Biografía

Near the end of his life, he became compulsive in his driving. According to his biography, if he had had bad service in a restaurant he would not drive past it. If a car had honked at him, he would not drive down that street again. At one point, he had to drive from the studio to his agent's office, which was only three miles away, with all his detours around streets he would not drive down he racked up over 25 miles.

A lifetime sufferer of real and imagined ailments, his frequent stays in mental hospitals provided grist for his frequently biting humor.

The role of Cosmo Brown in Cantando bajo la lluvia (1952) was written with him in mind, but was instead immortalized by Donald O'Connor.

Some of his last public appearances were on the television quiz show The Celebrity Game (1964) in 1964; he also appeared October 17, 1965 on What's My Line? (1950) as the mystery guest promoting his book "Memoirs of an Amnesiac". It was around this time that he increasingly withdrew from the public eye (although he continued to write and his book "The Unimportance of Being Oscar" was published in 1968) and lived the remainder of his life (he died in 1972) with his second wife June and their three daughters out of the limelight.

He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for recording at 6728 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California.

Strip the phony tinsel off Hollywood and you'll find the real tinsel underneath.

I made a comment to a newspaper about therapists saying that people should not become dependent on them and it got printed as, "The rapists say . . . "

My psychiatrist once said to me, "Maybe life isn't for everyone".

A musical is a series of catastrophes ending with a floor show.

In some situations I was difficult, in odd moments impossible, in rare moments loathsome, but at my best unapproachably great.