Child of Manhattan
Actress Nancy Carroll 1903-1965
Nancy Carroll's Career
In Her Own Words : Nan on Nan
" I couldn't have been interested in anyone without a sense of humor. "(referring to her choice in men)
" I was lucky because I was born in a big family of eleven children. There isn't much time to give attention to one among eleven. You had to take care of yourself."
" In those days they demanded that a girl have a certain kind of look. Ability didn't count as much as beauty. Since the talkies it's different."
"When I realized my big-time Hollywood career was over, I took it in stride. There are other satisfactions in life besides the constant glare of publicity and constant pryings into your personal life in that game called fame."
" My personal life has always kept me more absorbed than my career."
"One thing I should like, I should like to have more time to spend with my daughter. But I think it's better that I am not with her every moment. I don't want her to regard me as a possessive mother."
"I guess I did have a little trouble on the way up. The trouble was out in Hollywood. They patted me on the head and said, 'Now little girl, you're getting a wonderful break in pictures, you're very lucky and you should be properly grateful and do what you are told.' I didn't feel that way about it at all. It didn't mean much to me. I had played leads on the stage. I knew what I could do, and I didn't feel like being patted on the head and patronized."
"You're expected to make pals of the electricians, prop boys, or else someday they won't put your chair under you in the right way."
" A girl isn't bad just because she appears unconventional."
"I never consume a meal in a great hurry. An excellent plan, I've found, is that of taking a complete rest of body and mind fifteen minutes before and after each meal, if this is possible to arrange into one's daily schedule."
" I think screen tests are cruel. They pick out someone for a part and then test everyone else for it, knowing all the time that only that one has any chance."
"I don't know what it stood for but I was cast in everything -- out of one film, into another -- comedies, dramas, musicals. I suppose I happened to be a bird in the hand. I had no choice of stories or roles. I couldn't offer a word as to how I'd like to do a scene. Everything was too fast and furious. "
" I was a motion picture star, yet I had no happiness. The Irish are supposed to have all the luck -- perhaps I have --for mine has been both good and bad. "
"When my daughter made her stage debut in a production of " Susan and God " at the Buck's County Playhouse, I was thrilled to be a " stage mother."
" My first two marriages brought me only disillusionment."
" I'd rather have those letters following my name than some others I can think of. " (referring to B.S. or B.A. upon registering for college courses, hoping to obtain a degree )
" But then, I had some of the best directors in the world when I was in pictures. I should have learned something from men like William Dieterle, Edmund Goulding, Ernest Lubitsch and Richard Wallace. " (referring to her success at directing college productions.)
I'm afraid I am not one of those stars exhausted by emotion. Why after a day's work, I am all keyed up. I'm too alert to seek solitude. I like my friends round me. "
" I hope I have no production quarrels during 1933. I want three great roles in the next three pictures which I'm to make. And I hope no hairdresser burns my hair so that I have to wear a wig as I did in " Under Cover Man ."
" You're sure to run up against a group of people who all think exactly alike, and because you think differently, you're considered disagreeable, and upstage, and difficult. An original thinker always has to fight."
"If I walk into a restaurant and sit by myself, they say 'Nancy Carroll -- trying to be ritzy." If you're late and you don't stop to say good-morning to the gateman -- that's being snooty!"
" I'd like to go gay. I envy whoopee girls. I'd like to be a Clara Bow, an Alice White or a Joan Crawford, but I always end up being just Nancy Carroll. They just say, ' Oh, that's Nancy Carroll. Isn't she sweet ?' If they would just say I was wicked, dangerous, beautiful, dumb -- anything but sweet. "
"I'd rather sleep than eat and when that owie feeling hits my tummy about ten thirty in the morning, I console myself by saying that I am reducing."
"The other week I had some of my early films run for me at the studio. " Sweetie ", " Honey ", and the like. What awful things, yet at the time they were made I liked them and they gained me a host of fans. "
"It would have been much better had I typed myself. That's the only way to maintain a definite place in pictures. I wish now I had typed myself."
" I think screen tests are cruel. They pick out someone for a part and then test everyone else for it, knowing all the time that only that one has any chance."
"I don't know what it stood for but I was cast in everything -- out of one film, into another -- comedies, dramas, musicals. I suppose I happened to be a bird in the hand. I had no choice of stories or roles. I couldn't offer a word as to how I'd like to do a scene. Everything was too fast and furious. "
" I was a motion picture star, yet I had no happiness. The Irish are supposed to have all the luck -- perhaps I have --for mine has been both good and bad. "
"But then, I had some of the best directors in the world when I was in pictures. I should have learned something from men like William Dieterle, Edmund Goulding, Ernest Lubitsch and Richard Wallace. " (referring to her success at directing college productions.)
~ The Twenties ~
1927 ~ Ladies Must Dress
1928 ~ Mr. Romeo
1928 ~ Abie's Irish Rose
1928 ~ Easy Come, Easy Go
1928 ~ Chicken a la King
1928 ~ The Water Hole
1928 ~ Manhattan Cocktail
1928 ~ The Shopworn Angel
1929 ~ The Wolf of Wall Street
1929 ~ Sin Sister
1929 ~ Close Harmony
1929 ~ The Dance of Life
1929 ~ Illusion
1929 ~ Sweetie
~ The Thirties ~
1930 ~ Two Against Death
1930 ~ Dangerous Paradise (Flesh of Eve)(Victory)+
1930 ~ Honey
1930 ~ Paramount on Parade
1930 ~ The Devil's Holiday *
1930 ~ Laughter
1930 ~ Follow Thru
1931 ~ Stolen Heaven
1931 ~ Personal Maid
1932 ~ Wayward
1932 ~ Under-Cover Man
1932 ~ Hot Saturday
1932 ~ Broken Lullaby (The Man I Killed)+
1932 ~ Scarlet Dawn (Revolt)+
1933 ~ Woman Accused
1933 ~ I Love That Man
1933 ~ Child of Manhattan
1933 ~ The Kiss Before the Mirror
1934 ~ Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round
1934 ~ Springtime for Henry
1934 ~ Jealousy (Spring Three One Hundred)+
1934 ~ The Broken Melody (Vagabond Violinist)+
1935 ~ Atlantic Adventure (Sure Fire)+
1935 ~ After the Dance (Song of the Damned)+
1935 ~ I'll Love You Always
1938 ~ There Goes My Heart
1938 ~ That Certain Age
+ alternate title
~ Television Roles ~
1950-51 ~ The Aldrich Family
1951-2 ~ The Egg and I
1959 ~ "Paper Tiger" episode of Further Adventures of Ellery Queen
1961 ~ "Take and Put " episode of The Naked City
1962 ~ "The Love of Claire Ambler" episode of The U.S. Steel Hour
1962 ~ "A Man for Oona" episode of The U.S. Steel Hour
1963 ~ "Cornelius, Come Home" episode in Going My Way ~ The U.S. Steel Hour