James MacArthur Quotes

We were all ruled by the studio system. I signed a contract for seven years.

I came in on the tail end of the old school of Hollywood.

In my day, the only people who achieved real independence were my father, Mary Pickford and Charles Chaplin, who, with D. W. Griffith, formed United Artists. Other than that, everybody belonged to the big studios. They had no say in their own careers.

When my mother signed at MGM, that was the only kind of contract you could sign. There was no such thing as an independent agent.

Most actors nowadays are models turned actors. That's why a lot of young actors are terrible. You have to learn how to act. It is not something that you can just do.

The Hollywood structure was monopolistic, run by four or five big studios.

A lot of actors said they hated the studio system, but I loved it. It was like a college; it was a great place to learn.

When you worked in a studio it was the studio system that you kind of missed because it was a big, big family. I mean MGM had 5,000 people working a day there. You miss it.

I would absolutely recommend for actors to start in the theater because it establishes a foundation in your craft that you can build off of.

I was doing acting work at Fox - bit pieces with Greg Peck in The Gunfighter and things like that - and grew up more or less as a Fox contract player in about two years.

The big studio era is from the coming of sound until 1950, until I came in... I came in at a crux in film, which was the end of the studio era and the rise of filmmaking.

The major studios are by and large banks, and they give you what is by and large a loan to make a movie. Like banks, they want their money back plus.

There are so many actors that I meet that don't act enough. Definitely take class, definitely train - that's the most important thing you do. Build your craft. Become better.

You know, they just don't make big movie stars the way they used to, maybe because the system has changed, the studio system, but it's sad to see people like Jimmy Stewart go, all the giants of the past.

Studios were just run differently. There really was a head of a studio. There were people who loved their studios. Who worked for their studios and were loaned out to other people and everybody sort of got a piece. Well now there's a handful now.

My grandmother was an actress too. In the thirties and forties she was under contract with Universal Studios. Crazy credits, lots of them. My dad was also under contract with Universal Studios. And my first film was shot on the same stage they both worked on at Universal.

The studios knew how to build a star, and they knew what to do with you. They also taught you everything.

I was one of the horses of the Louis B. Mayer stable, and I thought the films I was given after my Academy Awards were not worthy.

I am one day going to be working openly in the motion picture industry. When that day comes, I swear to you that I will never sign a term contract with any major studio.

In the contract days, the big studios groomed us to play particular roles and we would stay with the image they gave us and insisted on.

There are lots of people in the world who do have the advantage of going to a good drama school and just decide that they want to be actors. There's nothing wrong with an untrained actor; they have to get their training somehow, they have to learn.

In my early days I was a contract player at Universal and I had a wonderful mentor named Monique James, who was head of talent there, and she used to drag me on sets to do parts.

M.G.M. never really gave me a break. They loaned me out for leading roles but cast me in programme pictures.

I thought acting was all about natural instinct but I've realised, through working with so many talented actors on 'Wild Swans' and 'Run,' that I can see the training. That's why I am back at drama school.

I worked with a man named Patty Crane who was Errol Flynn's stand-in back in the '30s in Hollywood.