Quotes & Sayings About Talkies

Television wasn't getting rid of animals, but they were no longer cast as creatures that were omniscient and heroic. They were talking horses like Mr Ed or an absurdist pig like Arnold Ziffle ... Just like the heroic animals in silent films became comedians in talkies, animals on television were becoming jesters, something Rin Tin Tin had never been. — Susan Orlean

Bankers, nepotists, contracts and talkies: on four fingers one may count the leeches which have sucked a young and vigorous industry into paresis. — Dalton Trumbo

For good or bad, there is a certain level of generalisation when it comes to my work. I want to break that perception. My decision to direct 'Bombay Talkies' or to present 'The Lunchbox' is an attempt to do that. These are the films that gel well with my sensibility, and it's unfortunate, it's not the perception out there. — Karan Johar

My great-grandfather played organ for silent movies. Talkies in, Gramps out. — Kent Beck

It would have been more logical if silent pictures had grown out of the talkies instead of the other way around. — Mary Pickford

No one ever knew they were old-fashioned; everyone always thought they were up-to-the-minute: Rickety Model T cars weren't rickety when they were invented, scratchy radio wasn't scratchy until television, and silent movies weren't a feeble precursor of talkies until there were talkies. Your two-piece telephone that demanded that you hold a cylinder to your ear while you screeched into the wall demanding a particular exchange of a harried, plug-juggling operator was the highest of high-tech. To know it was anything less would have been like acknowledging you were going to die and life was transient and you were already halfway to being a memory or worse. The real and worst tragedy of twentieth-century East Europeans: They had known they were old-fashioned before they could do anything about it. — Arthur Phillips

I connected very much with all the work of Joan Crawford because she started as a flapper. She used to dance and sing and she was very cute. She had something that was so different from what she is at the end of her life and she started in the silent movies and then went into the talkies. — Berenice Bejo

In the middle of my third Hollywood picture The Magician, the earthquake hit Hollywood. Not the real earthquake. Just the talkies. — Conrad Veidt

Pictures of my life stretch back into what must have been my very earliest childhood ... They are not movies, then, nor are they talkies, but they are quite distinctly feelies. — Sheila Kaye-Smith

I never approved of talkies. Silent movies were well on their way to developing an entirely new art form. It was not just pantomine, but something wonderfully expressive. — Lillian Gish

Struggling with my finances, nudging toward 50, I sometimes daydream about being happily married to a matching frugaholic husband in a matching Christmas-red tracksuit with matching walkie-talkies as we troll Ralphs, excitedly comparing triple coupons. — Sandra Tsing Loh

John Gilbert was perfectly willing to jump into talkies. He had as good a voice as Clark Gable. There was such a divide between the silent and talkies. There was no logic to who survived and who didn't. — Eve Golden

I can't complain about anything. It's like saying, "I don't like talkies." Time marches on and I don't care how people watch my movies as long as they see them. I don't care if they're on their phone. Believe me, if you ever want to watch my early films they would look a lot better on your phone than they would on a movie screen. The smaller the better. — John Waters

The reason I put so much energy into it at the beginning was that while there were plenty of people looking after the talkies, almost nobody was doing the same for the silents. Now there are plenty of very good historians and restorers. — Kevin Brownlow

In America, at the beginning of talkies, they pulled Fred Astaire from the theaters and put him on the screen and had all of these great composers write songs for him. They call it the Great American Songbook; I call it the Fred Astaire Songbook because they were written for him. — Tony Bennett

It's hard enough to just be a good actor. When you're on set, there's everything going against you. There are walkie talkies going off, the camera is creaking and moving, there are boom mics, and you have to hit your mark and make sure you don't shadow the other person's face. It's a really technical process. — James Marsden

I never thought of becoming a director. When I was twelve, the passage from silent film to the talkies had an impact on me - I still watch silent films. — Alain Resnais

When I was twelve, the passage from silent film to the talkies had an impact on me-I still watch silent films. I don't think that there is any such thing as an old film; you don't say, 'I read an old book by Flaubert,' or 'I saw an old play by Moliere.' — Alain Resnais