- Most of the time I played mothers. That's acting!
- Well, I never was one of those raving beauties, as you can easily see. But, I've got a good solid foundation, and maybe that's the reason I'm actin' in the movies. Goodness knows it isn't because I'm a glamour girl!
- The fountain of youth? Sure, there's one. It's all in your mind.
- Paint and powder and fine clothes and a snaky hairdo are only half an answer to this business of staying young after 45. It's what goes on inside your skull that counts.
- If you want to hit the show business jackpot, learn to make them laugh instead of trying to make them cry.
- [1951] Everybody's trying to be a Bette Davis or an Ann Blyth. There are plenty of funny men on stage and screen, but how many women? You can count them almost on the fingers of one hand - Betty Hutton, Marie Wilson, Joan Davis, Eve Arden, Judy Holliday, Lucille Ball. Who else is there?
- Why, this twang has always caused quizzical craning of necks in my direction whenever I really let it out. I'm getting pretty used to people telling me they never heard another voice quite like mine. I don't mind a bit because I know without this strange rasp I might never have met my late husband.
- It was because of my voice that I felt I could get Dr. Krebs, a lecturer with our traveling Chautauqua, to look in my direction if I really wanted him to. And I did want him to. I thought he was awfully nice. So one night upon leaving the show, I shouted at the doctor that I thought he was the smartest man I had ever heard talk. He turned all right. The raucous sound of my voice scared even me. I turned, too, to disappear as quickly as I could, and I fell flat on my face in a large, soupy mud puddle. The doctor and I were married shortly after.
- I got to feeling that my name was really Marjorie Dead End or somethin'. Every role I was offered was a slight variation of that poor mother [in Dead End (1937)]. That's why I accepted Lucy in The Women (1939). That's why I'm doing comedy now. And I'd like to keep on doing it. That is, if people seeing me on the screen really like it.
- [on doing comedy] It comes kind of easy, from remembering some of the honest and quaint characters back on the farm. And I must say, a sight more natural. I just unconsciously sort of blow into things with a bluster. I always have. Why, I'm tellin' you, if they dressed me up to play in society I bet I'd keep bumping into all the butlers and forever be stumbling up and down staircases. I don't have to do an awful lot of acting to appear kind of bungly. I feel mighty sure that the contract I signed with Metro will keep me doing the kind of things I like to do.
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