Donald O'Connor Quotes

That is the godawful thing about television today. Performers don’t have any place to hit and miss. You’re either in or you’re out; you don’t have a chance to become good at your craft. If you make three pictures in a row and they don’t go over, you’re out of the business.

Remember, if you do the same act for 20, 30 years it gets a little boring unless you’ve got something else going for you… And the orchestra really kept you going. They’d laugh at all your jokes, even if they’d been hearing them for the last 30 years.

Going up the walls doing somersaults, that trick took a couple of days.

Doing those costume pictures was wonderful.

They put me in a harness, like a horse, to learn the back somersault. It was weird up there when I put on that harness for the first time. The courage came with practice.

I didn’t smoke. I didn’t smoke then, and I don’t smoke now. We worked every day – that keeps you in pretty good shape. We could go for a long time in one take. You had to be in good shape with Gene Kelly.