June 18, 2009
Hollywood Good Guys: Liev Schreiber & Naomi Watts
Hollywood stars Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts, with their two children Samuel, 3, and Alexander, 1, recently visited Israel.
Schreiber said his grandfather was a strong Zionist who had always begged him to go to Israel. His grandfather died before he could make that happen, so this trip resonates for him. It may also have additional meaning following his most recent role as Zus Bielski in Defiance, the Holocaust movie recounting the Bielski brothers, Jewish partisans who lived and rebelled against the Nazis from a Bellarussian forest with a band of fellow refugees.
Schreiber recalls some intensely personal history:
“I grew up in the Lower East Side of New York, and I’m half-Jewish. Anything that has resonance for me about my family history, because I don’t know much about it, I’m drawn to. That’s part of why I think I choose projects like this. Less because I’m right for them, but because I want to know if I’m right for them.”
As Schreiber planted a tree in the Galilee, Naomi Watts recited the tree planting prayer.
“This particular area is called Galilee,” the dad-of-two explained. “And in this area, approximately 750,000 trees were destroyed in missile attacks [from Gaza]. So what we are doing here today is called Project Renewal.”
From years of watching Hollywood distance itself from Israel and Zionism I can safely observe that Schreiber and Watts, in their love of Israel and Judaism—make no mistake about it, the war against Israel is primarily a jihad against Judaism—are brave people for going public. Both are exquisitely gifted actors—A-list all the way—and their support for Israel should be applauded.
Once upon a time, Hollywood stars were firm supporters of Israel. Screenwriter Ben Hecht worked tirelessly for the Irgun. Frank Sinatra donated thousands of dollars to the Zionist cause. But the cancer of multi-culturalism has embedded itself into the “progressive” body politic of Hollywood, and with it comes the inevitable poison of moral equivalency, resulting in such vile movies as Steven Spielberg's historically and ethically bankrupt Munich.
Liev and Naomi proudly display their Jewish
National Fund certificates.
Liev Schreiber binds himself in tefillin.
Naomi Watts, holding her son Alexander, prays at the
Kotel, the Western Wall.
More pictures here.
Want to plant a tree in Israel? Click here and do it.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 07:49 AM | Comments (15)
March 05, 2009
10,000 Violent Women and One Screenwriter, Final Chapter
“My ladies will probably try and slip you some letters, ask you to mail them on the outside. Do not do that. It is contraband, you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“One or two might try and hug you goodbye, in that hug, there might be an inappropriate touch. Resist the temptation.”
“Yes, M’am.”
It’s my last day as visitor slash researcher in the prison. I’m being debriefed by the Supervisor, a tough, no-nonsense lady who still manages to retain her femininity—and sense of humor.
“You got what you wanted?”
“Yes, thank you. Can I ask you a few questions?”
“Ask, but I may not answer.”
To read Chapter VII, the final installment in my series, please head on over to Big Hollywood.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:43 AM | Comments (6)
February 26, 2009
10,000 Violent Women and One Screenwriter, Part VI
EXT. PRISON YARD - DAY
The Screenwriter and the Corrections Officer are chatting about the list of prison movies Robert has promised to compile. Screenwriter and C.O. share a companionable relationship that is occasionally rattled by Cindy’s insatiable curiosity about her visitor’s private life.
Cindy: “You a Jew?”
INTERTITLE: Oy-vey!
Robert: “Why do you ask?”
Cindy: “Y’know, Hollywood… Jews.”
I would so love to continue this conversation, explore Cindy’s mind-set, but:
Robert: “What do you think?”
Cindy: “I think, yeah.”
Robert: “And if I am Jewish?”
Cindy gives an exaggerated shrug of the shoulders.
To read the complete story, please go to Big Hollywood.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:48 AM | Comments (14)
February 19, 2009
10,000 Violent Women and One Screenwriter, Part V
Virginia Lee Corbin as a wild young flapper in “Lilies of the Streets,” 1925.
EXT. PRISON - DAY
The Screenwriter, alternately known to the inmates as Mr. Hollywood, Mr. Screenplay Writer and Mr. Clueless, sits with Eden, an attractive prisoner who is: mother to three children, an admirer of Jane Austen, and a fine dog trainer. She also committed murder and has agreed to talk about it. One long take. Think Gregg Toland deep focus photography meets Anthony Mann’s elegant choreography within frame.
“The thing y’gotta know is I’m not the same person I was back when I did what I did. But I still take full responsibility for, uh, what happened.”
In prison I keep hearing three tedious words:
It. Just. Happened.
To read the entire story, please head on over to Big Hollywood.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:54 AM | Comments (11)
February 16, 2009
Masterpiece Jew Haters
Timothy Spall as Fagin: “Never trust
the goyim.” Gotta check the Cliff notes.
I must have missed a few subtle literary points in college when I was taking a Charles Dickens seminar.
I missed the spot where Fagin, in Oliver Twist, is wearing a gigoondo yarmulke.
Also, blasting right by yours truly—alas, never the best of students—is the part where Fagin abstains from eating pork chops because they're not kosher.
Who knew that Fagin was an observant Jew?
And I must have skipped the part where Fagin—going all bi-polar—talks to himself in fractured Hebrew and intones: “Never trust the goyim.”
Last night I was flipping through my 150 channels—you can get obese watching all the cooking shows—when I stumbled on this new adaptation of Oliver Twist.
I had no idea I had access to Al Jazeera. It was kind of scary, I mean I know the Arab world with its state controlled TV and film industries is a sewer of Jew-hatred, but this Fagin is pretty darn close to the image of the evil Jew pushed by the Nazi propaganda machine.
He's not just the Jew, he's the devil.
This Fagin is such a leering, salivating monster that I wouldn't be surprised if, in next week's exciting installment, he molests a few doe-eyed kids then slaughters them so he can use their blood to bake matzo. Believe me, the Blood Libel is alive and well in the Arab world, and fast making headway in oh-so-civilized Europe.
Imagine my surprise when the station ID popped up and I learned that this was not Al Jazeera, but PBS.
Okay, I really wasn't surprised.
And I wasn't surprised that this grotesquely anti-Semitic Oliver Twist is a British production. Most sane people recognize that Britain, in about 25 years, will be ruled by Sharia and cheerily Judenrein.
Say hello to the happy-go-lucky 7th century.
European Jew-hatred is so common, so darn fashionable that Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist is now part of the arsenal to make Jew-hatred acceptable.
Director Coky Giedroyc and writer Sarah Phelps are the chief criminals in this repulsive exercise in sophisticated Jew-hatred. They will, no doubt, argue that they are restoring a fresh perspective to Fagin's Jewishness. This is the corrupt academic language of deconstruction, where “texts” have no real meaning, where all interpretations are equally valid.
Naturally, it's a one-way deconstructionist street.
You can bet your bottom dollar that no Muslim would ever appear in such a dark light in a BBC production. Because the Islamists would issue a fatwa and Giedroyc and Phelps would be living under 24/7 protection.
No doubt, this dynamic Jew-hating duo would hunker down with The Koran and deconstruct it in order to prove that beheading is not terribly sporting.
But it's open season on Jews because, well, what are we going to do but protest in print, be dismissed as right wing nut jobs, or y'know, pushy Jooz.
Question: why does PBS exist?
Oh right, desperately needed government support for people—and by people I mean losers—who can't make a living in the business like yours truly.
Your tax dollars at work.
Crossposted and expanded on Big Hollywood.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:29 AM | Comments (34)
February 10, 2009
10,000 Violent Women and One Screenwriter, Part IV
Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Hold Your Man, 1933.
“They seem to do a good job,” I say to Cindy.
“Yeah,” Cindy allows, “what else they got to do with their time.”
“They could be plotting a riot.”
“Cute.”
“Take over the prison system, make you their slave.”
“You've seen too many movies, Robert.”
Sad but true. C.O. Cindy is an excellent judge of character.
“Can any inmate get into the program?”
“No way. Inmates who abused or murdered children, inmates who tortured animals, they are barred, no exceptions.”
“Good policy. Gotta maintain standards.”
“Hey, we ain't so dumb.”
“But straight-up murderers?”
Listen to me, I'm doing dialog like from an old Warner Brothers movie.
“Killers are our best trainers. In for the full ride, they got nothing but time.”
Hey, C.O Cindy is in the exact same movie. This is fab-u-lous, we're kibitzing, in cute-tough prison-speak, like Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in the deeply flawed but fascinating Hold Your Man.
