FEELING CRUSTY AND BARBED? PART 2

YESTERDAY WE BEGAN GOOD FUN gleaning barbs among theatrical folks from Colin M. Jarman’s collection of Barbed Quotes. Here in Part 2 we continue the dissing with folks ranging from George Bernard Shaw to Joan Crawford (not that these two have ever been crusty to each other).

George Bernard Shaw. “I remember coming across him at the Grand Canyon and finding him peevish, refusing to admire it or even look at it properly. He was jealous.”—J.B. Priestley. 

There’s also the oft-repeated, albeit likely apocryphal exchange between GBS and Sir Winston Churchill: Shaw wrote, “I enclose two tickets for the first night of my new play, one for yourself and one for a friend, if you have one.” Churchill responded, “Impossible to come to the first night, will come to the second—if you have one.” 

On Charlton Heston. “Charlton Heston, who is as big and gunny as John Wayne, but a little less legendary.”—Paul Morley, Esquire (1997)

Earthquake (1974). “Any movie in which Charlton Heston drowns in a sewer is all right with me.”—Time Out 

Ouch. Without Heston, there’d be no Ten Commandments posted in schools.

On Gerard Depardieu. “Because he’s French he’s a sex symbol. If he was English, he’d be a dinner lady.”—Donna McPhail

My favorite “dinner lady,” curiously missing in Barbed Quotes, is Quentin Crisp. I noted there, “Crisp’s opinions were far-ranging, cogent and occasionally barbed. He enjoyed solitude, observing “Living en famille provides the strongest motives for rudeness combined with the maximum opportunity for displaying it.”

Quentin Crisp, 1908–1999, English writer, actor, raconteur.

He recognized the importance of being honest with one’s style: “It’s no good running a pig farm badly for 30 years while saying, ‘Really, I was meant to be a ballet dancer.’ By then, pigs will be your style.”

On Sly Stallone’s Escape to Victory (1981). “A soccer film set in a POW camp, it features actors who can’t play soccer (Michael Caine), soccer players who can’t act (Pele), and Americans who can do neither (Stallone).”—Nick Hornby The Times of London

On Brooke Shields’ Suddenly Susan (1997). “That’s quite some feat she pulled off, getting acted off the screen by Judd Nelson.”—The Vidiots

Brooke Shields, Manhattan-born 1965. Image from Rotten Tomatoes.

“The Russians like Brooke Shields because her eyebrows remind them of Leonid Brezhnev.”—Robin Williams

On Phyllis Diller. “I treasure every moment that I do not see her.”—Oscar Levant

On Goldie Hawn. In Death Becomes Her (1992), “Hawn emotes like a Barbie doll on coke.”— Alexander Walker London Evening Standard

I beg to differ. I’ve always enjoyed Goldie Hawn’s mad comedics, from the early days on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In (1968–1970) to her Oscar-winning role in Cactus Flower. I also applaud her work with the Hawn Foundation helping kids.

And, on another note entirely, the mention of “coke” reminds me of mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey’s “Come nube che fugge dal vento” (hitherto dubbed “the coke aria”) from Handel’s opera Agrippina. 

Screen grab from YouTube.   

On Joan Collins. “I said she was known on the show as the ‘British Open.’ ”—Joan Rivers.

On Ellen DeGeneres. “Ellen Degenerate.”—Jerry Falwell (Ellen later replied: “Nice, coming from a minister. That’s what the Lord’s work is, name-calling.”)

On Joan Crawford. “Joan always cries a lot. Her tear ducts must be close to her bladder.”—Bette Davis

On Bette Davis. “Bette and I are very good friends. There’s nothing I wouldn’t say to her face—both of them.”—Tallulah Bankhead

On Tennessee Williams’ Orpheus Descending. “Darling, they’ve absolutely ruined your perfectly dreadful play.”—Tallulah Bankhead 

On Tennessee Williams. “Tennessee Williams often writes like an arrested adolescent who disarmingly imagines that he will gain stature if (as young boys are advised in Dixie) he loads enough manure in his shoes.”—Time

On James Dean. “Mr. Dean appears to be wearing my last year’s wardrobe and using my last year’s talents.”—Marlon Brando

On Warren Beatty. “The only reason he had a child is so that he can meet babysitters.”—David Letterman The Late Show

Actually By George Raft. Turning down the role of Rick in Casablanca: “I don’t want to star opposite an unknown Swedish broad.”—George Raft

He surely got that wrong.

And, to conclude, with continued thanks to Colin M. Jarman and his Barbed Quotes:

Anonymous. “If she was cast as Lady Godiva, the horse would steal the show.”—Anonymous. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2026