Robert Osborne Quotations

Lana Turner was adorable and funny. Jimmy Stewart was such a nice person. I quickly realized that if you're not a nice person, you're not going to last in this business. I mean, once your box office starts to drop off, like Veronica Lake, they'll get rid of you fast.

There comes a time when even icons, if they choose to do so, should be allowed to enjoy life out of the spotlight.

When Orson Welles was acting in 'Compulsion,' the director Richard Fleischer let him just take over and direct the courtroom scenes. To be able to see Welles - who knew more about directing than anyone - direct himself and the other actors, it was unbelievable and unforgettable.

When a movie opened - if you lived in New York, you would see it at Radio City Music Hall where it would play a couple of weeks, and then you moved on to the next movie. Now you can see it the rest of your life - it's going to be on Netflix and DVD.

One movie I think is just terrific is 'Bernie,' with Jack Black and Shirley MacLaine. That was a great surprise to me - so witty, so entertaining, a true story, and I'm not a great Jack Black fan, but he's great in it. I think it's a gem.

If I didn't have my little schedule book, I wouldn't get out of bed in the morning.

My age and my phone number are both unlisted.

There's a lot of movies that aren't all about Christmas, or where Christmas isn't the focus, but have that spirit of Christmas in them. I love that sequence in 'Auntie Mame,' where she's in the department store, sewing at Macy's, and she doesn't know how to do anything but fill out a form as 'cash on delivery!'

For a lot of filmmakers, their first goal is to be successful and make some money. But once people start doing that, the real goal is then to win an Academy Award. Because when they do, they know that their obit is going to start out, 'Academy Award winner so-and-so.'

I went to California at a perfect time... when many of those people that I had admired so much in films were not working that much. They had free time on their hands to talk to... me, and they liked me because I knew so much about them.

Seeing New York in the movies is what made me want to live in Manhattan one day. I eventually got my wish, and the city has never disappointed me.

I think that no matter whether you're Quentin Tarantino or any other kind of a rebel, or whatever, everyone who makes movies still wants to win an Academy Award, because it's like the Pulitzer Prize or the Congressional Medal of Honor.

I did see 'Gravity,' but I don't have the enthusiasm to go see a movie as often as I used to go.

I think 'Elf' is funny, with Will Ferrell. That's a great Christmas movie.

I think there's something about traveling in airplanes all the time that's not the healthiest thing in the world for you.

I'm very enthusiastic about the Academy Awards because if there were no Oscars, we wouldn't have as many good movies as we do have.

As a kid growing up in a small town in Washington State, my only exposure to New York City was through movies. The town with its towering skyscrapers, fascinating people and teeming energy absolutely captivated me.

Doris Day started performing at a young age, had a tough road to success, and once she achieved it delivered the goods 100 percent and brilliantly, always making difficult work look as easy as breathing.

I grew up in a small town where I went to the movies a lot and fell in love with all these people. I also fell in love with the movie business. So all I saw were actors on the screen so I thought, well, that's what I have to be if I want to be a part of the movie business.

I love to be able to meet people who are successful, and I love them not because they're successful, but usually people who are successful have qualities that make them interesting to be around.

I'd worked for, during one period, for a PR firm, and for a while Rock Hudson was a client of ours, so I knew him well, and I knew when he had AIDS, that he had AIDS, but I would not write about that.

In a business like the movie business, you're going to have a lot of people competing. Somebody is always coming behind them who wants their job. Being an actor is like being in quicksand: whatever you do, it disappears very quickly. You have to keep reminding people.

My folks were busy. My dad was a teacher, and it was during the Second World War, and my mother was working. So I got my stories from films and books. I read a lot, and I love to read to this day.

I did love 'The Artist.' I've seen it four times, and every time I see it, it gets better and better.

I always knew I was going to be successful in some way with films. I don't know why. I had no particular talent, but I always knew I was going to be sitting in a dining room with Lucille Ball and at a cocktail party with Bette Davis.

I used to write stories a lot because you had to fill your hours some other way than watching television. So my imagination was vivid, and I used to write a lot of stories. I wrote a novel, which I still have, which is so awful.

