On posing in bathing suits: "A bathing suit is a girl's best friend in Hollywood. No girl should consider herself too important for that kind of publicity."
On finding the right man: "Let me tell you this: Every girl in the world wants to find the right man, someone who is sympathetic and understanding and helpful and strong, someone she can love madly. Actresses are no exception; the glamour and the tinsel, the fame and the money mean very little if there is hurt in the heart."
On wealthy husbands: "A man should be wealthy before marriage. It may be his last chance."
On being divorced three times: "Why do people attack me for getting three divorces? It's legal; if there's something wrong about it, why don't they attack the laws of the land, and let me alone?"
On her dreams: "My dreams are mad, silly things. I've started reading Freud. Very interesting."
On being labeled "The Ping Girl": "I want a fair chance to prove myself something more than a curvaceous cutie. I want to get out of bathing suits and into something more substantial. Unfortunately the publicity department of my studio does not agree. They have conceived the brilliant idea of selling me to the public as "the ping girl - because she makes you purr". This flash of genius is to be illustrated with a series of pictures out of their files, suggestive of anything but acting talent."
On getting noticed: "The first time I wore a bare midriff gown, Hollywood noticed me. Hollywood didn't discover me, I discovered it."
With Willis Hunt
On her second husband Willis Hunt: "There I was being so happy, so ecstatic, so delirious, so willing to forsake all others. To stop being Miss Big and try being the Little Woman. He didn't want a Little Woman."
On her 1942 U.S.O. tour: "We had a wonderful time everywhere overseas. But it was hard. For five months we never gave less than five shows a day. It was too cold to sleep nights and there wasn't water enough to take a bath. We bathed and shampooed in cold water - there was no hot. I had to do my own washing. And I ate more sand and fog, than food. I was hairdresser for the gang; at that we didn't look too bad."
On writing Four Jills In A Jeep: "The studio gave me two ghost writers but they stunk it all up. I finally decided to talk it to a steno typist. Naturally with some Scotch and soda under my belt. Yes, it was very droll. I'd go out to the kitchen and sneak a drink, and come back again with a lot of new inspirations. I had too many swear words, like Hell, damn and Christ in it. Edwin Seaver, the writer whom I know, went over it and he said , "I think this part stinks", or "that part stinks"...and I cut a lot out. But I sweated it out and wrote it."
On money: "I'm pretty good at saving up to a certain point. When the money bags start getting heavy I have an awful urge to lighten them. But the business manager is curing me of that."
On love: "The only thing I've found out about love is that I don't know anything about it. I wish somebody would tell me what it's really like. I've made a couple of guesses. But that business about 'women's intuition' just isn't true. Not in my case, anyway."
On her ex-boyfriend Busby Berkeley: "I think Busby is a very grand person and I have the highest regard for him. I do hope someday he'll meet the right person to bring him happiness as a life companion. I wasn't the right person."
On her future: "I have no intention of ending my career in a rooming house, with full scrapbooks and an empty stomach."
With Cesar Romero
On her close friend Cesar Romero: "I demand a sense of humor in any man in my life. Cesar Romero, for example, has a wonderful sense of humor, plus a wonderful quality of humility. He makes fun of his face. Calls himself "Cowface". He doesn't think he is the great Adonis, as so many actors do."
On going to Hollywood: "I had thought of going across the street to the drugstore for a malted milk, for the purpose of being discovered for movies but decided instead to take the money I'd saved and go to Hollywood. Funny thing - I found Hollywood already had plenty of blondes."
On working as a waitress: "Three orders at a time had me nuts. I'd bring in the beef stew and give it to the wrong man and he'd start in on it. By that time I'd realize the error and give grab it away. The man who was supposed to get the beef stew then wouldn't take it. Before I was through the manager would be making me pay for half the orders."
On reporters saying she resembled Carole Lombard: "If I look like Miss Lombard - and I don't - please spare her the humiliation."
On England: "This is a wonderful country. The people are wonderful, too. They like me for myself."
On achieving her goals: "If you want to do something or be someone set your mind to it and never give up - no matter how rough the going becomes. I didn't have a college education, but I learned that there's no obstacle too big which can't be surmounted."
On her first job in San Francisco: "The manager of the Royal Hawaiian club in San Francisco was interviewing girls to sing and dance in the floor show and when he asked me if I could sing and dance I blithely said 'Of course, I'm great!' when actually I was a greenhorn at both. Luckily the chorus was learning a new hula routine and in the resultant confusion no one noticed I didn't know my right foot from my left."
On starring in A Lady Says Yes on Broadway: "I am enjoying it and it is nice to do a play for a change."
Appearing in A Lady Says Yes
On stories she would marry Gene Markey in Washington: "I'm going to Washington for a visit, that's all. Mr. Markey is there and of course I will see him, but there are no immediate plans to announce."
On the possibility of marrying for a third time: "I only hope it's true that the third time is the charm. Because I'm pretty sure I'll marry again. I like the things marriage stands for. I'm just praying I can wait long enough next time to be sure it's love. I don't want to be guessing all my life."