And then it happens.
A genuine meltdown:
To read the complete story of my research for the cable movie Within These Walls, head on over to Big Hollywood.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:36 AM | Comments (5)
February 04, 2009
10,000 Violent Women and One Screenwriter, Part III
When I tell my wife, Karen, about the project, Within These Walls, she hits me with a level gaze—eyes like chips of coal:
“Not a good idea, Robert. Remember all the time in Sing-Sing doing research for that other script—it was not a healthy experience.”
Your faithful screenwriter shrugs, utterly clueless:
“This is a woman’s prison, how bad can it be? Besides, I am not going to turn down the chance to work with Ellen Burstyn.”
Karen looks at me and half-smiles, tolerantly but with—I sincerely hope—affection.
Evil exists; and face to face, it is a shock to the soul.
The love of my life can foresee the psychological black cloud that is fated to haunt me after conducting my prison research.
There is a reason I’ve been in love with my wife since we were nine-years old. She’s much smarter and level-headed than yours truly.
To read the complete story, head on over to Big Hollywood.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:28 AM | Comments (2)
February 02, 2009
What They Don't Teach You in Film School
Linda Darnell
Scheduled for release through United Artists, Summer Storm was directed by Douglas Sirk. Filming began in the spring of 1944, with The Wicked and the Weak as a working title. Linda got on well with Sirk, although things didn’t always progress smoothly. One particularly bad day, the director had shot sixteen takes of an important scene in a greenhouse. Linda grew tired, embarrassed, and was almost in tears.
Finally, Sirk ordered, “Everybody take a breather.”
Putting his arm around Linda’s shoulder, he said, “Now I want you to relax.”
Suddenly he yanked her across his knee and spanked her hard.
“Now you go out there and do that scene right!” he snapped.
To read my entire story in Big Hollywood, please click here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 04:10 PM | Comments (4)
January 28, 2009
10,000 Violent Women and One Screenwriter, Part II
Chapter II of my prison series, 10,000 Violent Women and One Screenwriter, is up at Big Hollywood:
“In high school,” says Cindy, “there were always these chicks, boosters and cheerleaders, the girls who wore different outfits every single day of the week; chicks who made you feel like crap; and they enjoyed your misery. You know something, Robert? Prison is like being back in high school all over again.”
To read the entire story, please click here.
If you'd like to order Within These Walls, the movie I wrote based on my prison research, click here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:55 AM | Comments (4)
December 18, 2008
Gary Sinise: Great Star, Great American
President Bush awards Hollywood star Gary Sinise with the
Presidential Citizens Medal.
This war's Bob Hope is Gary Sinise.
Gary tirelessly supports our troops and children's educational programs in Iraq—without a retinue of PR people and reporters trailing his every move and calling attention to his good deeds.
Go to my buddy Dirty Harry for the complete story.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 01:25 PM | Comments (8)
December 16, 2008
20 Favorite Actresses
This MEME is ripping through the film blogosphere like a prairie fire. I have not been tagged, but it's too compelling a list to ignore, therefore I'm jumping in.
So: What is my criteria for a favorite actress?
After much thought, it comes down to this: If yours truly will sit down and screen a film—any film, even a lousy movie—just to watch a particular actress weave her magical spell, well, she definitely qualifies as a favorite actress.
Mind you, we're not talking best actresses. Hence Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Myrna Loy, Ida Lupino, Norma Shearer and other towering figures do not make my list.
Some of the actresses on my list are great actresses. Others are deeply limited but possess that magical star quality that makes it impossible for Seraphic Secret not to watch.
Obviously, my list leans heavily towards players of the silent screen—Gish, Bow and Pickford were immensely gifted, hard-working trail-blazers—and actresses from Hollywood's Golden Age, the thirties through the mid-forties.
This was a hellish list to compile but after a while I tried not to over-think my choices and just went with my gut.
I believe this MEME originated from The Film Experience. Head on over and take a look at all the fascinating lists compiled by a diverse range of movie lovers.
Gong Li (yup, that's me, the grinning male on the left)
As always, I'm tagging all my reader-commenters and lurkers. I'm also tagging: Dirty Harry, Bookworm Room, Toronto Pearl, Jack, Michael Jennings, Batya.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 01:29 PM | Comments (31)
December 08, 2008
Big Hollywood
It's no secret that the Hollywood community is overwhelmingly liberal, deeply left leaning. Many of the films that Hollywood chooses to bankroll are often thinly disguised propaganda pieces flogging the year's most fashionable "progressive" causes.
It's also no secret that there are plenty of Hollywood conservatives who are forced to fly below the radar because there is an unofficial black-list against those who do not mindlessly spew the party line.
A few years ago I wrote about my experiences in Hollywood as it became clear to me that Islamo Nazism was being ignored or excused by liberal Hollywood. It was also chillingly obvious that Hollywood consciously abandoned Israel. No big shock for the left is a comfortable home for Jew-hatred disguised as “mere anti-Zionism.”
I've been in too many meetings where studio and TV execs shy away from stories that feature Arab Muslim terrorists for fear of being accused of that non-existent prejudice, Islamophobia. The only place this condition exists as a terrifying fact—not as some new and novel victim liberal fantasy intended to excuse terrorism—is in Muslim societies where Sunni slaughter Shia and Shia slaughter Sunni.
Hollywood, more and more, is revealed as a gullible group of appeasers and anti-American hysterics—one miserable film after another about Iraq is nauseating proof. And so, it has become necessary for conservatives, those who share common Judeo Christian values and a love of Israel, to band together and expand the narrow political and aesthetic discourse that dominates Hollywood and those who write about Hollywood.
To this end, Andrew Breitbart founded Big Hollywood, an informative, entertaining and articulate all-things Hollywood website. My good friend Dirty Harry was tapped by Andrew to be Editor-in-Chief.
I've been asked to be a regular contributor, a great honor, for the list of contributors is long and impressive.
My first article is "The Real Battle of Algiers," a two part essay that illuminates the skillful jihadist propaganda that is Gillo Pontecorvo's film, The Battle of Algiers. I examine the true historical record, the inconvenient facts excluded from the film, including the horrifying Muslim Jew-hatred that helped fuel the battle of Algiers, and the eventual expulsion of Algeria's entire and ancient Jewish community by the Algerian terrorists after the French surrendered.
As I've said many times, movies are a moral landscape.
The Battle of Algiers is a movie that inhabits a deeply immoral and dishonest landscape. It's a beautifully crafted film, but at the core it is a stealth piece of Jihadist propaganda. Like Leni Riefenstahl's work for the Nazis and Sergei Eisenstein's films for the Soviet Communists, Pontecorvo's movie is in service to a totalitarian and genocidal ideology.
Big Hollywood makes its debut on Tuesday January 6, 2009.
To get regular Big Hollywood updates, sign up here.
Clara Bow salutes Big Hollywood.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:53 AM | Comments (10)
November 26, 2008
Hollywood Blacklist: Hard Left
Day of Wrath, 1943, falsely accused
of witchcraft, a woman is about to be
burned alive.
This, from my good friend Dirty Harry:
The blacklist is alive and well in Hollywood. Los Angeles Film Festival director Rich Raddon, who seemed to have survived the left wing, fascist witch hunt finally buckled and turned in his resignation.
Not surprisingly, it was accepted:
Dirty Harry comments:
The message is loud and clear: Whatever you do, if you want to survive in this town, don’t give to political causes unpopular in liberal Hollywood. You will be named, outted, hounded, and harassed until you are gone.
And how do these McCarthyites live with themselves? They simply decree any cause they find unpopular “discrimination.” And yet these are the same moral illiterates who lionize those fifties blacklistees who defended, promoted, and covered for an ideology responsible for the enslavement and murder of millions.
Last I heard, Barack Obama and Joe Biden still oppose gay marriage.
To read the complete story, go to Dirty Harry's Place.
Let me add that this is not an isolated incident; it's endemic in liberal Hollywood. If you are a conservative, or, cue scary music sting , a Mormon, or an Evangelical Christian, it's best to keep your mouth shut, and your head down, or you will find yourself unemployed, and unofficially blacklisted.
And if you believe that marriage should be reserved for one man and one woman—how very paleolithic—well, for some enlightened souls that's bigotry and yup, constitutes hate speech.
One of the most interesting abuses of thought and language from the left is their latest bumper sticker battle cry: “The tyranny of the majority.”
