That’s one thing I like about Hollywood. The writer is there revealed in his ultimate corruption. He asks no praise, because his praise comes to him in the form of a salary check. In Hollywood the average writer is not young, not honest, not brave, and a bit overdressed. But he is darn good company, which book writers as a rule are not. He is better than what he writes. Most book writers are not as good.
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) American Novelist
I hate a man who always says “yes” to me. When I say “no” I like a man who also says “no.”
—Samuel Goldwyn (1879–1974) Polish-born American Film Producer, Businessperson
Hollywood makes prostitutes out of women and sissies out of men.
—Unknown
Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for stars.
—Fred Allen (1894–1956) American Humorist, Radio Personality
Where is Hollywood located? Chiefly between the ears. In that part of the American brain lately vacated by God.
—Erica Jong (b.1942) American Novelist, Feminist
You write a book like that you’re fond of over the years, then you see that happen to it, it’s like pissing in your father’s beer.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
If we have to tell Hollywood good-by, it may be with one of those tender, old-fashioned, seven-second kisses exchanged between two people of the opposite sex, with all their clothes on.
—Anita Loos (1888–1981) American Actor, Novelist, Screenwriter
I went out there for a thousand a week, and I worked Monday, and I got fired Wednesday. The guy that hired me was out of town Tuesday.
—Nelson Algren (1909–81) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
I can’t talk about Hollywood. It was a horror to me when I was there and it’s a horror to look back on. I can’t imagine how I did it. When I got away from it I couldn’t even refer to the place by name. “Out there,” I called it.
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American Humorist, Journalist
In the court of the movie Owner, none criticized, none doubted. And none dared speak of art. In the Owner’s mind art was a synonym for bankruptcy. The movie Owners are the only troupe in the history of entertainment that has never been seduced by the adventure of the entertainment world.
—Ben Hecht (1894–1964) American Screenwriter, Playwright
It’s a mining town in lotus land.
—Unknown
Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you will find the real tinsel underneath.
—Oscar Levant (1906–72) American Musician, Composer, Author, Comedian, Actor
I hate the place like poison with a sincere hatred.
—Unknown
Its idea of “production value” is spending a million dollars dressing up a story that any good writer would throw away. Its vision of the rewarding movie is a vehicle for some glamour-puss with two expressions and eighteen changes of costume, or for some male idol of the muddled millions with a permanent hangover, six worn-out acting tricks, the build of a lifeguard, and the mentality of a chicken-strangler.
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) American Novelist
Hollywood money isn’t money. It’s congealed snow, melts in your hand, and there you are.
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American Humorist, Journalist
The average Hollywood film star’s ambition is to be admired by an American, courted by an Italian, married to an Englishman and have a French boyfriend.
—Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) American Actor, TV Personality
The overall picture, as the boys say, is of a degraded community whose idealism even is largely fake. The pretentiousness, the bogus enthusiasm, the constant drinking, the incessant squabbling over money, the all-pervasive agent, the strutting of the big shots (and their usually utter incompetence to achieve anything they start out to do), the constant fear of losing all this fairy gold and being the nothing they have never ceased to be, the snide tricks, the whole damn mess is out of this world.
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) American Novelist
Isn’t Hollywood a dump—in the human sense of the word. A hideous town, pointed up by the insulting gardens of its rich, full of the human spirit at a new low of debasement.
—Unknown
If New York is the Big Apple, tonight Hollywood is the Big Nipple.
—Bernardo Bertolucci (1941–2018) Italian Film Director
Some are able and humane men and some are low-grade individuals with the morals of a goat, the artistic integrity of a slot machine, and the manners of a floorwalker with delusions of grandeur.
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) American Novelist
In Beverly Hills… they don’t throw their garbage away. They make it into television shows.
—Woody Allen (b.1935) American Film Actor, Director
There is in Hollywood, as in all cultures in which gambling is the central activity, a lowered sexual energy, an inability to devote more than token attention to the preoccupations of the society outside. The action is everything, more consuming than sex, more immediate than politics; more important always than the acquisition of money, which is never, for the gambler, the true point of the exercise.
—Joan Didion (1934–2021) American Essayist, Novelist, Memoirist
Hollywood is the only industry, even taking in soup companies, which does not have laboratories for the purpose of experimentation.
—Orson Welles (1915–85) American Film Director, Actor
They don’t want you until you have made a name, and by the time you have made a name, you have developed some kind of talent they can’t use. All they will do is spoil it, if you let them.
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) American Novelist
If you have a vagina and an attitude in this town, then that’s a lethal combination.
—Sharon Stone (b.1958) American Actor
There rise her timeless capitals of empires daily born,
Whose plinths are laid at midnight and whose streets are packed at morn;
And here come tired youths and maids that feign to love or sin
In tones like rusty razor blades to tunes like smitten tin.
—Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) British Children’s Books Writer, Short story, Novelist, Poet, Journalist
Hollywood’s a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss, and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty cents.
—Marilyn Monroe (1926–62) American Actor, Model, Singer
The motion picture made in Hollywood, if it is to create art at all, must do so within such strangling limitations of subject and treatment that it is a blind wonder it ever achieves any distinction beyond the purely mechanical slickness of a glass and chromium bathroom.
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) American Novelist
An associate producer is the only guy in Hollywood who will associate with a producer.
—Fred Allen (1894–1956) American Humorist, Radio Personality
Hollywood held this double lure for me, tremendous sums of money for work that required no more effort than a game of pinochle.
—Ben Hecht (1894–1964) American Screenwriter, Playwright
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