. From the time she was very young, she appreciated the fan letters sent to her from people all over the world. In the beginning she read and answered as many pieces of mail as she could herself, but it quickly got out of hand and had to be managed by studio personnel. During a nine-month period in 1944 in which MGM monitored the fan letter flow to each of the stars, Mother and Judy Garland were shown to be ahead of the rest by far, each receiving close to 200,000 letters. After she left the studio, Mother hired a personal secretary for the first time and she dedicated a certain part of every day to signing photos, reading the mail, and dictating responses to her secretary. She took this very seriously. There were rare occasions when she was scared by a bizarre fan, but more commonly, there were special fans with whom she became comfortable enough to strike up regular correspondence, or even make telephone friends." -Cheryl Crane
LANA TURNER in THE YOUNGEST PROFESSION — 1943
Good dialogue simply isn’t enough to explain all the infinite gradations of a character. It’s behavior—it’s what’s going on behind the lines.
“The very best screenplay I was ever sent was `Double Indemnity.’ It’s brilliant, but what’s amazing is that not one word was changed while we were shooting. Billy had it all there, and I mean all - everything you see on the screen was in the script. The moves, the business, the atmosphere, all written. When I mention `atmosphere’ in `Double Indemnity’ - that gloomy, horrible house the Dietrichsons lived in, the slit of sunlight slicing through those heavy drapes - you could smell that death was in the air, you understood why she wanted to get out of there, away, no matter how. And for an actress, let me say that the way those sets were lit, the house, Walter’s apartment, those dark shadows, those slices of harsh light at strange angles -all that helped my performance.” — Barbara Stanwyck
౨ৎ
shoutout to the nightbloggers all my homies love nightbloggers
chicago 1927
“The big job in one’s life, it seems to me, is finding out what is important to you and what isn’t important. It’s a major tragedy to race after things you neither want or need.”