They are referring to California voting that marriage should be defined as one man and one woman. As it as has been defined by every civilization and every major religion since time immemorial. Funny, I always thought that the tyranny of the majority is, y'know, democracy.
But, that's just me.
Anyhoo.
Rule of thumb: Hollywood liberals are only liberal when you agree with their brand of liberalism.
And here's my two cents, Help, I'm a Hollywood Republican.
Okay folks, it's that time of year again. Please support Project Valour IT. Here at Seraphic Secret we ask that you make a contribution to the Air Force. Your contribution goes to a worthy cause. Injured troops get tech equipment, laptops, cell phones, etc. All the of-so necessary hi-tech stuff that allows people to communicate, get jobs, create jobs, and hey, even get on-line and read great blogs like Seraphic Secret.
Look, I don't care if you're a Democrat, Republican, or a member of the Whig Party, we all owe our wounded troops a huge debt of gratitude, so please, click the “make a donation” button and give, give give.
I'll be your bestest friend.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:22 AM | Comments (15)
November 20, 2008
Hollywood Stars and Their Pets
Doris Day and her Poodles, Paris, 1950, Modern Cibachrome Photograph 20 x 16 in.
I've got a flaming migraine and can barely function. Hence, I'm taking the easy blog-road and posting this almost surrealistic publicity photo of Doris Day and her poodles, by John Florea. Florea was a Life Magazine photojournalist who covered the bloody side of war and Hollywood glamour.
And oh, yeah, those whacky Persians have enough nuclear fuel for a bomb. But nothing to worry about here, the IAEA isn't sure Iran actually knows how to build a weapon. I feel sooooo much better.
Okay folks, it's that time of year again. Please support Project Valour IT. Here at Seraphic Secret we ask that you make a contribution to the Air Force. Your contribution goes to a worthy cause. Injured troops get tech equipment, laptops, cell phones, etc. All the of-so necessary hi-tech stuff that allows people to communicate, get jobs, create jobs, and hey, even get on-line and read great blogs like Seraphic Secret.
Look, I don't care if you're a Democrat, Republican, or a member of the Whig Party, we all owe our wounded troops a huge debt of gratitude, so please, click the “make a donation” button and give, give give.
I'll be your bestest friend.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:22 AM | Comments (14)
November 11, 2008
Hey Kids, Let's Watch Some War Movies
My father, Chaplain Abraham Avrech, conducting
Jewish services during the Korean War.
Okay, after trying, really trying to cut approximately a million dollars from my latest script—ouch!—and putting in a call to my father, Col. Abraham Avrech, 42nd Division, Retired, and thanking him for his service, I'm gonna plop down on the couch and do what I do best: screen movies—appropriate for Veteran's Day.
Here's my list:
Destination Tokyo, (1944) offbeat casting with the debonair Cary Grant as the commanding officer of a submarine sneaking into Tokyo Bay to wreak havoc on the Japs. Yeah, they call them Japs on a regular basis. This film takes the time to explain why we're fighting a bunch of genocidal maniacs and why we're better than they are. Liberals beware, this is totally un PC, your brains will go into, heh-heh, complete meltdown.
Dark Blue World, (2001) from the ocean to the clouds. I don't usually recommend foreign films—except for Japanese and Chinese films, never French films—but this Czechoslovokian movie is fantastic. A Czech pilot is imprisoned by the post World World II totalitarian Communist regime. In flashback, he remembers the Czech pilots who flew with the RAF during the aerial war against the Lutwaffe, a little known corner of WWII history. This film has everything: great aerial combat scenes, a tragic love triangle, natch, tests of loyalty and friendship, and love of country. Technical credits are first rate and it's all wrapped in stunning performances. Highly recommended.
Zulu, 1964, the true—well, sorta—story of the Battle of Rorke's Drift, 1879, South Africa, where approximately 90 British soldiers fought against several thousand Zulu warriors. At one point a young bugler, lips trembling, asks the tough Sergeant: “Why? Why?” And the Sergeant, stiff-upper lip, as the British used to be, replies, “Because we're here, lad.” A young and incredibly gifted actor named Michael Caine makes his very first major film appearance as a foppish young officer who becomes a man in the crucible of battle. Zulu's score by the great John Barry, is one of the most memorable I have ever heard. During the Yom Kippur War I used to hum it to myself to keep up my spirits and remind myself that numbers don't matter, that in the end discipline, courage and fortitude triumph.
Wee Willie Winkie, (1937), O-kay, I admit, I have a huge soft spot for Shirley Temple. This film is my absolute favorite of her considerable and important body of work. Directed by the great John Ford, Shirley is in India, wearing the absolute cutest miniature British uniform you have ever seen. She gets all friendly with an Indian, ahem, militant who uses her as bait to lure an entire British column into an ambush. But fear not, Shirley will come to the rescue because she's so darned persuasive. Smirk all you want, this is a first-class movie with rock solid performances by Victor McLaglen and the awesome C. Aubrey Smith.
I'd like to know which are your favorite war movies.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:36 PM | Comments (32)
October 28, 2008
How to Get So Dead in This Town
Great script conference on the set of Red Dust.
Left to right: director Victor Fleming, Jean Harlow,
Clark Gable, Mary Astor.
In the spacious, well-appointed conference, I'm at the tail end of a script conference with a group of high-powered studio executives.
It's a good meeting. The company is enthusiastic about my latest spec script.
Spec scripts are not studio assignments. Instead, I wrote it on my own time in the belief that I'd find a buyer, and thus attach myself as executive producer and reap much higher financial rewards. Owning and controlling my own scripts, though risky, is one of the best ways for a Hollywood screenwriter to control his career. My batting average with specs is, so far, pretty darn good.
The production company optioned my script almost as soon as it hit the market
Now we're discussing a rewrite—actually, more like a polish. I also have to deal with some below-the-line budget problems. Figure out a way to cut a few million from the script and make it doable. I figure I'll scale back on the massive action scenes and combine several locations.
The execs are a creative, experienced group. Their notes are solid. I've known most of them for a long time. We've been in Hollywood for some 20-plus years. I like and admire these execs. Always respectful of my Orthodox Judaism they go out of their way to schedule lunch meetings at kosher restaurants.
We're all on the same page, script-wise. I'm thinking: this is fab-u-lous, we're gonna make an excellent movie.
I'm also gripped with a huge sense of relief because the meeting did not include the standard and obligatory George Bush-is-worse-than-Hitler pre-meeting chat.
Yup, it's all smooth and professional — until the meeting devolves into sheer lunacy.
“Okay,” announces the senior studio executive, “I just want to make sure that everyone in this room is voting for Obama.”
To the left of me a junior executive goes: “Well, sure, of course.”
To the right of me another executive nods his head up and down like a bobble and mutters: “We need Obama so badly.”
Let's be honest, folks: I can just grunt in the affirmative and be done with the whole wretched ambush.
“Robert?”
The studio exec is smiling, all charm and fuzzy-wuzzy, but his eyes betray confusion. I mean, Hollywood is in the tank for Obama, all except for a handful of out-of-the closet Republicans and even more who dare not voice their conservative beliefs for fear of being blacklisted. This is not paranoia, It's just the way it is for Hollywood Republicans swimming in an ocean of liberals.
“Earth to Robert?”
All eyes are on me. My colleagues are shifting uncomfortably in their super-comfy leather chairs.
Everyone in Hollywood takes it for granted that if you work in Hollywood you are a Democrat. Hollywood people, whose job it is to imagine stuff, find it hard, if not impossible, to imagine a Republican in their midst.
I feel like a Marrano, a secret Jew, unveiled before the Inquisition.
Time to man-up.
Sorta.
“Look, I don't talk politics. I'm here to make a movie.”
Seriously, the studio exec looks like he's just had a glimpse of the apocalypse and his head is about to explode.
He's like: “You are kidding, right?”
I'm totally absorbed in the incredibly complex task of closing my MacBook and shtupping it into my briefcase.
I glance up, all eyes on your faithful blogger.
G-d in heaven, I silently pray, puh-leeese let loose with an earthquake—not massive and corpse strewn, mind you—just awesome enough to send everyone scurrying for their lives and get me the heck out of this totalitarian canyon.
Is my prayer answered?
No, it is not.
I'm like: “Let's just make a great film together.”
My studio executive goes all Ludwig Wittgenstein on me.
