They talk about the illiteracy of Kentucky mountains. You see it in this here dogpatch stuff. Some of them old mammies out there could come here to Hollywood and teach you modern mothers how to raise your kids. You let her kid come in one night with her hair all messed up, and lips... slips, (what do you call that?) make-up stuff they put on their face, and her dress all squeezed to one side, and been out all night, drunk, brother, she'd get one of them limbs off the top of that hickory tree and she'd never go out no more. I tell you, she'd... And if you had a little more of that, you'd have a better Hollywood around here, and a better nation. That's right. It's true. "Just try to be modern," that--that's one of the tricks of the Devil.
Excerpt from
My Life Story
April 19, 1959
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