Jackie Cooper Quotations

So I felt, well, I'll make the money and, with the money, do what I want to do.

I got schooled over at NBC on a soap opera, and I had a Sunday-afternoon show, an hour show sponsored by the Ford Foundation, a documentary, half live with film integration. I directed that.

But the working I would always want to do.

From that, I became very anxious to produce something of my own.

Keep 'em clear of things like leaves and tree branches and stuff. They run hot.

I was a terrible little do-gooder, saccharine, most unreal kind of a character - except once in a while a director or script or combination of the two came along where I began to look like something else and sound like something else.

People like Spencer Tracy held up because they had the background originally, but to this day they never have changed Mr. Gable's role, or most of them.

I was thrilled, naturally, at that age, if somebody wanted me to look and act a couple of years older than I was.

I would love to have a good director working with me and going through the early stages of putting a play together with me.

We definitely would have to look for other funding.

But I want to do good work, after this series.

The studio didn't ask them to learn their trade, they just worked them, and when that personality or that gimmick or whatever they had ran dry at the box office, they were dropped and out.

Our defense is playing really well. They've really gelled. We played hard and didn't give up so I was pleased. To hang with (Granite Hills) gives us confidence.

So whatever I might have started to learn at that age was all undone by the next director and next crew in the next cheap picture, because I was allowed to get away with murder.

You've just got to be careful with them,

They thought in terms of: whatever you had that started you at the box office, this was it.

Also, I was very excited about somebody considering I had a talent they could develop a little bit, and very anxious to please.

They had to start shaving my chin when I was 12 years old because light started to pick it up.

There was nothing real about teenagers - nobody talked about them in those days, nobody did anything about them.

I'm very pleased with where we are right now. At the beginning of the season our goal was to make the playoffs and here we are.

I need a steady job like running in this new series, because we own the negative to every show that goes on the air, my partner and I.

I had directed a little in summer theater, and I liked it, and I started getting interested in directing, in live television.

So I'm in that half-hour business where the most money is, so that eventually I feel like the people that put on the Dupont show, like maybe my artistic effort is going to be a little different.

A lot of people like to run in plays because it's a nice, steady job.

A nice, steady job I don't need that bad. I'm not that satisfied with it.

I would also like to act, once in a while, but not get up every morning at 5:30 or six o'clock and pound into the studio and get home at 7:30 or eight o'clock at night, or act over and over and over every night on Broadway, either.

I remember Mr. Mayer very well. He sort of liked to be the father - no, he liked to be treated like you thought he was Daddy, but he didn't treat you like Daddy at all.

If it's boring, then it's tiring.

I hope this series is good work, but it is in the half-hour medium, which is limited to a kind of mediocrity that sponsors are just dying to have right now, and the public, for some reason, is unconsciously demanding.

They kept me in short pants as long as they could, until they were shaving the hair on my legs because it was beginning to photograph.

I never say too much about that in public interviews, because it disappoints the public to tell them you're not that crazy about a property you did that possibly they liked.

To me, the series was the end of the actor, when the series ended.

Very often on some of this stuff when I'd have to go to work. I'd just give the script a cursory glance. I had no training, and I was a quick study, so nobody knew how involved or not involved I was. But I look at that stuff now and I can see I wasn't involved, and I wasn't very good.

There was only so much television you could do.

There was never any effort made out there to improve the artist.

So then you have to say to yourself: Do I want to be rich, or do I want to do good work?

Well, they just don't know anything else except that one form of their business, acting, and they don't really want to learn any other part of it, or they would. Directing and producing and putting a show together is very creative, for me.

So if I keep making mistakes on Broadway or tape or film, producing, directing or acting, I can go along and do it - so long as I'm not investing too much capital in these things.

In those days, even as a boy, I watched some people that I knew were living way beyond their means.

Keep doing what you've been doing and you will keep getting what you've been getting!

I just knew how to do the one thing I did, and whether I did it well or not depended on who the director was.

(Granite Hills) is a tough team. We just couldn't penetrate them. We had opportunities but we couldn't put it in.