The contract system at Hollywood studios like MGM was a very efficient system in that because we were at the studio all the time we could rehearse a lot. But it also really repressed people. There were no union regulations yet, and we were all indentured servants - you can call us slaves if you want - like ballplayers before free agency. We had seven-year contracts, but every six months the studio could decide to fire you if your picture wasn`t a hit. And if you turned down a role, they cut off your salary and simply added the time to your contract.

There is a strange sort of reasoning in Hollywood that musicals are less worthy of Academy consideration than dramas. It`s a form of snobbism, the same sort that perpetuates the idea that drama is more deserving of Awards than comedy.

[on Fred Astaire] I work bigger. Fred`s style is more intimate. I`m very jealous of that when I see him on the small screen. Fred looks so great on TV. I`d love to put on a white tie and tails and look as thin as him and glide as smoothly. But I`m built like a blocking tackle.

My mother had gotten a job as a receptionist at a dancing school and had the idea that we should open our own dancing school; we did, and it prospered.

I`d studied dance in Chicago every summer end taught it all winter, and I was well-rounded. I wasn`t worried about getting a job on Broadway. In fact, I got one the first week.

I got started dancing because I knew it was one way to meet girls.

[on Judy Garland] The finest all-around performer we ever had in America was Judy Garland. There was no limit to her talent. She was the quickest, brightest person I ever worked with.

[on his career] I took it as it came and it happened to be very nice.

[on Ginger Rogers] When Ginger Rogers danced with Fred Astaire, it was the only time in the movies when you looked at the man, not the woman.

Fred Astaire represented the aristocracy, I represented the proletariat.

I never wanted to be a dancer. It`s true! I wanted to be a shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

If Fred Astaire is the Cary Grant of dance, I`m the Marlon Brando.

I arrived in Hollywood twenty pounds overweight and as strong as an ox. But if I put on a white tails and tux like [Fred Astaire], I still looked like a truck driver.

Kids talk to me and say they want to do musicals again because they`ve studied the tapes of the old films. We didn`t have that. We thought once we had made it, even on film, it was gone except for the archives.

There was no model for what I tried to do with dance . . . and the thing Fred Astaire and I used to bitch about was that critics didn`t know how to categorize us. They called us tap dancers because that was considered the American style. But neither of us were basically tap dancers.

[on his working experience with Debbie Reynolds while filming Singin` in the Rain (1952) (1952)] I wasn`t nice to Debbie. It`s a wonder she still speaks to me.