Though I soon became typecast in Hollywood as a gangster and hoodlum, I was originally a dancer, an Irish hoofer, trained in vaudeville tap dance. I always leapt at the opportunity to dance in films later on.

You don't psych yourself up for these things, you do them... I'm acting for the audience, not for myself, and I do it as directly as I can.

I`m sick of carrying guns and beating up women.

Outside of my family, the prime concern of my life has been nature and its order, and how we have been savagely altering that order.

I never had the slightest difficulty with a fellow actor. Not until One, Two, Three. In that picture, Horst Buchholz tried all sorts of scene-stealing didoes. I came close to knocking him on his ass.

Learn your lines… plant your feet… look the other actor in the eye… say the words… mean them.

You know, the period of World War I and the Roaring Twenties were really just about the same as today. You worked, and you made a living if you could, and you tired to make the best of things. For an actor or a dancer, it was no different then than today. It was a struggle.