I was shaped by the heroes in the films I saw, which you always want to emulate and be like. I wanted to be like Alan Ladd, Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart.

I would be surprised if they gave Meryl Streep her third Oscar for a film as light as 'Julie and Julia,' although, of course, Katharine Hepburn's third Oscar came with a very light performance from her in 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.'

My love of movies started when I was 7 years old, living in a small town, going to the movies all the time, and finding the people in the movies more interesting than the people in my small town. Also, at that time, it wasn't that easy to find out about movies.

If they didn't have an Oscar for people to shoot for, all they'd do is be making 'Dumb And Dumber' again and again.

Most of those big movies are not that wonderful. This trend toward honoring smaller films ù it's a very healthy one.

For some reason, the movies in the '40s have the best personalities: Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper, Betty Grable, Gene Tierney, and all those people. For some reason, I seem to gravitate more toward the '40s, and I don't necessarily know why. I just love the people.

I always felt that Bette Davis was one of the great screen actresses who never really got her due - she won two Oscars, but the last was in 1938, and that was really before all the great work that she did.

I think Kennedy being assassinated changed the world. That shot changed everything about America, and made us cynical, made people discontent and angry.

I still think of Columbia as one Rita Hayworth movie a year, or maybe one a year directed by Frank Capra in the '30s. To see how many really outstanding movies Columbia made, and all together, is kind of eye-opening.

When I was growing up, you'd read about actors, and they'd never tell you their age and how much they made a year as part of their definition.

That's what she does so well. Molly always makes it a point to open my eyes to something new. Her whole take on movies is so much more intellectually based than mine. She also reads things into movies that I don't always see. I'm not sure the filmmakers always saw those things.

The weird thing with 'Kismet' is that Vincente Minnelli didn't know what to do with a Cinemascope camera for that film - so he never moved it! It's like in the old days when sound first came in and was so complicated that the camera just sat there. There are hardly any close-ups in 'Kismet,' so everything's at a bit of a distance.

You see a Clint Eastwood movie, and you might not know if it's from Universal or Warner Bros. or another studio. He has affiliations with so many studios now, but there was a time when you'd just look at a movie and think, 'Oh, that's a Warner Bros. film.'

I'm 77. The only reason I'm ever shy about it is that people tend to think of you in terms of what they think that age is. I certainly don't feel any different than I did when I was 35, and my energy seems to be more than it was then.

I liked 'The Help,' and I love Viola Davis. But I didn't think that film was a great film; I thought that was a very uneven film. I thought the Southern women were so caricatured that it was kind of like 'Harper Valley PTA' or something like that.

The British 'A Night to Remember' is so beautifully done and so well-constructed.

'The Hollywood Reporter' was always in. You always got great tables. You always got great seats at screenings. You always got treated well if you were at the paper.

There's an excellent movie we have on TCM called 'It Happened on Fifth Avenue,' which was originally going to be directed by Frank Capra... but just before he was going to start working on it, he came across this story called 'The Greatest Gift.' And that turned into 'It's a Wonderful Life.'

He shows great potential, but he's not there yet. But they weren't 'there' after being in the public eye for as short a time as Clooney has. It takes a long time to be a Cary Grant, to win the affection of the world the way he did.

I can't imagine any one more delightful to sit and talk with about movies on a regular basis.

The closest to Hepburn is Cate Blanchett.

America once had the clarity of the pioneer ax.

Of all the jaw-droppingly beautiful women who've become genuine movie stars, none has had a longer film career (62 years), has been filmed in Technicolor more often (34 times), has had a more versatile group of leading men (from John Wayne to John Candy) or has spent more time held captive on a pirate ship than our TCM Star of the Month for July, the magnificent red-headed Maureen O'Hara.

There’s something about Olivia de Havilland that has always set her apart from other actresses. Maybe it’s the combination of warmth, sensitivity and intelligence she conveys, or the way her good looks have always been further enhanced by the ever-present twinkle in her eyes or the wisdom you sense behind those orbs.