Irving Thalberg Quotations

The movie medium will eventually take its place as art because there is no other medium of interest to so many people.

Credit you give yourself is not worth having.

Novelty is always welcome but talking pictures are just a fad.

Forget it, Louis, no Civil War picture ever made a nickel.

A story never looks as good as when the other fellow buys it.

Compliments you pay to yourself aren't worth having.

No story ever looks as bad as the story you've just bought; no story ever looks as good as the story the other fellow just bought.

What's this business of being a writer. It's just putting one word after another.

Screen credit is valuable only when it's given you. If you're in a position to give yourself credit, you don't need it.

The most important person in the motion picture process is the writer... and we must do everything in our power to prevent them from ever realizing it.

The producer beating a new path for himself through the wilderness is going to do the thing 'differently,' of course. But after a while, he looks about him. The territory is unfamiliar, the forest ahead forbidding. Just how 'different' dare he be? He looks at his resources, and then at the established successes of the past. He suddenly realizes he must play safe, be sure. The unknown is a gamble; the known isn't-at least comparatively. The safest plan, obviously, is to follow the trailblazers. So he produces an imitation of one of the current successes. Usually it is a mediocre imitation.

If it isn’t for the writing, we’ve got nothing. Writers are the most important people in Hollywood. And we must never let them know it.