Joseph L. Mankiewicz famous quotes

07-12-2025

All playwrights should be dead for three hundred years.
-- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

#Years #Three #Hundred
The difference between life and the movies is that a script has to make sense, and life doesn't.
-- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

#Differences #Scripts #Make Sense
There is no such thing as realistic dialogue. If you [simply recorded] the real conversation of any people and played it back from the stage, it would be impossible to listen to. It would be redundant . . . . The good dialogue writer is the one who can give you the impression of real speech.
-- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

#Real #People #Giving
Funny business, a woman's career: the things you drop on the way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. It's one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not: being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted.
-- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

#Moving #Careers #Matter
So many people know me. I wish I did. I wish someone would tell me about me.
-- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

#People #Wish #Know Me
Please don't look at me as if you had a source of income other than your salary.
-- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

#Money #Class #Salary
[Writers are] the highest paid secretaries in the world.
-- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

#World #Secretary
And Kate Hepburn-God, she's beautiful, God, she plays golf well, God, she can get anyone in the world on the phone, God, she knows what to do all the time, God, she wears clothes well.
-- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

#Beautiful #Golf #Phones
In my last two years in high school, my face was pocked with pimples, I stammered when I spoke; if I made a mistake, I blushed furiously, and when nervous, as I was in the company of girls, I perspired freely.
-- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

#Life #Success #Girl
I am a critic - as essential to the theatre as ants to a picnic.
-- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

#Theatre #Essentials #Picnics
I've been in on the beginning, the rise, peak, collapse and end of the talking picture.
-- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

#Talking #Ends #Collapse
There's nothing as real as money.
-- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

#Real
Every screenwriter worthy of the name has already directed his film when he has written his script.
-- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

#Names #Scripts #Film
I'm not biting my fingernails. I'm biting my knuckles. I finished the fingernails months ago.
-- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

#Knuckles #Biting #Months
I got a job at Metro and went in to see Louis Mayer, who told me he wanted me to be a producer. I said I wanted to write and direct. He said, No, you have to produce first, you have to crawl before you can walk. Which is as good a definition of producing as I ever heard.
-- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

#Jobs #Writing #Definitions

You may also like:

Anne Baxter
Actress
Bette Davis
Actress
Celeste Holm
Film actress
Darryl F. Zanuck
Film Producer
Elia Kazan
Producer
Elizabeth Taylor
Actress
Gene Tierney
Film actress
George Cukor
Film director
George Sanders
Film actor
Herman J. Mankiewicz
Screenwriter
Howard Hawks
Film director
Jean Simmons
Actress
John Huston
Film director
Laurence Olivier
Actor
Montgomery Clift
Film actor
Rex Harrison
Actor
Richard Burton
Actor
Rouben Mamoulian
Film director
Thelma Ritter
Actress
Vincente Minnelli
Stage Director