Publicity photo for Woman of the Year (1942)

During the casting of the 1942 film Woman of the Year, Katharine Hepburn was selected to play opposite screen veteran Spencer Tracy, thus beginning a professional and personal relationship that would last for twenty-five years (they did eight additional films together and had a legendary — and technically illicit — romantic relationship). When the regal Hepburn met the short and stocky Tracy for the first time, she said in her distinctive patrician manner, ‘I’m afraid I’m a little tall for you, Mr. Tracy.’ A commanding figure, Hepburn did not often meet men who could stand up to her, so her respect for Tracy shot up when he replied, ‘Not to worry, Miss Hepburn, I’ll soon cut you down to size.'”

— Source: Viva la Repartee by Dr. Mardy Grothe

“Alfred Hitchcock’s 1944 film Lifeboat, a drama about eight survivors of a freighter sunk by a German U-boat, was one of the most popular films of the year (it was also nominated for three Academy Awards). While posing for publicity photographs for the film, actress Mary Anderson approached the director and asked, ‘What is my best side, Mr. Hitchcock?’ His reply was soon being circulated all around Hollywood: ‘My dear, you’re sitting on it.'”

— Source: Viva la Repartee by Dr. Mardy Grothe

Poster for The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944)

“The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, the new Preston Sturges film, seems to me funnier, more adventurous, more abundant, more intelligent, and more encouraging than anything that has been made in Hollywood for years… The essential story is hardly what you would expect to see on an American scene. . . . The girl’s name, Trudy Kockenlocker, of itself relegates her to a comic-strip world in which nothing need be regarded as real; the characters themselves are extremely stylized. . . . Thanks to these devices the Hays office has either been hypnotized into a liberality for which it should be thanked, or has been raped in its sleep.”

— James Agee, from his review in The Nation (January 1944)

“I watched Preston Sturges work on Sullivan’s Travels. He let me go through the entire production, watching him direct — and I directed a little. I’d stage a scene and he’d tell me how lousy it was. Then I watched the editing and I was able to gradually build up knowledge. Preston insisted I make a film as soon as possible… He said it’s better to have done something bad than to have done nothing… so the first picture, good or bad, that came along, I decided to do.”

— Anthony Mann, interviewed for Screen (July-October 1969)