1915 May 6th
Kenosha, Wisconsin
Director and Actor

On Hamlet's Ghost: Shakespeare played it, and that's why he played it: because it's the toughest part in the play. He must have been a great actor. It's nonsense that he was a bit player.

[Othello] is something more than a masterpiece. It stands through the centuries as one of the great monuments of Western civilization. So where does that leave a mere movie-maker? Nowhere, nowhere at all. 

[Michele Scalera] said 'Dobbiamo fare l’Otello!'. 'We've got to make Otello'. I saw no reason to argue.

That's a fault of the film. That's a fault of my performance. I should have been older when I made the film, because I would have known more about the part, and I should have seemed older. I should have played it older. I think it's true that Othellos in general should play as older than they usually do, because age is .. first of all it's indicated in the text and secondly it distances Othello and Desdaemona and anything that does that, age, race, or culture or any of .. those things are very, very important to the drama.

But we come to Iago's character and the whole question of, what does Coleridge call it? 'The motiveless malignancy of Iago.'  We played him; I had that idea of impotence. It was really not so much a key for the audience as a clue for our performance, a way to justify a certain reading of the role.

[Othello] is destroyed so easily because of his simplicity, not his weakness. He really is the archetype of the simple man, ya know. He has never understood the complexity of the world or human beings. He is a soldier; he's never known women. It's a favorite theme of Shakespeare's. It's a curious thing about Lear too. Lear clearly knows nothing about women, and has never lived with them at all. His wife is dead. She couldn't exist, the play couldn't happen if there were a Mrs. Lear, obviously. He is the all-male man, whom Shakespeare, who was clearly tremendously feminine in many ways, regarded as a natural born loser in a tragic situation. Total incomprehension.

I was strongly criticized for [Macbeth]. It was a barbaric age. I don't understand that objection. And also nobody ever wrote about the main point of that production, which was the struggle between the old and new religions. A very strong emphasis on Christianity throughout, and witches as being the underground druidical people. You know, we stop and have a long prayer to St. Michael, and the screen is filled of celtic crosses and everything. No one ever paid any attention to that. That's .. the whole device of the picture is based on this struggle between .. not between good and evil but between two religious systems: one underground, and one overground. I saw Roddy McDowall the other night. He said: Ya know — its so good to see you again. Whenever I want to enjoy myself I get a print of Citizen Kane, and I said: You idiot! You're in a good picture of mine. Why don't you burn a print of that?

If you do breathe, you’ll find that Shakespeare’s verse is like a surf board.

Associated Plays: