JANE POWELL:                                        

[At the age of 88, the delightful coloratura soprano who starred as Milly in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) has moved on from her days as a musical movie star]: ‘I don’t think about the past except now, when we’re talking about it. I never felt I was really there anyway. I always pictured myself as a fly who was up in the corner looking down at myself. I never feel I was there. I’m not very sentimental when it comes to the past. I don’t live there and I feel for people who do because it’s never going to be the same as you remember it.’

Jane & Howard Keel in Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (1954)

‘The only thing I knew was MGM, where I had worked since I was 14. Unions were not even a part of my vocabulary. SAG [Screen Actors Guild] meant a gravity problem. EQUITY meant owning a house.

‘I didn’t quit movies. They quit me.’[Technically, that was not quite correct. With the obvious decline of movie musicals in the late fifties, Jane left MGM (before they could fire her), and moved to the East Coast to continue her career by appearing on the musical stage. In her seventies she began singing on cruise ships.]

CLIFF RICHARD:                                     

[When the singing star of Summer Holiday (1963) refused to boycott apartheid South Africa, thus earning himself a place on the United Nations’ blacklist, he responded with]: ‘I go wherever Christians invite me to speak about Jesus. It’s a platform I have been given by God.’

BEN KINGSLEY:                                       

[On winning the Best Actor Oscar for Gandhi (1982), he was asked by an interviewer if he knew he was going to be victorious]: ‘If I knew I was going to win, I would not have gone dressed as a waiter.’

‘I actually don’t ever really socialize on the film-set. I’m hermit-like. I go home, get room service and I work on the lines for tomorrow, because that’s my job. I can have fun other ways, other times, but for me the joy of acting is to know what I’m doing and why I’m doing it.’

JOHNNY WEISSMULLER:                     

[On his achieving world-wide fame and becoming rich into the bargain through playing Tarzan in a dozen films between 1932 and 1948] ‘How can a guy climb trees, say ‘Me, Tarzan, you, Jane’, and make a million? The public forgives my acting because they know I was an athlete. They know I wasn’t make-believe. I’d like to move into the Douglas Fairbanks type of action pictures. I’m no great actor, but my fans like me, so why shouldn’t I give it a whirl?’

EARTHA KITT:                                                                            

[The outspoken African-American singer/actress was never afraid to speak her mind, just as she did at the White House in 1968 to Lady Bird Johnson at the height of the Vietnam War. The following Eartha outburst left the First Lady in tears]: ‘I am a mother and I know the feeling of having a baby come out of my gut. I have a baby and then you send him off to war. No wonder the kids rebel and take pot. You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. They rebel in the street. They don’t want to go to school because they’re going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam.’

Eartha confronts Lady Bird Johnson in 1968

[In an Essence magazine interview she had this to say regarding her 1968 anti-war statements; her subsequent loss of work and virtual exile from the United States for nearly a decade because of them]: ‘The thing that hurts, that became anger, was when I realized that if you tell the truth – in a country that says you’re entitled to tell the truth – you get your face slapped and you get put out of work.’

Eartha & Orson Welles

[On her relationship with her friend James Dean and one-time lover Orson Welles]: ‘Jamie and I were like brother and sister. He told me, in fact, he thought of me as his sister. Our relationship was strictly platonic and spiritual. Orson spent most of his money on women. That’s why he didn’t have the money to make films.’

[On Imelda Marcos, wife of the President of the Philippines]: ‘When I was travelling in the Philippine Islands my daughter and I, from time to time, used to stay with Mr. and Mrs. Marcos. And sometimes she would come and sit somewhere up front, and she would yell out, ‘Eartha, sing ‘Waray Waray!’ This was one of her favourite songs. But of course, she always insisted on singing right along with me!’

GUS TRIKONIS:                

[The name Gus Trikonis is probably unfamiliar to most movie-goers. As an actor he made a couple of good movies; first as Indio in West Side Story (1961) and later as a crewman named Restorff in The Sand Pebbles (1966) – before going on to rack up 47 directorial credits in TV series and tele-movies. He is best known, however, for being Goldie Hawn’s first husband, marrying her just as she started to hit it big]: ‘Before you know it, she said to me, ‘Let’s get married because I’m becoming a star, and I don’t want to say I’m just living with a guy ; I want a husband.’ She went off and did all kinds of wild, weird things. She was running around with Warren Beatty, Barbra Streisand and Jack Nicholson, the 1 percent. It was not my world; I was out of step with them. So we grew apart and split. Then she called me one day and said, ‘I want a divorce.’ I ended up asking her for $75,000, and she screamed, ‘How dare you ask me for that kind of money!’ She was making millions and I had $175 in my bank account. But after she had her freak-out, she realized I wasn’t trying to gouge her, and that it was more than fair. The whole thing was painful because I loved her.’

Gus weds Goldie Hawn 1969

‘I last saw Goldie in the late 1990s, when we both ended up on the same flight to Germany. She looked good then and she looks good now. She’s probably had a facelift or two, but whatever. We were always friendly and on good terms, and I know she’s done some positive work with kids through her Hawn Foundation. Now she’s back making movies and I say ‘good for her!’