Creativity Quote by Donald O'Connor

There is a showman’s generosity in Donald O’Connor’s plea: make more movies, more musicals, give people a shot, let the public have the spectacle. It’s an argument that sounds civic-minded, almost New Deal in spirit, but it’s also deeply industry-savvy. O’Connor isn’t merely praising entertainment; he’s defending an ecosystem where mass culture functions as an escalator - for audiences hungry for release and for unknown performers desperate for a door that isn’t locked by pedigree.

The repetition of “I think” is doing quiet rhetorical work. It softens the pitch into something like common sense, the kind of folksy insistence that reads as modest while pushing a clear agenda: production equals opportunity. When he says “this country deserves” it, the subtext is that musicals aren’t frivolous; they’re a public good, a pressure valve, a training ground, even a jobs program in sequins. That’s a performer speaking from a time when the studio system could churn out talent, manufacture stardom, and still make it feel like magic.

Context matters. O’Connor came up in an era when Hollywood musicals were both escapist medicine and industrial machine - high craft, high labor, high risk. His wistfulness hints at contraction: fewer big musicals, fewer chances to be “discovered,” less investment in the kind of communal, exuberant fantasy he helped perfect. Underneath the optimism is a warning: when an industry stops making room for beginners, it also stops replenishing its own myths.