“I don’t want to be a star. If you have to label me anything, I’m an actor – I guess. A journeyman actor. I think ‘star’ is what you call actors who can’t act.” — Paul Muni
Photographer: George Hurrell
Scarface (1932). With George Raft.
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“I have read all sorts of stories concerning my early adventures. They say I used to get into fights behind the theater with my beard on. They say I would go on the stage wearing roller-skates. These stories are not true. I wish they were. It wasn’t funny. It was a great misfortune. It’s an awful thing to cut from a man’s life the days that should contain fights and skates and marbles. I don’t blame my father for the youth he took away from me. Poverty was his only reason for doing it. We acted to make a living; we gave desperate little shows in the Jewish language, trying to command audiences that were drifting away to the more dazzling stars and the smarter habit of the English speaking stage. It was a serious business that I had no place for roller-skates. I couldn’t be a boy. I had to be a man, a character man. I’ve been one ever since.” — Paul Muni
Source: John C. Moffitt (1933)
Scarface (1932). With Ann Dvorak.
“Between the stage and the screen, I have no preference. Both extend advantages to the actor’s comfort. But comfort to me is secondary to importance and it is my opinion that the screen is the ideal medium for bringing great stories of current conditions of the public. To me there is no excuse for a trivial movie. The resources of the screen are so vast, its scope is so wide and its technique so flexible that it screams to be important. It seems to me that the legitimate stage is showing a growing tendency to be trivial. Its plays, too, frequently are brilliant, witty vehicles concerning the type of person that is a curiosity to the average man or woman.” — Paul Muni
Source: John C. Moffitt (1933)
Photo: Scarface (1932)
“Of course, all movies are not important. They can’t be. But there seems to be a growing tendency on the part of the screen to look for stories that fit well into the wide frame, to set forth contemporary matters with a vividness that instructs and interprets. I prefer to wait for such stories. That’s why I’d rather make fewer pictures.” — Paul Muni
Source: John C. Moffitt (1933)
Photo: “I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang” (1932)