“You're not voting for Barack. That means you're voting for John McCain,”
Now I'm focused on zipping up my laptop case. It's unbelievably complicated and demands all my attention.
Smiling through a deadly combination of disbelief and rapidly escalating anger: “Robert, this is not a democracy in this room. You don't get to abstain.”
I love liberals. They're so not liberal it's almost a fulfillment of George Orwell's 1984.
“Look, I don't discuss politics or religion in business meetings. Sorry.”
Sure, I could say that I'm voting for McCain-Palin, but I don't feel like playing in their playground. I want to create some simple boundaries.
“Sarah Palin is such a backward step for women,” chimes in a young, slender D-girl. DG is an Ivy League grad, overeducated, overbred and fashionably undernourished. She invariably shows up at meetings poised for the runway in Prada, Armani, Dolce Gabbana, plus a seemingly endless supply of Manolo Blahnik pumps, footwear whose combined cost is more than the GNP of several third world countries.
I shrug, trying to give the impression that I'm way too stupid to process D-girl's sophisticated political analysis.
Finally, my agent—G-d love him—claps his hands together and all hyper and energized and trying desperately to create a Ho Chi Minh style diversion announces that this is a great script, that the notes are great, that we all have great relationships, that we're going to make a great movie, and it's all so, you know, great.
Oddly enough, I don't feel so great.
In the elevator going down to the parking lot my agent chuckles and calls me a four-letter word. He does this with great affection.
“Why don't you just give 'em what they want?”
“As Barack Obama once sad: That's above my pay grade.”
“It's a good thing you have so much talent or you'd be so dead in this town.”
And hey, wouldn't you like to see the videotape of Obama attending a dinner in honor of Palestinian terrorist Rashid Khalili? The LA Times is holding it back—at least prior to the election. The tape, might, y'know, get blindly reliable Jewish Democrats to reconsider voting for Obama.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:54 PM | Comments (71)
September 27, 2008
Paul Newman 1925 - 2008
A moment of silence for Paul Newman, a great actor, a great star, and a good man.
My friend John Nolte has written a fine obituary for the legendary actor here at Pajamas Media.
Let's watch one of Paul Newman's greatest moments from The Hustler, 1961, The Final Game.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:31 PM | Comments (16)
September 18, 2008
Dietrich Notices Streisand's Nose
Maria Riva's biography of her mother Marlene Dietrich is refreshingly honest
and beautifully written.
One of the most fascinating Hollywood biographies was written by Maria Riva, Marlene Dietrich's daughter. Riva's book reveals a monstrously self-absorbed woman whose every moment was devoted to the glamorous Dietrich image, and perpetuating the legend of a noble and selfless woman.
Riva's book overflows with telling details about Dietrich's obsession with her own beauty; when shooting a film, Dietrich positioned a full-length mirror beside the camera so she could keep an eye on herself. Dietrich's knowledge of lighting and camera were often more sophisticated than the cameramen and directors with whom she she worked. Her face was a living canvas on which Dietrich labored for perfection. If you look closely at her movies of the 40's, when she was no longer working with Joseph von Sternberg—real name Jonas Sternberg—you can, on occasion, see the white line Dietrich inscribed down her nose to give it a more streamlined appearance.
When looking at rushes for the wretched Kismet, 1944, Dietrich demanded to know from the legendary cameraman Charles Rosher why she wasn't looking as young as before.
In response, Rosher deadpanned: “Well Marlene, I am ten years older.”
Taking no prisoners, Riva lists many of Dietrich's lovers. There were hundreds for Dietrich was incapable of genuine love—she was a classic narcissist—and considered it her sacred and civic duty to seduce most everyone, male and female, in her path.
When John Wayne declined her advances, Dietrich flew into a rage. How dare this stupid American cowboy reject the great Dietrich. She never forgave Duke. This was a woman who marinated in her life-long grudges.
There are laugh-out-loud passages where Dietrich, often buzzing on a Dexedrine-fueled high, delivers biting monologues on the actors and actresses she holds in contempt for their hideous looks or vulgar fashion sense.
In one amusing passage, she's preparing her wardrobe with the great Paramount designer Travis Banton for The Devil is a Woman 1935. Dietrich has just returned from New York where she attended the Ziegfeld Follies and saw Fanny Brice—real name Fania Borach.
“Those girls of his [Ziegfeld] are very pretty! But much too tall for women—must be men. And those things they have to carry, strapped to their heads! I was frightened they were going to fall down all those stairs! Don't you think that whole to-do is a bit exaggerated? For the screen, I can understand, but on stage? It looks like a circus... and that ugly woman. Fanny Brice! What is she doing with those beautiful Ziegfeld show girls? No one can be that ugly! No one can allow themselves to go around with a nose like that and then sing! Travis, do you know where that accent of hers comes from? There is no country in the world that has an accent like that. What is that?”
Travis was laughing.
“I think it comes from a part of New York called the Bronx.”
“I don't believe it! And she keeps it?”
Thirty-three years later, I was with my mother when she saw Barbra Streisand play Fanny Brice in Funny Girl. In the dark movie house, Dietrich's voice rose, clear and distinct above the film's sound track.
“Well, she certainly has the nose for it!”
Fanny Brice, her Bronx accent and prominent nose offended Dietrich's
aesthetic sense.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:37 AM | Comments (4)
August 15, 2008
Secret Confessions of a Hollywood Movie Star
A Hollywood Republican meets his fate
“Robert, explain it to me, I simply don't understand such Jews.”
I'm having lunch with a movie/television star. A few years ago he starred in one of the most popular series on network TV.
Popular and infamous for its arch leftist agenda.
“Must have been hard for you,” I say, “day in day out, being a parrot for their propaganda.”
“Hey, it was a great gig. Until they fired me.”
“There's no creature as intolerant as a Hollywood liberal.”
“I hear ya.”
A couple of beautiful women float by trying to make eye contact with the movie star. He doesn't seem to notice. Poor guy, this happens to him all the time.
Movie star is a secret Republican, a thoughtful man trying to make sense of nonsense.
“I read your article, Help, I'm a Hollywood Republican. That was a brave move, Robert.”
I shrug, all false modesty. Actually, it wasn't brave at all. I was just sick and tired of limousine liberals denying the reality of the terrorist threat. Sick and tired of Hollywood's obsession with so-called global warming. Sick and tired of unpatriotic, ungrateful Hollywood, acting as enablers for world-wide terrorism.
Here's what I thought: If I don't say something publicly, I'm going to feel like a traitor.
After the article was published I was fired from two screenwriting jobs. Both were pay or play deals. It's a measure of how deeply the producers despised me that they chose to pay off my full salary. In effect, paying me not to write.
“The thing that I don't understand, Robert, is how so many Hollywood Jews remain active liberals when it's obvious that the Republicans are the party who support Israel. I mean it's just so clear that the Democrats act as shills for Palestinian terrorists. Listen, all the writers on my show, some of the smartest people I have ever met. I mean, off the charts bright. And almost all Jews. Yet when it comes to Israel, they're like rabid. Can you explain that to me?”
“The thing is, being smart does not translate into wisdom. All those Jewish writers and producers on your show, clever people, sure, but among the whole bunch, not a lick of wisdom.”
The movie star smiles.
Wow, his teeth are so white I'm momentarily blinded.
“That's good, Robert. Wisdom. I'm gonna remember that one.”
And I'm gonna check in with my dentist and see what he can do for me.
The Movie Star practically shouts: “Listen, I'm the world's biggest goy, but even I know that Israel is the f----ng shining light of the world!”
People turn and stare.
Grinning, I go: “You are now an honorary Jew.”
“Dude, you have: Made. My. Day.”
Karen and I wish all our friends a lovely and meaningful Shabbat.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:04 AM | Comments (35)
July 30, 2008
The Madge Bellamy Acting Workshop
Madge Bellamy postcard
A few years ago, I was up in Toronto, on location for Within These Walls, a film the Academy Award winning actress Ellen Burstyn, acting as producer and star, asked me to write. Ellen, one of the great actresses in Hollywood, past and present, discovered the true story and immediately realized its potential as a powerful and entertaining film. The challenge of playing a hardened murderess who is redeemed by learning to train and love dogs, greatly appealed to Ms. Burstyn.
During the first week of production, one of the featured actresses—not Ellen—knocked on my hotel door and asked if she could discuss her role with me.
Of course I sat down with the actress—a recognized and respected talent—and we discussed her role, the character's history, motivation, and dramatic arc. The actress relentlessly probed every single line of dialog. She challenged me to defend all the hard decisions I'd made in writing the character.
I kept saying:
“I think you do this because...”
“I think you feel this because...”
“I think the big turning point is when...”
The Actress kept saying:
“I feel that I do this because...”
“I feel that my character experiences this because...”
”I feel that my character...
I short: I was thinking and she was feeling.
The great liberal, conservative divide as applied to a film.
It was a long night, but because film is a collaborative craft, and because I respected the actress and she—I think—respected me, we each made concessions, and ultimately the character that emerges in this fine and touching film is richer, more complex than I originally imagined. The actress turned in a stupendous performance. After a few days of watching rushes, I took the actress aside and said:
“You're making me look good.”
“Honey, I'm just doing my job,” she purred.
Which brings me to Madge Bellamy.
Madge Bellamy, studio publicity photo
A huge Hollywood star in the early 20's, most of Bellamy's early, silent work has been lost. But you can still see her in starring roles in John Ford's Iron Horse (1924) and Maurice Tourneur's Lorna Doon (1922). In the sound era, Madge's most famous role is as Madeleine Parker, in White Zombie, with Bela Lugosi (1932), a cult classic.
Tragically, Madge was one of the most self-destructive Hollywood stars of all time. In a town where players excel at self-annihilating behavior, that's quite an accomplishment. In 1943 Madge shot her lover, Stanwood Murphy. The massive publicity and resulting scandal destroyed her already sputtering career. Regarding the shooting Madge said: “I only winged him, which is what I meant to do. Believe me, I'm a crack shot.”
Madge Bellamy, cover of Photoplay Magazine,
January, 1929
But for now, let's leave scandal behind and focus on how Madge learned to act in motion pictures as revealed in a fascinating interview from Photoplay Magazine, Oct. 1927.
Madge had the unfortunate reputation of being a dumb actress—probably because she made a series of disastrous career choices and insulted so many powerful Hollywood moguls. She walked out of L.B. Mayer's office as he announced that he wanted to cast her in the starring role of his next film. Madge explained that Mayer didn't stand up to greet her like a proper gentleman.
Big mistake.
However, as you can see from this excerpt, Madge Bellamy was unusually bright and articulate. Unfortunately, then and now, beautiful women are often ruthlessly stripped of their brains by bright people who should know better.
“Acting,” for instance. “I always thought that acting was a question of emotions—that you felt a scene and played it as you felt it.”
“Well, I was wrong about that. Acting is a matter of intelligence and observation. You don't have to feel an emotion to portray it. You must observe how other people express their emotions.”
“Mr. Dwan [Alan Dwan, the great, pioneering director] and I had an interesting conversation on the set this morning. I had been playing a sad scene and when I finished, Mr. Dwan asked me what I had been thinking about. And I told him I had been thinking about something sad. 'Well,' said Mr. Dwan, 'you should have been thinking of the muscles of your face.'”
“Now I see what has been wrong with me. I have been trying to feel emotions and express them. I have never thought much about the technique; I simply wanted to be sincere. That was a mistake.”
“So I have been sitting here practicing with the muscles of my face. Look!” And Miss Bellamy drew here eyebrows. Instantly, the tears slowly rose to her eyes.
“See, I am crying and yet, I am not thinking of anything sad. It's just a muscular reaction.”
Adoring crowds line up to see Madge Bellamy in Ankles Preferred (1927)
Madge Bellamy authored a fascinating autobiography, A Darling of the Twenties, published in 1989, a few months after her death. Silent film scholar Kevin Brownlow's introduction is free of star-worship and highly informative. Unfortunately, new copies of the book are impossible to find, but used copies, usually cast-a-ways from public libraries, are readily available on the internet. Madge's autobiography is filled with fascinating details of her years in early Hollywood, and illustrated with dozens of rare photos from Madge's personal collection.
The Madge Bellamy Acting Workshop
Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner's Wonderful Time
Joan Crawford Untouched, Retouched
Evelyn Keyes: Scarlett's Younger Sister
Notable Hollywood Eyebrows Part I and Part II
Cyd Charisse: Dancing Dynamite
Lana Turner: Bad and Beautiful
Hollywood Goes to War
Lillian Gish: Dying for Her Audience
Ricardo Cortez: Hollywood's Latin Lover or The Kosher Butcher's Son
Hollywood's First Western Hero: Billy Broncho, A Jewish Kid Who Couldn't Ride a Horse
Sylvia Sidney Replaces Clara Bow
Douglas Sirk Directs Linda Darnell
Less Dialogue is More: Mervyn LeRoy, Vivien Leigh, Robert Taylor and Waterloo Bridge.
Alla Nazimova: Desperately Exotic
Charlton Heston: A Moment of Silence
Lilyan Tashman.
Carmel Myers: The Rabbi's Beautiful Daughter
Colleen Moore: The Stars and Stripes
Colleen Moore's Wedding Night
One Hairstyle, Three Memoirs: Alma Rubens, Colleen Moore, Louise Brooks
Theda Bara: The Vamp Adopts the Troops
Movie Magazines: They Don't Print 'em Like They Used To
Alma Rubens: Dope Fiend, But Not a Jewess
Wallace Reid: Hollywood Shooting Star
Olive Thomas: Hollywood's First Suicide
Mary Pickford: The Greatest Movie Star
Seraphic Secret Chats with Actress Coleen Gray about John Wayne, Howard Hawks, and Stanley Kubrick
Susan Peters: The Great Unknown and Tragic Actress
The Blond Machine Gun: Jean Harlow
Peg Entwistle & The Hollywood Sign
Brigitte Bardot & Sean Connery in Shalako—Sorta
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:05 AM | Comments (11)
July 25, 2008
Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner's Wonderful Time
Ava Gardner, publicity photo for The Killers
The love affair between Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra—and I'm using that term loosely—was a legendary tsunami of high drama. Both stars were emotionally immature with little impulse control. Both stars were alcoholics. And both had a history of affairs with equally unstable partners.
And so it should have been no surprise that The Voice and The Shape would meet and fall into a mad, torrid relationship punctuated by unbridled passion and equal doses of violence.
In Autumn of 1949 Gardner and Sinatra, not yet lovers, were both at the Palm Beach home of producer Darryl F. Zanuck. The liquor flowed, and the two stars locked in on each other like lethal missiles.
Ava said, “You're still married.”
Frank responded, “No, doll, it's all over. It is done.”
For hours they drank and flirted. Ava's career was going through the roof. Her smoldering role as the femme fatale in The Killers—one of the best noir movies ever—catapulted her into the Hollywood stratosphere.
For a shoeless farm girl from North Carolina with no father and little education, Hollywood stardom was a dangerous perfume. In a few short years Ava went from being a sensitive, prim and proper virgin to a notoriously loose, hard-drinking, hard-hearted woman.
Sinatra's career was in trouble. His records were not selling as they used to and MGM was anxious to let him go as his box office appeal faltered. Sinatra did not help himself by being obnoxious and hostile to the media.
Sinatra and Gardner exited Zanuck's party with a bottle of booze in hand. They clambered into Sinatra's Cadillac and putting pedal to metal, Sinatra roared into the night.
Driving along they passed the bottle back and forth.
Like two crazy kids, they were going nowhere fast.
Soon, they ended up in the small town of Indio. Sinatra pulled into the main street and parked. There he and Ava kissed and groped under the stars.
Taking a break from their make-out session, Ava tipped back her head for another long gulp of hooch. Sinatra leaned forward, opened the glove compartment and pulled out two .38 Smith & Wesson pistols.
Sinatra took aim at a street light and fired. Glass exploded. He aimed at another street light and hit it on the first shot.
Ava, a country girl who grew up around hunters, cried: “Let me shoot something.”
Sinatra grinned and handed her the second pistol. Whooping like a Confederate soldier Ava Gardner aimed at the twinkling stars and blasted away.
Frank stared at Ava, mesmerized, and knew beyond a shadow of doubt that he had finally found his soul mate. Here was the most beautiful woman in Hollywood, shooting up the inexplicable universe.
Ava downed more liquor, sighted down the barrel of the Smith & Wesson and fired into the window of a hardware store.
Ava shot the chambers empty and continued to shriek the rebel yell.
Sinatra put the huge Caddy into gear and headed back to Palm Springs. They didn't get very far before they heard a police siren.
Two small town cops approached with guns leveled.
Sinatra said to Ava: “Christ, what do these clowns want now?”
A few hours later, as Ava lay unconscious on a wood bench in the police station, a publicist from Los Angeles arrived by chartered plane with a big black bag that he handed over to the cops.
Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner were released. There was no paper trail and no publicity.
The two small town cops enjoyed a prosperous retirement.
In the morning, back in Palm Springs, Ava Gardner's sister, Bappie, was up having breakfast when Ava returned all rumpled and haggard and smelling like a speakeasy.
Bappie wanted to know where Ava was all night.
Ava replied: “I went out with Frank Sinatra. We had a wonderful time.”
Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra party hard
My main source for this anecdote is Lee Server's excellent biography Ava Gardner, Love is Nothing.
Legal Disclaimer: Seraphic Secret does not condone or recommend this style of dating. We strongly support coffee and conversation in the lobby of your local mega hotel, respect for private property, and oh yeah, firearm safety.
Karen and I wish all our friends a lovely and inspirational Shabbat.
Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner's Wonderful Time
Joan Crawford Untouched, Retouched
Evelyn Keyes: Scarlett's Younger Sister
Notable Hollywood Eyebrows Part I and Part II
Cyd Charisse: Dancing Dynamite
Lana Turner: Bad and Beautiful
Hollywood Goes to War
Lillian Gish: Dying for Her Audience
Ricardo Cortez: Hollywood's Latin Lover or The Kosher Butcher's Son
Hollywood's First Western Hero: Billy Broncho, A Jewish Kid Who Couldn't Ride a Horse
Sylvia Sidney Replaces Clara Bow
Douglas Sirk Directs Linda Darnell
Less Dialogue is More: Mervyn LeRoy, Vivien Leigh, Robert Taylor and Waterloo Bridge.
Alla Nazimova: Desperately Exotic
Charlton Heston: A Moment of Silence
Lilyan Tashman.
Carmel Myers: The Rabbi's Beautiful Daughter
Colleen Moore: The Stars and Stripes
Colleen Moore's Wedding Night
One Hairstyle, Three Memoirs: Alma Rubens, Colleen Moore, Louise Brooks
Theda Bara: The Vamp Adopts the Troops
Movie Magazines: They Don't Print 'em Like They Used To
Alma Rubens: Dope Fiend, But Not a Jewess
Wallace Reid: Hollywood Shooting Star
Olive Thomas: Hollywood's First Suicide
Mary Pickford: The Greatest Movie Star
Seraphic Secret Chats with Actress Coleen Gray about John Wayne, Howard Hawks, and Stanley Kubrick
Susan Peters: The Great Unknown and Tragic Actress
The Blond Machine Gun: Jean Harlow
Peg Entwistle & The Hollywood Sign
Brigitte Bardot & Sean Connery in Shalako—Sorta
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:36 AM | Comments (8)
July 17, 2008
Notable Hollywood Eyebrows Part II
Marsha Hunt applies her own make-up
As a model, I had always applied my own make-up. For my screen test at Paramount I was sent to the Make-Up Department, inwardly thrilled to be in the hands of the very experts who prepared so many famous faces for work each day. But when they finished, what I saw in the mirror left me stunned. I had never seen her before and wasn't sure I wanted to see her ever again.
My eyebrows had been plucked away and reshaped into narrow arcs, changing my whole expression; my lashes were overlaid with strips of long, false fake ones, making me feel droopy-lidded; eye shadow applied immediately above the eyes, white liner was drawn between eyes and lower lashes; my nose had a lightening line down its center to make it look chiseled and narrower, and my lipstick rounded the cupid's bow, extending above the natural line.
They simply had given me all the make-up touches that were then in vogue. With no delusions of being a beauty, I just felt altered, rather than enhanced. I comforted myself that surely it would photograph better than that. But when I finally saw my screen test, there was that strange girl again looking very odd, at least to me. I'll never know why they signed me, looking like that. I vowed then, always to do my own make-up thereafter, and with the exception of old-age roles, always did.
Thus writes Marsha Hunt in her invaluable The Way We Wore, Styles of the 1930's and '40's. Hunt, an actress of exceptional range, was signed by Paramount in 1935 when she was just 17-years old. The ex-model was cast in twelve films during her three year contract and then signed by MGM.
Marsha Hunt's book is a fascinating and informative study of Hollywood's Golden Age through the prism of style. A ferociously intelligent beauty, Hunt observes and comments on the harshness of studio make-up, changing hair styles, hats, shoes, fur muffs, cuffs and collars, handbags and pocket books. She even finds time to illustrate the high style of automobiles .
Cecile B. DeMille and Marsha Hunt in the director's magnificent Cord phaeton, parked in front of The DeMille Bungalow on Paramount's lot, 1936
There are hundreds of photos—all of Hunt—modeling various outfits for the studio publicity mill. A touching memoir and an encyclopedia of fashion, Hunt's volume is an invaluable reference to Hollywood's role in defining style and fashion.
Hunt's startled reflection on her heavy make-up and screen test is revealing. The clash between the reality of her true self with the manufactured Hollywood image was deeply alienating for the unusually self-aware young actress. No wonder Lana Turner wryly commented on her seven disastrous marriages: “The problem is that men marry Lana Turner—and wake up next to me.” Turner, unlike Marsh, was incapable of bridging the gap between who she was and her larger-than-life screen image.
Last week, in Notable Hollywood Eyebrows, Part I, I pointed out that the Flappers of the 20's were in the vanguard of pitiless eyebrow plucking. One of Seraphic Secret's readers, a brilliant cultural observer, wrote to me with this fascinating bit of cultural information:
Flappers were the first group of women outside of prostitutes to shave their legs and armpits. They changed the world, depilation-wise.
Okay, let's go to the visuals:
Hedy Lamarr
Gloria Swanson
And here, caught in a rare, candid moment, our two reigning champs of mercilessly plucked eyebrows:
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:08 AM
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Screening old Hollywood films I've noticed an interesting trend—in eyebrows. During the early days of silent films, female stars appeared pretty normal. Which is to say, the eyebrows were lightly plucked, but retained a recognizably human configuration. But the Flapper Age, a time of huge social upheaval in America, ushered in severely plucked, thinner brows, eventually morphing into Baroque loops and harsh anorexic gashes. Narrow eyebrows seem to have come into fashion as Hollywood, and society in general, turned away from the 19th century ideal of the full-figured woman to the rail thin female of the modern age. Plucked eyebrows reached their apotheosis in the 30's when the thin, elegant lines of Art Deco design were all the rage. Eyebrows in Hollywood evolved into extra fine lines in endless variations which seemed drawn by industrial designers. Studio stylists regularly shaved the eyebrows of the vulnerable young actresses being groomed for stardom, but after a few shavings the eyebrows of the various Pygmalions failed to grow back. Thus, several generations of Hollywood stars lacked eyebrows and their faces became living canvasses for endless variations of eyebrow art. Jean Harlow had narrow, deep-set eyes, and so the studio inscribed eyebrows, like soaring roman arches, to create the illusion of rounder, wider eyes. Carole Lombard had a lovely forehead and her eyebrows—low, feline slashes—were etched in order to draw attention to that patrician feature. Below, more examples of notable Hollywood eyebrows. And finally, the best eyebrows evuh:
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:26 AM
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So, I've been taking a look at portraits of Hollywood stars from the 50's, a time when the studio system was collapsing, and I noticed a few things. The quality of studio portrait photography was dismal. The images are, for the most part, bland, with little creative inspiration. Everyone seems bored—the photographers and the stars. Hollywood once employed geniuses like George Hurrell and C.S. Bull, whose iconic photography helped mold the G-d-like images of Hollywood's golden age. But as the studios were shrinking in power, they drastically cut back on their still departments. And because actors were no longer under long-term contract to the studios, the technocrat executives who replaced the original passionate moguls had no stake or ability to carefully shape and control the images of their most promising thespians. Since then, Hollywood stars have been shrinking at an incredible speed, eventually collapsing into what we have now: not movie stars, but celebrities who fight for media space with reality TV personalities, serial murderers and scandal choked, drug addled rock stars. I also noticed hair. Something was happening to the hairstyles of Hollywood stars in the 50's. There was, in the cultural air, a reversal in the natural order of masculine and feminine. In the past, great Hollywood female stars were often defined by luxurious and cascading curls. But in the 50's a startling number of Hollywood women submitted to a radical and often sexless 'do. The resulting images come uncomfortably close to evoking memories of post WW II photos of European women who were publicly humiliated and punished as German collaborators, their proud locks severely shorn, harshly clipped and plastered down into tight, impenetrable helmets. But the men, like vain peacocks, display incredibly complex hair architecture—frequently built in layers like towering wedding cakes. The sensuality just drips from their rococo, thickly gelled cuts. What was happening? Did the apocalyptic nature and mass slaughter of the Second World War turn fashion conscious Hollywood women into hard-to-define gamines? If so, a new generation of Hollywood men, with pillowy lips and come-hither eyes, stepped into the breach morphing into sexually charged male objects, yet seductively hinting at the inner female. Here are a few samples:
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:51 AM
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The lovely and talented Cyd Charisse passed away last night in Cedars Sinai Medical Center here in Los Angeles. When I heard the news, I experienced a sense of deep loss. I was a high school student the first time I laid eyes on the long-legged, sinuous Hollywood star Cyd Charisse. I cut school and took the subway into Manhattan to catch a screening of Singin' in the Rain, (1952) at one of Manhattan's revival movie houses. I think it was Dan Talbot's New Yorker Theater. At the time, I was devouring esoteric film journals and Singin' in the Rain was frequently cited as one of the best musicals ever made. Look, I was a dopey Yeshiva student obsessed with Japanese movies, but I had a hunger to know about all movies—though musicals struck me as somewhat, y'know, girlie. But the the film magazines I was reading—and not truly comprehending—called Singin' in the Rain a “seminal movie.” So, when the opportunity arose to catch a screening, well, I took the plunge and made the trek from Brooklyn to Manhattan—another world. Singin' in the Rain is a seminal movie. It's the finest treatment of the difficult transition from silent films to sound movies ever produced. But here's the thing about Singin' in the Rain: Debbie Reynolds is all fresh, perky and just perfect in her ingenue role. But one look at Cyd Charisse just blew me out of my seat and erased all memory of Reynolds from my little mind. Charisse has just one scene with the great Gene Kelly in the film, but she is brilliant, unforgettable, a dangerous slice of fire-breathing womanhood—smooth as silk. And to this day, when I watch the film, I'm once again that hungering, movie mad yeshiva student, cutting classes and coming face to face with one of the most graceful and magnetic dancers who has ever graced the silver screen. I never had the opportunity to thank Cyd Charisse for making me care about and respect musicals. This entry is written in deep gratitude. A warning for those who are religiously modest: This dance number is smoking hot. Cyd Charisse IMDb The Cyd Charisse Appreciation Page
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:27 AM
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Miranda Rose Smith reviewed So Proudly We Hail (1943) a few weeks ago. Now, our movie-loving friend from Israel writes about another patriotic Hollywood movie, David O. Selznick's Since You Went Away (1944). Selznick's vision for this movie was a domestic Gone With the Wind whose subject matter he labeled, “The Unconquerable Fortress: Home.” Warning: Spoilers ahead! Claudette Colbert plays Anne Hilton, a wife and mother, valiantly holding things together while her husband is away at war. Colbert tries to keep up a brave front for her two daughters, Jane, Jennifer Jones, and Bridget "Brig," played by a luminous 16-year old Shirley Temple. Colbert's husband abandoned a promising job in advertising to join the army. Colbert embarks on a Keep-It-Strictly-Platonic flirtation with an old family friend, Tony Willett, played by the durable and charming Joseph Cotten. Simultaneously, Colbert copes with catty neighbor Agnes Moorehead, the only major character who hoards food and deals in the black market. Academy Award winning Hattie McDaniel is the no-nonsense housekeeper, Fidelia. At Brig's suggestion, Anne takes in a lodger, the pompous Colonel William G. Smollett, Monty Woolley. Smollett is not the jingoistic military nut so favored by today's Hollywood elite. This character is carefully shaded with human layers. Beneath the boastful exterior lies a sensitive soul. The Colonel suffers a painful estrangement from his grandson, Bill, Robert Walker, expelled from West Point, now an enlisted man. Bill and Jane, a beautifully doomed movie couple, fall in love and get engaged—only to have Bill killed in action. The unfortunate Colonel is unable to express his grief and rage. On Christmas Eve, he paces around bitterly sputtering, "Peace on earth. Goodwill towards men." Jennifer Jones volunteers as a Red Cross nurse's aide in a veteran's hospital. Here she meets combat fatigue victim Craig Stephens. Jones gives a lovely and nuanced performance as a young woman slowly recovering from the loss of a beloved fiance. By the end of the picture, Stephens, gradually healing from his breakdown, leaves Jones to reenlist. Duty before love. The film lovingly hints that something will develop between these two damaged people after the war. This is one of Jennifer Jones' greatest performances. Unfortunately, she was so beautiful and so allergic to fame and publicity, that even with an Oscar to her credit, she's never been recognized as the superb and versatile actress she truly was. Working in a shipyard, Anne meets refugee Zofia Koslowska, Nazimova, who tells Anne about her little boy. The two of them longed to come to America, but tragically the boy died before they could both emigrate. Zofia recites the Emma Lazarus poem inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty. Anne doesn't even know the poem, thus suggesting that immigrants appreciate this country in ways that many natural American-born citizens cannot. Nazimova, one of the leading stars of the silent era, turns in a performance of great depth. It's gratifying to see silent players working in sound films. Too many silent stars were unfairly discarded by short-sighted sound engineers and studio executives when sound took over. We experience the heartache of families who lose loved ones—without blaming the U.S. government or cooking up delusional conspiracy theories. Mr. Mahoney, the local grocer, is proud that his son serves in the Air Force and burns indignant when several customers suggest that he trade in the black market. Patriotic Americans are honest, decent and sane in this picture. Anne and Tony meet the grocer's son, Johnny, at a U.S.O. dance. Not long afterwards, Johnny is killed in a plane crash. Later, the elder Mahoney walks out of a movie when a newsreel announces a home town welcome for a returning hero. The pain is just too much for the father to bear. This movie does not shrink from the unbearable tragedy of lost sons. The cost of war is great, says the film, but there is no choice in the face of evil rampant. Such sentiments have all but disappeared from contemporary Hollywood films—and we are all diminished by this cynical, post-modern attitude.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:05 AM
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During this Memorial Day Weekend Seraphic Secret remembers those who have fallen, and those who sacrifice so much in the cause of freedom. Remember when Hollywood celebrities flocked all across the globe to entertain and support American troops? Here's just a brief sampler of what Hollywood patriotism once looked like.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:18 AM
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One of the great tragedies of the fate of silent films in the modern era—indifference and ignorance—but for those who have seen clips from silent films, they invariably view muddy, degraded prints projected at the wrong speed, hence the jerky motions that give the impression that all silent films are bad slapstick. Silent movies were shot and duplicated on nitrate film. In the few original prints I've been fortunate enough to see the images are just stunning; the screen glows with a liquid, silvery radiance that's impossible to duplicate on modern film or tape. The art of silent film acting—the best performers—were geniuses who were able to convey a world of emotion through the most subtle means. The great King Vidor, (1894 - 1982) whose career spanned eight decades—early silent movies, right into the sound era—directed Lillian Gish in a silent version of La Boheme in 1926. Gish was so powerful at this point in her career that she had contractual approval over script and director. The intensity of her work ethic, the dedication to her craft simply awes Vidor as he writes so many years later, 1952, in his excellent memoir A Tree is a Tree. The title is very funny; it's a quote from a penny pinching studio executive who famously said: “A rock is a rock, a tree is a tree. Shoot it in Griffith Park!” Hence, in early films, Los Angeles' Griffith Park was used as a location for cowboy movies, Civil War movies, New York's Central Park, the Scottish Highlands, Versailles—you name it, Griffith Park served as a location. Here, Vidor describes how Gish rigorously prepared for and played her dramatic death scene in La Boheme: Miss Gish did not work with King Vidor again until 1946 when she played Mrs. McCanles in David O. Selznick's Duel in the Sun. There's a lovely moment in the film when Jennifer Jones says to Gish: “I'll be a good girl—I want to be like you.” Whenever I'm in production, working with actors, deep in my heart I too wish they want to be like Lillian Gish. Karen and I wish everyone a chag sameah, happy holiday on today's Lag Ba'Omer. And, of course, we wish all our friends a lovely and meaningful Shabbat.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:48 AM
