- I'm no actor, and I've got 64 pictures to prove it.
- If you're so concerned about fucking privacy, don't become a fucking actor!
- Actually, I am a golfer. That is my real occupation. I never was an actor. Ask anybody, particularly the critics.
- [When asked if it bothered him to play Samson's father in a TV-movie remake (Samson and Delilah (1984)) of his early film, 35 years earlier, in 1949 (Samson and Delilah (1949)) in which he played Samson, he answered] If the money's right, I'd play his mother!
- [about the movie Head (1968)] I don't understand it. All I know is it makes me laugh.
- [on Samson and Delilah (1949)] Samson wasn't exactly bad for me. How can you go wrong in a picture that is going to pull in 17 million and maybe as high as 20? Why, I'm getting fan mail from places all over the world that I've never heard of before.
- I'm an emotional actor. When I'm doing a scene, I really believe it. I live the part as long as I'm in the scene.
- [of his decision to retire from acting at age 46] It wasn't fun anymore. I was OK financially, so I thought what the hell... I'll become a professional loafer.
- I was never that crazy about acting. I had a compulsion to earn money, not to act. So, I worked as an actor until I could afford to retire. I wanted to quit while I could still enjoy life... I like to loaf. Everyone told me I would go crazy or die if I quit working. Yeah? Well, what a lovely way to die.
- I'm pretty proud of about 50% of my motion pictures. 'Demetrius and the Gladiators' (Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954)) wasn't bad. 'The Robe' (The Robe (1953)) and 'Samson and Delilah' (Samson and Delilah (1949)) weren't bad. I made 72 of them and I made close to $18 million. So, what the hell? Now I can retire and enjoy life.
- Kiss of Death (1947) and then Samson and Delilah (1949) were very important to my career. The success of Death, I'm sure, helped me to get Samson and Delilah (1949), and Delilah led to many good roles in pictures like The Robe (1953) and Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954).
- Hedy Lamarr, who plays Delilah [in Samson and Delilah (1949)], was gorgeous - George Barnes, who photographed the picture, said to me, "You can shoot her from any angle. She has no bad angles." But I don't think she was well during the picture. Nothing chronic, she was just somehow out of sorts. Let me put it another way: she was not exactly a ball of fire - she just seemed to be loping along. But we got along okay, worked well together, and the camera picked up her beauty and mystique.
- In a scene with 3,000 extras, if one guy in the back was picking his nose, Mr. DeMille would spot it and stop everything to chew him out.
- DeMille hired the best people in town for his films, and since we were all professionals he didn't feel he had to direct us too much. He figured we knew our jobs. He'd say a few words to us, then shoot the scene. But he didn't miss a trick.
- [1992] When Samson and Delilah (1949) came out, I received very flattering telegrams from Mr. DeMille (Cecil B. DeMille) and another pioneer filmmaker, Jesse L. Lasky, whose son, Jesse, Jr. (Jesse Lasky Jr.), had written the screenplay. I still have them.
- [1992] Recently, I was asked to play Sylvester Stallone's father in a movie, so I gave them my price. It's been a few weeks now and I haven't heard, so it's probably not going to happen. But that's okay, I don't need the work. My father was rich and I took good care of my own money.
- Cecil B. DeMille, the producer-director of Samson and Delilah (1949), always saw all of Hollywood to find the best people for his spectaculars. So when I got the call, I wasn't all that anxious to come in for the interview from Laguna, where I was living then. I thought, "Well he's seeing everyone and now it's my turn." Meeting him in his office at Paramount, I found that he had an extensive knowledge of my entire career - that's how thorough he was. When the interview lasted four hours, I knew I was in. While we were talking he mentioned that he was having difficulty casting another important role, the Saran of Gaza. After he described the character to me I said, "It's got to be George Sanders." And he not only signed me to play Samson, but George Sanders to play the Saran of Gaza.
- One time he [Cecil B. DeMille] came up to me and said, "Victor, my boy. We're ready to do the scene where you fight the lion. We have a real lion, but he's very tame, a very sweet old lion. His name is Jackie. When you fight him, I'd like you to put your head in his mouth. Now don't worry; nothing can happen - Jackie has no teeth." I said, "Mr. DeMille, I don't even want to be gummed!" I did not do the stunt. No way! Not if there were six people holding Jackie by the tail!
- I wasn't pampered the way a Tyrone Power was. Zanuck would say to producers, "If you're not careful, you son of a bitch, I'll give you Mature for your next picture."
- You automatically accepted the pictures they wanted to give you unless you wanted to take a suspension for the length of the picture plus eight weeks. My agent, Myron Selznick, was one of the few who didn't play games with the studio. He actually worked for his clients. "Look, Vic," he'd say, "why lose all that money? If the picture's a flop, it doesn't hurt you, it hurts the studio." That was the great thing about being under contract.
- [on retirement] I thought it would be a good idea to sort of enjoy what I had worked so hard for and see how the other half of the world lived.
- I loaf very gracefully. There's a lot to be said about loafing if you know how to do it gracefully.
- [on Tyrone Power] One director of mine got so nervous when Ty Power came on to the set to watch that he forgot where he told me to walk in a scene. "You stupid son of a bitch," he yelled. "I told you to go to the other side." I picked him up gently and threw him into a breakaway wall and the wall collapsed. There was dead silence except for one guy on the catwalk who applauded because the director had been picking on me for six weeks.
- I took acting five times as seriously as anyone else. I just couldn't show it. Some kind of complex, I guess.
- Hollywood was wonderful in the forties. [20th Century] Fox was like a country club.
- You've got to be one thing or the other in Hollywood. Either people think you're lousy jerk like me or a great guy like Gable. Not six people know Gable intimately, yet everyone will tell you what a great guy he is.
- [on Cecil B. DeMille] That DeMille, what a guy! What a showman. He used to say, "Vic, they say I'm corny. All right, what is corn? It's food that springs from the heart of our America. Iowa, Kansas, Missouri. It feeds our people. It feeds the starving of Europe - of the world. Vic, I'm glad to be corny." And they can kid about the old master all they want, but there isn't a big star on the lot who doesn't come to visit him, and even Hope and Crosby, I've noticed, are respectful in the presence of DeMille.
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