No one had ever done a swimming movie before so we just made it up as we went along. I ad-libbed all my own underwater movements.

There was a policy at Hughes against drinking at lunch, but the men ignored it

I never walked the streets of New York hoping to be a musical comedy star. For one thing, they would have thought I was too tall, because l was five feet eight and a half, and they were all little bitty things running around in the studio at that time.

We can't all win Olympic medals. Even I never won one.

I was the only swimmer in movies. Tarzan was long gone, and he couldn't have done them anyway; he could never have gotten into my bathing suit

I always felt that if I made a movie, it would be one movie; I didn't see how they could make 26 swimming movies.

Howard Hughes himself was a regular at the restaurant, and in a way it became his headquarters, too. Howard had recently relocated to Las Vegas, so when he wanted to do business in Los Angeles, he went into the back of our restaurant to use the telephone.