Creativity Quote by Kitty Carlisle

There is a sly deflation baked into Carlisle's "same wave as everybody else": Hollywood isn't framed as destiny or artistic calling, but as mass motion - a tide you either ride or resist. Coming from a performer who moved easily between opera, Broadway, film, and later television, the line reads less like confession than like a wink at how careers actually get made. People love the myth of the singular star with a singular vision. Carlisle offers the opposite: ambition as contagion, opportunity as a current, success as partly surrendering to the moment's momentum.

The phrasing also quietly protects her. "Got caught up" softens agency, a strategic pass that sidesteps accusations of naked careerism or opportunism. For women in early- to mid-century entertainment, "wanting it too much" could be punished; charm had to do the work that honesty couldn't. By casting Hollywood as a wave, she keeps her desire legible but socially acceptable. It's not "I chased fame", it's "the era was pulling all of us."

Context matters: Hollywood in the 1930s and 40s functioned like a national magnet, hoovering up stage talent as sound cinema demanded voices, faces, and polish. Carlisle's line captures the industrial reality of that pipeline while preserving the romance of spontaneity. The subtext is a seasoned professional admitting what the public rarely hears: the dream factory runs on trends, and even the most poised performers are, in part, passengers.