On sex appeal: "I think sex is definitely here to stay so I don't see any necessity for throwing it in people's faces. I don't think a girl has to wear dresses cut down to her tummy to exhibit what is known as feminine allure. She can exhibit it in a high neck dress but subtly. Heaven knows I want people to think I have sex appeal. But I also want to think I have something besides sex appeal."
On entertaining the troops during World War 2: "It's not only a duty, it's a lark. Even if your clothes are wrinkled, your face is chapped to the ears and you're deaf from flying in bombers, it's like home when you come down in the midst of Americans. It's living such as I have never known back here."
On not being allowed to visit soldiers in dangerous areas: "The boys were counting on us to come and perform for them, and we could not go. It broke my heart. Once I sent cables to the commanding officer, asking special permission to make trips to Hollandia and Biak, because I knew the fellows were waiting for us. Permission was refused by headquarters."
On her romance with Franchot Tone: "It's just dandy - and it's already lasted two whole weeks."
On rumors: "Anyone in public life gets used to unkind rumors after a time. Though all of them are very upsetting when they are published and spoken about publicly, particularly by those in the business who are, shall I say, jealous of your success. I have learned to stand up to them by ignoring them and not dignifying them with an answer."
On posing for leg art early in her career: "It was the leg art that did the trick. Naughty leg art, if you happen to look at it in that light. You see when the boys needed someone to pose in a skin-tight white bathing suit, go sleigh riding in shorts, or climb a ladder in a skirt they would yell 'Get Landis!' and Landis was willin'. That made everybody happy except, maybe, the goody-goods and the bluenoses and I suspect they took a second peek now and then."
An early leg art photo
On her first husband Irving Wheeler: "I didn't think anyone knew I'd ever been married. I thought Irving had forgotten our marriage, too. We lived together for three weeks and then had an argument. I've only seen him once since then, and that was when he told me he wanted a divorce."
On attracting men: "If you want to interest men, you have to have the courage to attract them. Most men, I've found, like a girl who's daring enough to get their attention - if she's demure enough to appreciate it after she gets it. As long as it's a man's world, a girl has to be daring to get ahead."
On being good: "Long ago I learned that Little Goody Two Shoes fared right well in the copy books, but in real life she wound up on the short end of the deal. Me, I'm a realist. Be a little naughty and you get what you want in life."
On gossip: "Don't gossip - particularly about other women. Don't make sarcastic and catty remarks. Kindness is the secret to true femininity."
On her goals: "I want to be as good an actress as Bette Davis, and I'd like to be a great singer. But more than that I'd like to be happily married and have
some children."
On starting a family: "It is a great disappointment to me that I'm not expecting along with several other of my married friends. Both my husband and I feel that it is time to forget about the superficial things in life. It is the natural, wholesome way of living - having children and establishing a home - that counts. Having a child makes a soldier realize that he has something very real to fight for. With a home and a family waiting for him, he has an incentive to give everything he has. When the war is over, we intend to buy a large ranch in Nevada. Lots of space, several children, simple living is our dream. Although my career is secondary, it will be necessary for me, and a lot of other wives, to help financially until my husband gets back into civilian life."
On her fourth husband Horace Schmidlapp: "I have now what I've always wanted in a marriage. I have the feeling of a deep security which will insure a permanent future with children of our own. I have a home now, not merely a house. My husband has a solid sense of values and brings out the best in me. We're already planning a home in the East with at least three children. When this happens, I'll commute to Hollywood for my picture assignments."
With Horace Schmidlapp
On having children: "We're really eager for that family of three children. I think Horace prefers boys but I'll be satisfied with either boys or girls, although I think an arrangement of two boys and a girl would be nice. I find I'm terribly anxious to start living in a real home of my own and once my children arrive, they and my husband will be the most important things in my life. My motion picture career will be of secondary importance."
On her high school classmates: "I always seemed so much older than the other kids my age - they seemed like tots."
On why movies are important: "Movies are a tremendous power for the good. In wartime they helped stave off countless cases of homesickness, they entertained our men and kept them informed about people and things back home. Ask any veteran how important those nightly movies in the jungle rain were to him and his buddies. I know because I sat though many myself."
On moving to New York City: "We're going to call New York home. My husband's business keeps him in New York most of the time so we decided we could hardly make Hollywood as a permanent home."
On marriage: "Ever since I was a very small child, I wanted marriage and children more than I wanted anything else, including a career. Because I wanted marriage and children so badly, I constantly sought for love, I was too eager for it. I read into people things that weren't there, so that the minute a personable fellow, with whom I felt the least 'sympatica' showed me the least persuasive interest, I just went overboard for it."
On her friends: "I hate to lose any friends because I feel that a little part of me goes with them. The sense of loss is painful. Now I know upon whom I
can rely."
On playing the piano: "Every girl has, in the back of her wish department, some unsatisfied longing held over from childhood. Personally, I always wanted to play the piano. Now that I have a piano and some spare time between pictures, I've been taking lessons. I'm not good, but I'm getting better and I've obtained a lot of satisfaction out of the effort."
