Top 90 Mgm Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

A good portion of my work with Tangerine Dream at the time involved film music, and I remember approaching it as any 23-year-old would - without much fear or respect. Also, Tangerine Dream was typically asked to deliver a monochromatic kind of score, the electronic-analog trademark sound that TD had become famous for following landmark films such as Sorcerer [Universal, 1977], Thief [MGM, 1981], and Risky Business [Warner Brothers, 1983].

I'm from Chicago, my family started a chain of movie theaters in Chicago that were around for 70 years and then one of them became the head of Paramount and the other was the head of production at MGM and we all came out of Chicago.

I am willing to spend whatever it takes … My moral standard compels me to speak out on this issue because I am the largest company by far in the industry and I am willing to speak out. I don’t see any compelling reason for the government to allow people to gamble on the Internet and nobody has ever explained except for the two companies whose special interest is going to be served if there is gaming on the Internet, Caesars and MGM.

Most of the contract people at MGM stayed and stayed and stayed. Why? Because the studio looked after them. Warner Brothers wouldn't - they were always spanking somebody or selling them down the river.

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!

Fact is, awards shows were never really about recognizing achievement. They were a publicity ploy cooked up in the late 1920s by MGM topper Louie Mayer and his newly formed Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences which was itself, back in the day, nothing but a front organization to discourage unionizing.

I remember vividly seeing 'Tarzan' and Fred Astaire, the Chaplin films, Fred Astaire musicals, MGM, because of my mother. She was just interested in everything and she took me to opera and ballet, and then ballet got me hooked.

All the Warner actors were real actors. They started in theater and led very straightforward lives - you never saw entourages around. The MGM girls were the glamour girls, and they always had the makeup and hair people with them and all that.

I tap danced for ten years before I began to understand people don't make musicals anymore. All I wanted to do was be at MGM working for Arthur Freed or Gene Kelly or Vincent Minelli. Historical and geographical constraints made this impossible. Slowly but surely the pen became mightier than the double pick-up time step with shuffle.

Ballet is a closed world and very rigid; MGM was a fairyland. You'd walk down the lot, seeing all these fabulous movies being made with the greatest talent in the world sitting there. It was a dream to walk through that lot.

I saw Bob Arum out in America, I saw him walking through the lobby in the MGM Grand. I basically went over and said: 'You're running out of opponents for Crawford and I'm the guy to beat him. I'm here.' I saw Terence Crawford, he said he was ready for it, so everybody is on the same page. Everyone wants to make the fight.

Actually, my true name is Rosa Dolores Alverio. And then I became Rosita Moreno when a stepfather stepped in. And when I got to MGM studios, which was my first film contract, they just thought that Rosita wasn't a good name, and they changed it to Rita. And yes, it was their idea.

We did the original 'Stargate' as an independent movie. It was a surprise success. Shortly before the movie came out, the financiers who were frightened the movie might not do well sold the film to MGM. When the film came out, it was a hit and spawned TV shows.

I had a really good time at MGM. And we had no quarrels much, except once in a while, I'd go up to the front office and say I thought I should be doing something big, like washing elephants ... All my life I wanted to have talent ... Finally I had to admit there was nothing there.

At MGM, you knew you were going to be working next year; you knew you were going to get paid. But I was too ambitious musically to settle for it. And I wanted to gamble with whatever talent I might have had.

In the beginning I had a real work problem. Every time I had job I had to convince the immigration authorities I was the only man for that job and get a special work permit until I went under contract to MGM.

I like to think that I gave Jack Warner Brothers inking and Joe Sinnott gave him MGM inking. If you're not as in love with old movies as I am you might not make that connection, but I can see that connection.

Growing up, I would watch a movie on video and would go to the back of the VHS and locate the address for Universal Pictures or MGM or whatever. I'd write to the studios asking them if I could be in a movie. They never wrote me back.

There was this little shaggy dog on it, and Frank Weatherwax was working the dog. One day we were all sitting around, and Frank said, listen, my brother Rudd just got the rights back from MGM for Lassie, and said have your agent check into it. I did, and I went for a screen test.

We had the same doomsday people when we were building the MGM Grand, same people, same doomsday. You have to ask a lot of questions and listen to people, but eventually, you have to go by your own instincts.

Herb Solo at that time was the head of MGM. I said, 'I want to live like Clint Eastwood.' Did I know at that time Clint Eastwood, to him, Heaven was a truck, a dog, and a picnic basket for food or something?

You asked me my favorite question: What happened and what did you learn from being under contract to MGM? And the answer is I know how to make movies. I understand how to do that. I've been doing that my whole life. It's just easier to raise the money yourself and then hire yourself. It's possible if you reduce your own budget a little.

Either I'm going to be like an MGM starlet - get married five times, it will be a bit of a laugh - or I will get pregnant, by accident, with someone I barely know. We'll get through it. They'll be a great co-parent. We definitely won't end up together.

I remember a meeting I had at MGM. It was at the end of their reign. They say we have you under contract, and because you’re under contract, we’d like to you to work. I said, well, that seems fair. But if it’s a really good movie, they were going to give it to a particular actor that was not under contract. The bottom line was they were going to pay you more if it was a bad one and pay you less if it was a good one.

Pippin had an opening number called "Magic to Do," and Jules Fisher, the brilliant lighting designer lit it. Tony Walton did all of the sets. As a kid I thought, "Wow, I'm seeing onstage what a MGM musical would look like live." It was that good, and it was directed by Bob Fosse.

It was an absolute honour to fight in Vegas. Every fighter dreams of fighting at the MGM Grand. That's where so many legends have fought before and so many legends will continue to fight.

I had an opportunity to meet Elvis, only once. It was at the MGM Grand. It was certainly not at the height of his career. No, it wasn't at the height of his career, but it was still a thrill to see him and meet him anyway. You know?

I'm a big Broadway fan and a big MGM fan.

As a kid, I just was a contract player at MGM Studios. They put me into goodness knows how many different roles.Some of them were wonderful and some of them were very just distasteful and awful because I was playing out of my age range and I was thoroughly uncomfortable, let's put it that way. So it took me many years to find my acting feet.

I worked with so many comedians who became big names - so many, I can't even remember some of their names. John Byner, Totie Fields, Joan Rivers. Shecky Green at the MGM. When I started my career, my first hotel in Las Vegas was at the old Flamingo. My opening act was Bill Cosby.