Leonard Maltin Quotes

• While it was occasionally done here or there, nobody else had a figurehead like Walt doing it. Jack Warner wasn’t on TV. Walt was the boss, but he had a real public profile and he used it to his advantage. And he became a household face.

  Leonard Maltin

• When Tim Allen made The Santa Clause, I thought that was a delightful film. It took a modern sensibility but layered onto it a kind of sentiment.

  Leopold Trepper

• Timing in life is everything.

  Leonard Maltin

• The last person to stand still and repeat himself was Walt Disney. He refused to repeat himself. So to think that he’d be making the same kind of film in the year 2001 that he made in 1941 is absurd.

  Leonard Maltin

• Television is what made It’s a Wonderful Life the classic it is today.

  Leonard Maltin

• Shakespeare wrote great plays that we’re still watching all these years later. Charlie Chaplin made great comedies and they are still as funny today as they ever were.

  Leonard Maltin

• Quality survives.

  Leonard Maltin

• Polar Express is not an attempt to do animation. It is a technology-based film.

  Leonard Maltin

• NBC anchor Brian Williams is a standup comic in disguise.

  Leonard Maltin

• Movie theaters still exist in spite of all of the alternatives that are available, video and video-on-demand and DVD and streaming video and all of these things.

  Leonard Maltin

• Los Angeles has the greatest concentration of surviving movie palaces in the United States, yet most residents have never been inside one of them.

  Leonard Maltin

• If I were less than honest as a critic, I think people would spot that right away, and it would destroy my credibility.

  Leonard Maltin

• I’m a lifelong Disney nut.

  Leonard Maltin

• I think the people who are making Christmas-themed movies today feel that people are more cynical about Christmas. There’s more of an edge.

  Leonard Maltin

• I think people in Hollywood are afraid of sentiment because they think audiences will reject it.

  Leonard Maltin

• I teach at USC. I have a big class of 360 kids, only about a fifth of whom are film majors. I don’t just show the Hollywood blockbusters. I show independent films, foreign films, documentaries.

  Leonard Maltin

• I had the great good fortune to interview Peggy Lee. Her memories of working with Walt Disney and his team were warm and upbeat.

  Leonard Maltin

• Hollywood executives believe that money is both the be-all and end-all to the moviemaking process.

  Leonard Maltin

• Everyone is looking for the sure thing. They are looking to hedge their bet. They think the way to do that is to go with a proven quantity, a remake of something you have already seen. That is their mindset.

  Leonard Maltin

• Dumbo… makes me cry. Every single time and in the exact same spot. I just have a special affection for Dumbo.

  Leonard Maltin

Leonard Maltin (23)

Birth:	18th December, 1950
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Animator, Critic, Historian

About

Leonard Maltin is an American film critic and historian, author of several mainstream books on cinema, focusing on nostalgic, celebratory narratives.Maltin began his writing career at age fifteen, writing for Classic Images and editing and publishing his own fanzine, Film Fan Monthly, dedicated to films from the golden age of Hollywood.
After earning a journalism degree at New York University, Maltin went on to publish articles in a variety of film journals, newspapers, and magazines, including Variety and TV Guide.

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Today's Anniversary - 22nd December

Births

• 1905 - Kenneth Rexroth
• 1908 - Max Bill
• 1962 - Mark Ruffalo
• 1944 - Mary Archer
• 1943 - Paul Wolfowitz

Deaths

• 1899 - Dwight L. Moody
• 1989 - Samuel Beckett
• 1943 - Beatrix Potter
• 1998 - Virginia Graham
• 1940 - Nathanael West