Brief Excerpt: Gloria Swanson, from People Will Talk by John Kobal —

... we must remember that we have used up an awful lot of ideas since then. It's all well and good when you're starting an industry and you're going into this thing because you, well, everything you do is a new, fresh idea that hasn't been used a thousand times. Sure, it might have been in books or the Greeks might have done it, but those ideas were new to films. Now, to come by a new idea, a fresh character, a new situation anymore is practically impossible. Everything today is almost a rehash of everything we did in the early days, in the '20s.

Source

Kobal, John. People Will Talk. New York: Knopf, 1985: 13.