“You’d have to watch the way she came in…If Joan was wearing a pair of slacks, that meant you’d go over and slap her right on the ass and say ‘Hiya kid. You getting much?’ In turn she’d be as raucous as Billie Cassin from Texas at that moment and you’d have an absolute ball. She could come back the next day wearing black sables and incredible sapphires, and by Jesus, you’d better be on your feet and click your heels, kiss her hand, and talk with the best British accent you had, but never in any way indicate she was different in any respect from the way she was yesterday, because the following day she’d come in in a dirndl or a pinafore and you’d be on the floor playing jacks with her. I loved it. You had to be an actor and be adaptive to what she was playing, though the moment she left my office, I went back to what I was before she came in.”

—Joseph L. Mankiewicz, quoted in Kenneth L. Geist, Pictures Will Talk