Quotes: Actor William Powell

Quotes from William Powell:

'I highly recommend worrying, it is much more affective than dieting.'

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'Cultivate quiet, solitude and a few sincere friends, rather than mob, merriment and thousands of nodding acquaintances'

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'Dessert is probably the most important stage of the meal because it will be the last thing your guests taste before they pass out all over the table.'

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(Talking about Myrna Loy) 'When we did a scene together, we forgot about technique, camera angles, and microphones. We weren't acting. We were just two people in perfect harmony. Many times I've played with an actress who seemed to be separated from me by a plate-glass window; there was no contact at all. But Myrna, unlike some actresses who think only of themselves, has the happy faculty of being able to listen while the other fellow says his lines. She has the give and take of acting that brings out the best.'

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'Even my best friends never fail to tell me that the smartest thing I ever did was to marry Myrna Loy on the screen.'

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'One or two gestures can be equivalent to a whole script, but those gestures have to have point and appropriateness.'

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(About his wife Diana) ' I'd have been a dead man without her. She's my life'

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Quotes from Myrna Loy:

'My first scene with Bill, a night shot on the back lot, happened before we'd even met. Woody (W. S. Van Dyke) was apparently too busy for introductions. My instructions were to run out of a building, through a crowd, and into a strange car. When Woody called 'Action,' I opened the car door, jumped in, and landed smack on William Powell's lap. He looked up nonchalantly: 'Miss Loy, I presume?' I said, 'Mr. Powell?' And that's how I met the man who would be my partner in fourteen films.'

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'When he died, at ninety-one, I was one of the first people Mousie called. For weeks afterward, friends wrote and telephoned condolences, as if I had lost a husband. Well, our screen partnership lasted thirteen years through fourteen pictures, longer than any of my marriages. To this day, forty years after our last appearance together, people consider us a couple. I never enjoyed my work more than with Bill. He was a brilliant actor, a delightful companion, a great friend, and, above all, a true gentleman, with those often attributed but seldom possessed qualities: great style, class, breeding. There's nobody like him. There's never going to be anybody quite like him. I miss him more than I can say.'

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'The later ones [the Thin Man pictures] were very bad indeed, but it was always a joy to work with Bill Powell. He was and is a dear friend and, in the early Thin Man films with director W.S. Van Dyke, we managed to achieve what for those days was an almost pioneering sense of spontaneity.'

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'[William Powell] had that marvelous subtlety that was so compatible with my style of acting. He was a very witty man, a great wit, and knew how to use it.'

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