Stanley Kubrick and Sue Lyon on the set of Lolita (Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1962)
“The perfect novel from which to make a movie is, I think, not the novel of action but, on the contrary, the novel which is mainly concerned with the inner life of its characters. It will give the adaptor an absolute compass bearing, as it were, on what a character is thinking or feeling at any given moment of the story. And from this he can invent action which will be an objective correlative of the book’s psychological content, will accurately dramatise this in an implicit, off-the-nose way without resorting to having the actors deliver literal statements of meaning.
…People have asked me how it is possible to make a film out of Lolita when so much of the quality of the book depends on Nabokov’s prose style. But to take the prose style as any more than just a part of a great book is simply misunderstanding just what a great book is. Of course, the quality of the writing is one of the elements that make a novel great. But this quality is a result of the quality of the writer’s obsession with his subject, with a theme and a concept and a view of life and an understanding of character.
Style is what an artist uses to fascinate the beholder in order to convey to him his feelings and emotions and thoughts. These are what have to be dramatised, not the style. The dramatising has to find a style of its own, as it will do if it really grasps the content.” - Kubrick in Words and Movies (Sight & Sound, 1960-61)
Rudy Bond and Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire (Dir. Elia Kazan, 1951)
Donald O’Connor and Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain (Dir. Stanley Donen 1952)
“Moses supposes his toeses are Roses,
But Moses supposes Erroneously,
Moses he knowses his toeses aren’t roses,
As Moses supposes his toeses to be!
Moses supposes his toeses are Roses,
But Moses supposes Erroneously.”
Audrey Hepburn during the filming of Funny Face in Paris, 1956
Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier at a press conference for The Prince and the Showgirl in the Waldorf Astoria Ballroom in New York City, 1956.
A twenty-five-year-old Elizabeth Taylor on the set of “Suddenly Last Summer”, in London, June 1959.
Humphrey Bogart in In a Lonely Place (Dir. Nicholas Ray, 1950)
“I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.”
Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift on the set of The Misfits (Dir. John Huston, 1961).
“Monty and Marilyn were psychic twins. They were on the same wavelength. They recognized disaster in each other’s faces and giggled about it.” — Frank Taylor
Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire in Top Hat (Dir. Mark Sandrich, 1935)
“I loved Fred so, and I mean that in the nicest, warmest way: I had such affection for him artistically. I think that experience with Fred was a divine blessing. It blessed me, I know, and I don’t think blessings are one sided.” — Ginger Rogers
Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins (Dir. Robert Stevenson, 1964)
“Early each day to the steps of St. Paul’s, the little old bird woman comes… In her own special way to the people she calls, come buy my bags full of crumbs. Come feed the little birds, show them you care, and you’ll be glad if you do. Their young ones are hungry, their nests are so bare; all it takes is tuppence from you. Feed the birds, tuppence a bag. Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag…”
