Quotes from 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.

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.

A Christmas Carol is such a fool-proof story you can't louse it up.

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.

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

Quality survives.

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

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.

Audiences deserve better.

Woody Allen has said, If I wanted to have a weekend of pure pleasure, it would be to have a half-dozen Bob Hope films and watch them, films like Monsieur Beaucaire and My Favorite Brunette. It's not for nothing that he's such a greatly accepted comedian. He is a great, great talent. Despite this praise from a celebrated contemporary funnyman, there is a tendency to take Bob Hope's films for granted.

Abbott and Costello are surrounded—by Bela Lugosi and Glenn Strange—in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

It probably isn't coincidental that so many of them are the work of writer-directors who are passionate about telling their stories—as opposed to journeymen who are simply carrying out an assignment

If your sense of humor was shaped by Looney Tunes, you're set for life.

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.

NBC anchor Brian Williams is a standup comic in disguise.

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

Timing in life is everything.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

I'm a lifelong Disney nut.