We were like a stock company at Warners. We didn't know any of the stars from the other studios.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I'm first and foremost a company man, surprising as that is. I love Warner Brothers. That's where I have a deal. That's where I've been for years. So I don't really interact too much with other studios and do things with other studios and I don't necessarily read scripts from other studios.
Hollywood sold its stars on good looks and personality buildups. We weren't really actresses in a true sense, we were just big names - the products of a good publicity department.
I think Warner Bros. are probably some of the best people in marketing films in the world.
All the Warner actors were real actors. They started in theater and led very straightforward lives - you never saw entourages around. The MGM girls were the glamour girls, and they always had the makeup and hair people with them and all that.
I had a big problem working with stars, because they are too expensive and have too many demands. Their names help you raise the money to make the movie, but then they demand close-ups. They change things. You end up doing things at their service instead of servicing the film.
Indie movies got co-opted by the studio system. The studios insisted that only stars could make movies successful.
I love the Warner Brothers lot. There is so much history there. They've done such a smart thing. They have signs outside of each stage which tell you what movies and TV shows were shot inside. So cool... you can almost feel the ghosts of actors past.
There are so many venues in which stars are exposed today, that we just know much more and the studios don't have the control over stars like they used to, in the 30s, 40s, and 50s.
I'm from Chicago, my family started a chain of movie theaters in Chicago that were around for 70 years and then one of them became the head of Paramount and the other was the head of production at MGM and we all came out of Chicago.
When you worked in a studio it was the studio system that you kind of missed because it was a big, big family. I mean MGM had 5,000 people working a day there. You miss it.
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