George Sidney Quotations

I've had 79 to 80 years of show business. I started when I was 5 with a man called Tom Mix. I didn't have time to go to school because I was in silent movies, I was in radio, I was in burlesque, I worked with the circus. I'm all show business!

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.

Once I make a picture, I never look at it again.

It's a terrible thing to say I know. I've only done what I wanted to do. It's a real luxury. I only made the pictures I wanted to make and lived in the places I've wanted to live. I'm very, very happy.

Musicals became too expensive. When we were working at MGM, there was a whole company of talent - stars, directors, choreographers, song writers, conductors, arrangers. All worked under contract at regular salaries. To gather people like that today would be enormously costly.

Sinatra and I, my God, we got on wonderfully. We had great times together. When he came in, he had complete concentration.

Gable, at a quarter of eight in the morning, is banging on the side of his dressing room. At one minute to nine, you'd better be ready, the king was ready to be directed. He didn't want to fool around. If he anybody came in late, he would really go crazy. He was there to work and that was it.

I always say, 'I owe my career to golf. The test director went out to play golf. At 1 o'clock I walked out on the stage and there are these three girls, they're made up ready to be tested and I walked in and said, 'I'm the director.' And some guy in the back yelled, 'Well, go ahead and direct Charlie.' So that was it. That was the moment of truth.

When I was 50, I said, 'That's it,' And they said, 'How?' I said, 'What do you mean how? I've been working now for 50 years now.'

People, they want me to teach school, but no matter what I could teach - I can teach you to be a lawyer, because there are certain rules. There are certain rules in being a doctor or in building houses. But, in making a picture, there are no rules. It's just your particular instinctual feeling for what it is.

I made all these films and I had all kinds of great experiences. I worked with the great filmmakers and it was a very exciting life.