Ray Hagen Quotes

Joan [Blondell] had always kept it real, always kept her priorities straight. "I wasn't that ambitious. I enjoyed a home life more than a theatrical career. I just took what they gave me, because I wanted to get home quickly." Joan, said one writer, personified everyone's "good friend," on- and off-camera. "Of all the stars I have interviewed," wrote Charles Higham, "I have liked Joan Blondell the best. She is unique in my experience in being an actress who is devoid of ego, self-congratulation and self-pity, and would not dream of quoting a favorable review of herself. She is down-to-earth and human and real. This is almost unheard of in Saran-wrapped Hollywood." Her accessibility, straightforwardness and her quick-with-a-comeback attitude was her appeal, and it never diminished as she got older.

When I was a kid I adored Katharine Hepburn, especially when she played Jo, the ballsy sister in Little Women. All the kids in school started calling me "Jo." I also loved Barbara Stanwyck, Ann Sheridan, Bette Davis, Claire Trevor - I didn't know them but after seeing them in so many movies, I felt like I knew them. They weren't feminists, they were just strong women, and I always admired anyone who had some guts. All those sweet, quiet, polite, ladylike little things just bored me to death. Back then there were so many wonderful women's stories being filmed, and so many strong actresses. But by the time I started doing movies they were mostly making men's stories. It has always saddened me that I never got to work with directors like George Cukor and William Wyler, directors who could really pull such marvelous performances from actresses." - Jane Russell

A point often ignored in cinema history studies of [Bette] Davis," wrote Jim Parish and Don Stanke years later of Housewife, "is that Ann Dvorak, who plays the film's title role, was established as a strong dramatic actress long before Bette, and it was she who set the standard for battling with the studio for better roles. In her quiet performance as Nan Wilson Reynolds, it is Miss Dvorak and not the already mannered Bette, who woos the audience's attention and affection. It is Dvorak who provides the proper artistic control for the feature…" The big difference between the two actresses was maturity. Bette, in these early movies, was very rough around the gills; she became polished, but always tended to slip into campy tirades. Dvorak was a natural; she was intense, but always in control, even in highly emotional situations.

The Depression was at its peak in 1933, and so was Blondell. She exemplified the average woman of that dismal period. Audiences could relate to her honesty, her drive, and her humor and strength in the face of adversity. She came across as one of them - a down-to-earth gift she never lost. "I related to the shopgirls and chorus girls, just ordinary gals who were hoping. I would get endless fan mail from girls saying, 'That is exactly what I would have done, if I'd been in your shoes, you did exactly the right thing.' So I figured that was my popularity, relating to the girls.

So here they are, a gaggle of highly skilled and utterly unique actresses whose pre-feminist strength and independence were awesome to behold. Whether with gags, glares or gats, they railed, they ranted, they raved, they rode roughshod. They ruled.

Her face gave her away: the half-smirk, her shadowy eyes and that look were sure signs that she was up to no good, even if she wasn't. You somehow suspected her motives might just be tainted. Not an asset for an actress who wants to play traditionally romantic leading roles, but great viewing for her fans who wanted her to be bad, wanted her to gun down the next dope who came along. Marie Windsor was at her best when she was ruthless or just plain tough; she made her roles interesting - heck, she looked interesting - giving them a visceral, raw energy many of them didn't deserve. Yeah, she couldn't be trusted, what of it?" - Laura Wagner on Marie Windsor

The vocal credits for Singin' in the Rain are interesting, and rather confusing. In the film, Debbie Reynolds has been hired to re-dub [Jean Hagen]'s dialogue and songs in the latter's first talking picture. We see the process being done in a shot of Reynolds, back to camera, matching her dialogue to Jean's and synchronizing it while watching the sequence on film. But the voice that is used to replace Jean's dialogue is not Reynolds', but Jean's own quite lovely natural voice. Director Stanley Donen explained, in Hugh Fordin's The World of Entertainment: "We used Jean Hagen dubbing Debbie dubbing Jean. Jean's voice is quite remarkable and it was supposed to be cultured speech, and Debbie had that terrible western noise." To further confuse matters, the voice we hear as Jean sings "Would You?," also supposedly supplied by Reynolds, is that of yet a third girl, unbilled studio singer Betty Noyes.

[Lucille Ball]'s such a TV icon it's hard for some to separate the two Lucys - the gorgeous, snappy actress of film and the wacky, slapstick queen of television. On TV she was a middle-aged housewife, on film she was a dazzling beauty. The difficulty with her movie career wasn't that she was bad or not up to the roles. Quite the contrary: They were rarely up to her.