"They were fun days, and we set the town on fire with every movie we did"
About this Quote
“Set the town on fire” is obviously figurative, but it’s also calibrated. It carries the whiff of scandal, nightlife, publicity, premieres, and the kind of masculine bravado Lancaster specialized in on screen. It’s a performer’s way of describing impact without sounding like he’s talking about box office or reviews. Fire is spectacle and threat: people look, people talk, institutions get nervous. That’s the subtext of a studio-era star who knew how attention worked before “brand” became a term of art.
Context sharpens it. Lancaster came up when actors could be both craftsmen and folk heroes, when a movie’s arrival could reorganize a town’s mood for a week. His career straddled the shift from the tight studio machine to a looser, auteur-driven era; the quote reads like a valedictory glance back at a time when movies didn’t just entertain - they dominated the civic bloodstream. It’s less an autobiography than a claim: we weren’t just in films; we were the event.
Quote Details
| Topic | Movie |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Lancaster, Burt. (n.d.). They were fun days, and we set the town on fire with every movie we did. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/they-were-fun-days-and-we-set-the-town-on-fire-43772/
Chicago Style
Lancaster, Burt. "They were fun days, and we set the town on fire with every movie we did." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/they-were-fun-days-and-we-set-the-town-on-fire-43772/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"They were fun days, and we set the town on fire with every movie we did." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/they-were-fun-days-and-we-set-the-town-on-fire-43772/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.

