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.

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

New Orleans is 5 feet below sea level, which means that holes dug in the ground immediately fill with water. Coffins were punctured and sunk with weights, which didn't stop them from floating up out of the cemeteries and down the streets of the French Quarter on stormy nights. The solution was to bury people above ground, in what are called vaults.

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.

My father was totally Irish, and so I went to Ireland once. I found it to be very much like New York, for it was a beautiful country, and both the women and men were good-looking.

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 got a part as a chorus girl in a show called Every Sailor and I had fun doing it. Mother didn't really approve of it, through.