All the King's Men (1949)

Jack Burden: Anne, Burden's Landing is a place on the Moon. It isn't real. It doesn't exist. It's me pretending to live on what I earn. It's my mother trying to keep herself young and drinking herself old. It's you and Adam living in this house as though your father were still alive. It's an old man like the judge dreaming of the past.

---

Sadie Burke: He'll ditch everybody in the whole world, because that's what Willie wants. Nobody in the world but him!

---

Sadie Burke: Be smart. Play square with him. You're gonna need people like us around.
Willie Stark: Are you sure?

---

read more quotes from All the King's Men...

In the original manuscript, Willie's last name is Talos, not Stark. When the novel was first published, the name was Stark. In 2001, the novel was reprinted with Stark's name changed back to Talos, among other changes.
Producer-Director Robert Rossen offered the role of Willie Stark to John Wayne. Rossen sent a copy of the script to Wayne's agent, Charles K. Feldman, who forwarded it to Wayne. After reading the script, Wayne sent it back with an angry letter attached. In it, he told Feldman that before he sent the script to any of his other clients, he should ask them if they wanted to star in a film that "smears the machinery of government for no purpose of humor or enlightenment," that "degrades all relationships," and that is populated by "drunken mothers; conniving fathers; double-crossing sweethearts; bad, bad, rich people; and bad, bad poor people if they want to get ahead." He accused Rossen of wanting to make a movie that threw acid on "the American way of life." If Feldman had such clients, Wayne wrote that the agent should "rush this script... to them." Wayne, however, said to the agent that "You can take this script and shove it up Robert Rossen's derri?re..." Wayne later remarked that "To make Huey Long a wonderful, rough pirate was great," he said; "but, according to this picture, everybody was s - t except for this weakling intern doctor who was trying to find a place in the world." Broderick Crawford, who had played a supporting role in To prepare for the role of Willie Stark, Broderick Crawford watched newsreels of Huey Long, the former Louisiana senator and governor on whose life the novel was loosely based.
read more facts about All the King's Men...