Nita was a vamp with street smarts. She had been around the pasture once or twice and had men, the movies, and life all figured out. Never shy about speaking her mind, Nita left us with some memorable quotes which give us an understanding of Nita, the woman. Intelligent at a time when intelligence in a woman was not fashionable, Nita also possessed a wicked, earthy sense of humor with the self-confidence to laugh at herself. Here are some of her insightful quotations.
On the vamp matter, I just don't happen to look like an ingenue and that's why they cast me for the vampire, which is wrong again, because the real vampire is the little baby doll with the liquid eye. Every time. A man is scared to death of a woman who looks as if she might have a couple of thoughts. He wants to know it all. That's Men. The girl with the curls is the real vampire. I found that out when I was in the chorus. It was the blond cutie that did all the damage to the front row.
You know yourself that the way to lose a man is the way the film wives treat them. Be nice to a man and he's as good as gone. Cater to him, run after him, spill a few tears over him at the breakfast table, call him "Dearie" and you'll have him falling into the arms of the first vamp who throws him a red rose and a cruel word now and then, when she thinks of it.
They used to put me in boudoir scenes wearing ermine tails and paradises in my hair and a couple of snakes coiled around my shoulders. A man would run 20 miles if he ever stumbled on a woman really looking like that.
Girls like Marilyn Monroe are tremendously more sexy than I ever could be. They look like human beings. I looked like something buried for 2,000 years and just dug up!
I'm a lazy devil. I prefer reading to anything in the world. From detective stories to Flaubert and Dickens. I'm mad about psychological murders. Sort of a frustration, I suppose. I was a one-woman crime wave on the screen.
I like earrings. I don't think I could vamp successfully without them.
They always hated me because I spoke English correctly. Now they all take diction lessons but still speak like Marlon Brando.
When I went out to the coast, some of the people on the Lasky lot tried to Ritz me. I heard a group of people say, "Oh, she's only a showgirl." Do you know what I said? God made showgirls and Paramount made actresses.
These pages were originally created on July 10, 1999.
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