19 Quotes by Jeanine Basinger

Movies with interfering in-laws and kids are often presented as comic, the ridicule bringing welcome relief to beleaguered married folks suffering offscreen at the hands of relatives.

Movies endorsed unwanted ideas by putting them into story form and resolving them up there on the screen. The goal was, as always, identification, but also relief.

The true marriage movie involving in-laws and children is a story about how marriage is directly affected by external characters who impact the central relationship in various ways.

When Clark Gable, MGM's most popular and famous leading man asked for a percentage of the profits from his films, he was flatly refused. A top executive was reported to have said, He's nobody. We took him from nobody. We lavished him with lessons and publicity and now he's the most desired man in the world. Who taught him how to walk? We straightened his teeth and capped them into that smile. We taught this dumb cluck how to depict great emotions, and now he wants a piece of the action? Never!

... in the movies Paris is designed as a backdrop for only three things--love, fashion shows, and revolution.

A small town is automatically a world of pretense. Since everyone knows everyone else's business, it becomes the job of the populace to act as if they don't know what is going on instead of its being their job to try to find out.

In Beautiful, Mr. Shearer writes with humor and has fun with some of the glorious nonsense of Lamarr's movies.

Everyone will tell you how rigid I am, but a teacher has to be flexible. You can't cut the student to your cloth; you have to cut yourself to theirs.

Loving and appreciative, researched to a fare-thee-well, and pitched to both fans and first-time viewers of Singin' in the Rain, this delightful book delivers almost as much fun as the film itself.