A lot of people like to run in plays because it's a nice, steady job.
Jackie Cooper

A nice, steady job I don't need that bad. I'm not that satisfied with it.
Jackie Cooper

But I want to do good work, after this series.
Jackie Cooper

But the working I would always want to do.
Jackie Cooper

From that, I became very anxious to produce something of my own.
Jackie Cooper

I hope this series is good work, but it is in the half-hour medium, which is limited to a kind of mediocrity that sponsors are just dying to have right now, and the public, for some reason, is unconsciously demanding.
Jackie Cooper

I just knew how to do the one thing I did, and whether I did it well or not depended on who the director was.
Jackie Cooper

I never say too much about that in public interviews, because it disappoints the public to tell them you're not that crazy about a property you did that possibly they liked.
Jackie Cooper

I remember Mr. Mayer very well. He sort of liked to be the father - no, he liked to be treated like you thought he was Daddy, but he didn't treat you like Daddy at all.
Jackie Cooper

I would also like to act, once in a while, but not get up every morning at 5:30 or six o'clock and pound into the studio and get home at 7:30 or eight o'clock at night, or act over and over and over every night on Broadway, either.
Jackie Cooper


If it's boring, then it's tiring.
Jackie Cooper

In those days, even as a boy, I watched some people that I knew were living way beyond their means.
Jackie Cooper

People like Spencer Tracy held up because they had the background originally, but to this day they never have changed Mr. Gable's role, or most of them.
Jackie Cooper

So I felt, well, I'll make the money and, with the money, do what I want to do.
Jackie Cooper

So I'm in that half-hour business where the most money is, so that eventually I feel like the people that put on the Dupont show, like maybe my artistic effort is going to be a little different.
Jackie Cooper

So if I keep making mistakes on Broadway or tape or film, producing, directing or acting, I can go along and do it - so long as I'm not investing too much capital in these things.
Jackie Cooper

So then you have to say to yourself: Do I want to be rich, or do I want to do good work?
Jackie Cooper

So whatever I might have started to learn at that age was all undone by the next director and next crew in the next cheap picture, because I was allowed to get away with murder.
Jackie Cooper

The studio didn't ask them to learn their trade, they just worked them, and when that personality or that gimmick or whatever they had ran dry at the box office, they were dropped and out.
Jackie Cooper

There was never any effort made out there to improve the artist.
Jackie Cooper