Another Classic Has Left Us

I remember listening to an interview with him years back. He said that he had routinely turned down roles where the script called for him to use profanity - which he refused to do.

Not sure if he stuck to that his whole career, but I was impressed by him throughout that interview.

Here are some other quotes associated with the actor. The last one on Women's rights is a hoot.

• "Spencer Tracy was the first actor I've seen who could just look down into the dirt and command a scene. He played a set-up with Robert Ryan that way. He's looking down at the road and then he looks at Ryan at just the precise, right minute. I tell you, Rob could've stood on his head and zipped open his fly and the scene would've still been Mr Tracy's."
• "The trick is not to become somebody else. You become somebody else when you're in front of a camera or when you're on stage. There are some people who carry it all the time. That, to me, is not acting. What you've gotta do is find out what the writer wrote about and put it into your mind. This is acting. Not going out and researching what the writer has already written. This is crazy!"
• "Everything I do has a moral to it. Yes, I've been in films that have had shootings. I made The Wild Bunch (1969), which was the beginning of the splattering of blood and everything else. But there was a moral behind it. The moral was that, by golly, bad guys got it. That was it. Yeah."
• "Ever since they opened the floodgates with Clark Gable saying, 'Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn,' somebody's ears pricked up and said, 'Oh boy, here we go!'. Writers used to make such wonderful pictures without all that swearing, all that cursing. And now it seems that you can't say three words without cursing. And I don't think that's right."
• "No, I've never done anything (drugs). At least, not to my knowledge. I once took a bunch of goofballs by accident. They looked like candy. They were in a little bowl at a party. I grabbed a handful and went to town. That was some New Year's Eve. I didn't have a coherent thought till February."
• On his marriage to Ethel Merman: "Biggest mistake of my life. I thought I was marrying Rosemary Clooney."
• On his $5,000 salary for playing the eponymous lead in Marty (1955), which won him a Best Actor Oscar: "...I would have done it for nothing."
• On Women's Rights: "They tried it the wrong way. You can't expect anyone to take you seriously if you burn your undies and tell me I'm a pig. That's why it failed. Too many ugly broads telling me that they don't want to sleep with me. Who wanted you anyway?"