1.
Marlon Brando once said of Oscar-nominated actor Montgomery Clift, “He acts like he’s got a Mixmaster up his ass and doesn’t want anyone to know it.”
2.
In fact, Brando was apparently quite sassy. According to the book Hollywood Babble On: Stars Gossip About Other Stars, Marlon Brando once said, “Bob Hope would attend the opening of a supermarket.”
3.
After James Dean’s first big movie role in East of Eden, Brando also famously said, “Mr. Dean appears to be wearing my last year’s wardrobe and using my last year’s talent.”
4.
Brando wasn’t immune to criticism of his own, though. Trevor Howard once called Marlon Brando: “Unprofessional and absolutely ridiculous.” The two had worked together on the 1962 film Mutiny on the Bounty.
5.
This is a little later, but Christopher Reeve once told David Letterman that Marlon Brando was “phoning it in” and just “didn’t care” later in his career.
6.
Richard Burton apparently said of Brando in his diaries: “Marlon has yet to learn to speak. Christ knows how often I’ve watched Marlon ruin his performance by under-articulation. He should have been born two generations before and acted in silent films.”
7.
In a meeting of legends, Marlon Brando worked with silent film pioneer Charlie Chaplin on the movie A Countess From Hong Kong. Afterward, he called Chaplin “probably the most sadistic man I’d ever met” and “an egotistical tyrant and a penny-pincher.” He also referred to him as “a fearsomely cruel man.”
8.
Costars trading insults encapsulate some of my favorite examples. On the set of Meet Danny Wilson, Frank Sinatra reportedly called costar Shelly Winters a “bowlegged b***h of a Brooklyn blonde,” while Winters called him a “skinny, no-talent stupid Hoboken b***ard” and even punched him.
9.
Robert Mitchum once said of costar Greer Garson, “I gave up being serious about making pictures around the time I made a film with Greer Garson, and she took a hundred and twenty-five takes to say no.”
10.
The biography Some Like It Wilder: The Life and Controversial Films of Billy Wilder states that Humphrey Bogart mocked William Holden as “pretty” and a “lover boy,” and in turn, Holden had strong words for Bogart. “I hated the bastard,” he said. “He was always stirring things up when he didn’t have to.” The two had appeared in Sabrina together.
11.
Laurence Olivier was famously brutal on his costars. He called Merle Oberon “a silly little amateur,” Joan Fontaine “loathsome,” and said of Marilyn Monroe, “My hatred for her was one of the strongest emotions I had ever felt.” Of Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, he said, “I didn’t care to be taught acting by those two.”
12.
Olivier also criticized the performances of other actors, including John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, and Peter O’Toole, particularly when it came to Shakespeare. After seeing O’Toole in Halmet, he said he “felt so ashamed for the poor chap.”
13.
This one blows my mind a bit timing-wise because Lauren Bacall is an Old Hollywood star, and Tom Cruise is decidedly not, but Bacall lived long enough to get in some harsh words about Cruise. “When you talk about a great actor, you’re not talking about Tom Cruise,” she said. “His whole behavior is so shocking. It’s inappropriate and vulgar and absolutely unacceptable to use your private life to sell anything commercially, but I think it’s kind of a sickness.” She was referring to Cruise’s couch-jumping and very public relationship with Katie Holmes.
14.
Katharine Hepburn also lived quite a while — long enough to be interviewed by Barbara Walters. In an interview, Walters appeared to goad Katharine Hepburn for always wearing pants, and Katharine replied that she did have a single skirt and would wear it to Walters’ funeral.
15.
Katharine Hepburn was famously outspoken as she got older. After Sharon Stone starred in Basic Instinct, Hepburn said, “It’s a new low for actresses when you have to wonder what’s between her ears instead of her legs.”
16.
Hepburn was not immune to criticism herself. Writer Dorothy Parker said of the four-time Best Actress Oscar-winner, “She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.”
17.
Earlier on, Hepburn had said of child star Shirley Temple, “Acting is the most minor of gifts. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four.”
18.
Louise Brookes was worse — she called Shirley Temple “A swaggering, tough little slut.”
19.
And comedian Totie Fields said of Temple, “Shirley Temple had charisma as a child. But it cleared up as an adult.”
20.
This isn’t *quite* Old Hollywood, but it’s so casually cruel I have to include it. James Caan once called Bette Midler “very stupid.” He continued, “She’s not a bad person, but stupid in terms of gray matter. I mean, I like her, but I like my dog, too.” The two co-starred in For the Boys.
21.
Ava Gardner appeared to call Clark Gable dumb, once saying, “Clark is the sort of guy that if you say, ‘Hiya Clark, how are you?’ he’s stuck for an answer.”
22.
John Wayne also once called Gable an “idiot,” saying, “You know why he’s an actor? It’s the only thing he’s smart enough to do.”
23.
Wayne also called Montgomery Clift “an arrogant little bastard”…
24.
…And Gene Hackman “one of the worst actors in Hollywood.”
25.
Tallulah Bankhead famously did not get along with Bette Davis. She once said of Davis, “There’s nothing I wouldn’t say to her face…both of them.” She also said of Davis, “And after all the nice things I’ve said about that hag, Bette Davis. When I get a hold of her, I’ll tear out every hair of her mustache!”
26.
Bette Davis was similarly cutting in many of her public remarks on other stars. After starring with Errol Flynn in The Sisters and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex in the 1930s, she said of Flynn, “He was just beautiful. He himself openly said, ‘I don’t know really anything about acting,’ and I admire his honesty because he’s absolutely right.”
