Papa told her about a Lohengrin performance. It was just before his first entrance. He was ready to step into the boat, which, drawn by a swan, was t… - Walter Slezak

I never lie unless it is absolutely necessary. Or convenient.

You have to work five or six years in the theatre—in hit shows—to make people sick and tired of you, but this you can accomplish in only a few weeks on television. It's a remarkable medium.

In that wonderful musical show Knickerbocker Holiday Maxwell Anderson defined the outstanding characteristics of an American as "one who refuses to take orders!" I think that I qualified for that, my chosen nationality, at an early age. As far back as I can remember, an expressly given order triggered instant defiance. My little mind started functioning like an IBM machine; signals flashed in my resistance center, lights flickered around my resentment glands, bell and buzzer alerted all the cunning of a five-year-old. Strategy and tactics went to work, not to rest till they had circumvented or defied that specific order. I don't know if that character trait was deplorable or laudable; I only know that I have never been able to lose it. And I am extremely grateful that I was too young to serve in the First World War and too old for the Second; I surely would have been court-martialed for insubordination, and expired in front of a firing squad. Even today, at my ripe old age, if someone suggests I do something and this suggestion is tinged with an excessive amount of authority, I immediately turn into a bristling fortress of resistance.