During Double Indemnity (1944), Fred MacMurray would go to rushes. I remember asking Fred, 'How was I?' 'I don't know about you, but I was wonderful!' Such a true remark. Actors only look at themselves. "I'm a tough old broad from Brooklyn. I intend to go on acting until I'm ninety and they won't need to paste my face with make-up." Eyes are the greatest tool in film. Mr. Capra taught me that. Sure, it's nice to say very good dialogue, if you can get it. But great movie acting - watch the eyes! Put me in the last fifteen minutes of a picture and I don't care what happened before. I don't even care if I was IN the rest of the damned thing - I'll take it in those fifteen minutes. "My only problem is finding a way to play my fortieth fallen female in a different way from my thirty-ninth." Commenting in 1939 on the fact that her fiancé, Robert Taylor, at 28, was four years younger than she, which raised eyebrows then, Stanwyck said: "The boy's got a lot to learn and I've got a lot to teach." It's perhaps not the future I would choose. I still think it's possible to make a success of both marriage and career, even though I didn't. But it's not a bad future. And I'm not afraid of it. I couldn't remember my name for weeks. I'd be at the theater and hear them calling, 'Miss Stanwyck, Miss Stanwyck,' and I'd think, 'Where is that dame? Why doesn't she answer? By crickie, it's me!' Egotism - usually just a case of mistaken nonentity. There's nothing more fun in the whole world than seeing a child open a present at Christmas. To have a six-year-old boy stroke a bicycle with his eyes and, not daring to touch, turn and ask, 'Is it mine, Missy? Really mine?' That's part of my future. The rest is work. And, I hope, some wisdom.

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