27.
Davis once said of Jayne Mansfield, “Dramatic art in her opinion is knowing how to fill a sweater.”
28.
But Davis’ most famous feud is with What Happened to Baby Jane? costar Joan Crawford. After Crawford died, Davis, who she had famously feuded with, reportedly said, “You should never say bad things about the dead, only good. Joan Crawford is dead…good!”
29.
Another of Bette Davis’ famous insults of Joan Crawford? “Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it’s because I’m not a bitch. Maybe that’s why Miss Crawford always plays ladies.”
30.
Davis also said, “Joan Crawford — I wouldn’t sit on her toilet!” and “I wouldn’t piss on Joan Crawford if she were on fire.” Oh, and she said that Crawford had “slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie.”
31.
Joan Crawford had her fair share of barbs for Davis, too. She once said that Davis “was always partial to covering up her face in motion pictures. She called it ‘art.’ Others might call it camouflage — a cover-up for the absence of any real beauty.”
32.
Crawford also said of Davis, “Bette will play anything, so long as she thinks someone is watching. I’m a little more selective than that.” On another occasion, she insulted Davis’ acting. “I don’t hate Bette Davis even though the press wants me to. I resent her — I don’t see how she built a career out of a set of mannerisms instead of real acting ability. Take away the pop eyes, the cigarette, and those funny clipped words and what have you got? She’s phony, but I guess the public likes that.”
33.
On another occasion, Crawford said, “I’m the quiet one, and Bette’s explosive. I have discipline, she doesn’t,” and “She has a cult, and what the hell is a cult except a gang of rebels without a cause. I have fans. There’s a big difference.”
34.
Crawford’s digs weren’t just reserved for Davis. At the Photoplay Awards dinner, Joan Crawford told reporter Bob Thomas that Marilyn Monroe’s cleavage “was the most shocking display of bad taste I have ever seen. Look, there’s nothing wrong with my tits, but I don’t go around throwing them in people’s faces.”
35.
She wasn’t the only one to have something negative to say about Marilyn. Otto Preminger said of Marilyn Monroe, “Directing her was like directing Lassie.”
36.
And Tony Curtis said that kissing Marilyn Monroe in Some Like it Hot was “like kissing Hitler,” though he later elaborated, “Someone said to me, ‘Hey, what’s it like kissing Marilyn?’ I said, ‘It’s like kissing Hitler. What are you doing asking me such a stupid question?’ That’s where it came from.”
37.
Orson Welles once said he hated Woody Allen “physically,” saying, “I can hardly bear to talk to him. He has the Chaplin disease. That particular combination of arrogance and timidity sets my teeth on edge.” When director Henry Jaglom, with whom Welles was speaking, suggested Allen was shy, Welles replied, “He is arrogant. Like all people with timid personalities, his arrogance is unlimited. Anybody who speaks quietly and shrivels up in company is unbelievably arrogant. He acts shy, but he’s not. He’s scared. He hates himself, and he loves himself, a very tense situation. It’s people like me who have to carry on and pretend to be modest. To me, it’s the most embarrassing thing in the world — a man who presents himself at his worst to get laughs, in order to free himself from his hang-ups. Everything he does on the screen is therapeutic.”
38.
In the same conversation, Welles also said, “I never could stand looking at Bette Davis, so I don’t want to see her act, you see.”
39.
Welles said of celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck, “I don’t like Wolfgang. He’s a little shit. I think he’s a terrible little man.”
40.
He also called Norma Shearer “one of the most minimally talented ladies ever to appear on the silver screen, and who looked like nothing, with one eye crossed over the other.”
41.
Remember Tallulah Bankhead from earlier in this post? Well, after Somerset Maugham declined to cast her in his play, Bankhead reportedly said, “Mr Maugham, I have two words left to say to you, and the second one is ‘off.'”
42.
Natalie Wood apparently told her sister Lana that Elvis “can sing, but he can’t do much else.” The two had briefly dated in the ’50s.
43.
Frank Sinatra once referred to journalist Dorothy Kilgallen as “the chinless wonder” — and compared her to a chipmunk. He also once sent her a headstone.
44.
Screenwriter SJ Perelman said of Groucho Marx, “The man was a major comedian, which is to say that he had the compassion of an icicle, the effrontery of a carnival shill, and the generosity of a pawn broker.”
45.
John Gielgud said of Swedish actor Ingrid Bergman, “Dear Ingrid — speaks five languages and can’t act in any of them.”
46.
Fanny Brice said of Esther Williams, who famously went from being a swimming star to a film star often shot in the water: “Wet, she’s a star. Dry, she ain’t!”
47.
Dyan Cannon said of director Otto Preminger, “I don’t think he could direct his nephew to the bathroom.” Preminger had directed her in Such Good Friends.
48.
Elliott Gould once called comedian Jerry Lewis a “sour, ceremonial, piously chauvinistic egomaniac.”
49.
Writer Graham Greene once called early sex symbol Mae West “an overfed python.”
50.
And W.C. Fields called West “a plumber’s idea of Cleopatra.”
51.
Finally, this one is more playful. While presenting an award at the 51st Oscars in 1979, Shirley MacLaine publicly called out her brother, Warren Beatty, who famously had a ton of relationships as a young star: “Warren, Warren, Warren, just imagine what you could accomplish if you tried celibacy.”
What’s your favorite celeb jab or insult? Let us know in the comments!