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Robert and I have been Internet correspondents for some time now. I suggested that he review one of my favorite World War II patriotic tearjerkers, So Proudly We Hail (1943). Robert, very kindly, suggested that I review the movie. Caution this does CONTAIN SPOILERS! —Miranda Rose Smith Shamelessly patriotic, no excuses are made for the enemy, the Japanese. At one point, the nurses have a pet monkey and one nurse cracks,“We called him Tojo, because they looked so alike.” All through, the picture broods over the threat of what will happen to the nurses if they should fall into the hands of the brutal Japanese. Nurses with evacuation orders offer to switch places with their friends. Commanding officer Captain “Ma” McGregor (Mary Servoss), who has lost a son in combat, orders her nurses to leave. Then comes the parting of nurse Janet “Davy” Davidson (Claudette Colbert) from Lieutenant John Summers (George Reeves). Davy meets George when he's rescued from a torpedoed ship—she gives him a bath. Talk about meeting cute. At the end of the picture, when John is leaving Corregidor to see if he can hustle up some black market supplies from Mindanao, Davy tells Ma, “I'm going to break regulations big time. I'm going to get married.” Ma attends the wedding she officially can't know about. There's a heartbreaking scene between flirtatious nurse Joan O'Doul (Paulette Goddard) and "Aw, shucks" leatherneck “Kansas” Walachek (Sonny Tufts.) Kansas tells Joan he is not going to surrender. Presumably he's going to join the Filipino partisans. They embrace. She says, “I thought you were just another guy on the make.” He replies, “I was.” That's fine screenwriting, from the less-is-more school. Fade to next scene. Hollywood had admirable restraint in those days when romance powered movies instead of brute lust. Sigh. During an evacuation, the nurses hear rifle shots and realize that a Japanese patrol has broken into the base hospital. As they prepare to flee, Joan runs back for her black lace nightgown. She delays the evacuation a fatal few seconds and the nurses are forced to hide. Realizing that the Japs—the politically incorrect word is used throughout the picture. I believe that bad words were made for bad things, and the Japanese Imperial Army was a bad thing—will soon find them and, “Its one of us or all of us.” Olivia D'arcy (Veronica Lake), whose fiance was killed at Pearl Harbor, hides a grenade in her bosom and goes out to meet the Japs. As the enemy soldiers close in, she pulls the pin. Her sacrifice allows her friends to escape. Later, Joan, unable to sleep, says, “All I do is dream about Olivia,” and she works till she collapses from exhaustion. The nurses are never portrayed as saints. These characters have complexity, depth. Joan's vanity endangers all her friends—risking life and limb for a frilly nightgown goes beyond fetish—and she is so flirtatious that she has two fiances show up to see her off at the dock. When the nurses learn they are headed for Bataan, they hope for lots of food and a beauty parlor. These women are strong, courageous, yet they are 100% feminine. The price of freedom is often tragically high and comes soaked in blood. So, if you want to know what patriotism, courage, and true faith in the future looks like—remember, the outcome of the war was in doubt in 1943—get the DVD of this powerful and inspirational movie. They don't make them like they used to. Miranda Rose Smith is a librarian who lives in Ramat Gan, Israel.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 07:37 AM
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Have you noticed all the Hollywood stars rushing to Israel on her 60th birthday? Doesn't your heart swell with pride as Hollywood stars and moguls—many of them Jewish—publicly voice their support for the Jewish State? Isn't it wonderful how so many Hollywood people are making their way to S'derot to show solidarity with those innocent Jews living under a state of siege? I'm just messing with your head. Hollywood couldn't care less. Hollywood films don't even begin to approach the existential issue of Islamic terrorism. If you look at Hollywood films, (and many are not) the people who do get harsh treatment are: the American military, American soldiers, Evangelical Christians, Catholics, and of course evil Republicans. But Islamists who proudly boast of wanting to wipe Israel of the face of the earth are a no-go zone. Muslim cultures that oppress women, homosexuals and religious minorities are also never criticized. Iran, an imperial, Holocaust denying state, and the world's greatest export of terrorism, is ignored. No, Hollywood will crank out one loser after another about evil American soldiers in Iraq, or Gitmo, or, sigh, soon to die in your local theaters, Oliver Stone's smear of President Bush. Not only are the films wretched, but they are washed in red ink. You'd think the studio heads would notice. You'd think. But guess what. Hollywood is so radically leftist in ideology that it continues to produce stinker after stinker knowing that these American-hating films will die at the box office, domestic and foreign. It's an anti-capitalist mind set that reminds us of the Soviet Politburo. Yes, these people are rigid as calculus in their leftist ideology—thus stockholders suffer and audiences, with alarming regularity, stay home to watch cable television. Hey, LC on The Hills may have lousy taste in men but she's a solid Republican. But there is one man who cares, actually he cares a lot more than the current Israeli government which is discussing a hudna with the barbarians when they should be destroying Gaza. We salute Jon Voight, who, unlike PM Olmert and the criminal appeasers in his government, knows that negotiating with terrorists only invites more terror. To read the complete article, please click here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:37 AM
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I've worked with directors who act as Freudian psychologists to elicit the proper emotions from actors. I've also seen directors who are more results oriented. They tend to block the actors—deeply choreographing their movements—thus adding depth to surface performances so that they carry the proper emotional weight. Hey, whatever works, especially in television where shooting schedules are tight and the margin for error is close to zero. I've witnessed directors who bully actors into submission in order to get what they want. And I've seen directors who will sit down with their actors and spend endless hours discussing, analyzing, and torturing character and back story in order to excavate the core of the character's soul. Getting a great performance is a mysterious process. There is a synergy at work among film craftspeople that is impossible to define or capture in a bottle. George Stevens, an often great director, was known for shooting endless takes of a single scene, but never explaining to his actors what was wrong with the previous takes or what he was looking for. Joan Fontaine, in her autobiography, No Bed of Roses reports Stevens saying: “I don't know what's wrong. Let's shoot it again.” Sometimes, Stevens would stop filming and go off all by himself, walk around in circles, or just stare into space. Fontaine informs us that it was the great Carole Lombard who solved the mystery of what the legendary director was thinking during these breaks: “You know what that s.o.b. is thinking about when he's in one of his trances? Not a f****ng thing!” Which brings us to director Douglas Sirk and actress Linda Darnell (1923-1965). Sirk, a stridently anti-Nazi German emigre to Hollywood—his wife was Jewish—is best known for several stylish and lush melodramas that achieved cult status in the 70's. When they were released in the 50's, the critics savaged them, dismissing the popular and profitable pictures as hokey “women's films.” In truth, Sirk's cycle of melodramas are not masterpieces, but they are fine movies and Sirk was a solid talent who was able to draw consistently powerful performances from his actors. Rock Hudson turns in the best performances of his career in three of Sirk's films. Seraphic Secret recommends: Magnificent Obsession, All That Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind, and watch Sandra Dee earn her acting chops opposite a finely tuned Lana Turner in Imitation of Life. Linda Darnell, real name Monetta Darnell, a stunning small town Texas beauty, was hounded into Hollywood by a crazed, alcoholic mother who was determined that her daughter achieve what she never could. Interpolation There is a special place in hell for stage mothers. There is no forgiveness for these selfish and greedy parents. End Interpolation Darnell came to Hollywood—with a beloved pet chicken hidden in a suitcase—when she was just fifteen years old, after being spotted by a Fox talent scout. She clawed her way to the top, and when she starred opposite Tyrone Power in Blood and Sand, Darnell became a genuine Hollywood star. But personal problems—a parasitic family, a penchant for abusive men, and, yup, booze—yanked Darnell into a stunning and ugly downward spiral. In 1944, when Darnell was working with Sirk, she was battling a weight problem, felt underappreciated by her studio boss Darryl Zanuck, her marriage was on the rocks, and her tyrannical mother was constantly demanding money. Ronald L. Davis reports the following in his sympathetic but clear-eyed biography of the tragic actress, Hollywood Beauty: Linda Darnell and the American Dream.
Vivien Leigh
Joan Marsh
Claudette Colbert
Eleanor Boardman
Dorothy Lamour
Irene Dunne
Louise Brooks
Jean Harlow and Marlene DietrichJuly 08, 2008
Notable Hollywood Eyebrows
Jean Harlow
Carole Lombard
Clara Bow
Marlene Dietrich
Marion Davies
Greta Garbo
Bette Davis
Joan Crawford
Anna May Wong
Dolores Costello
Julie Newmar as Catwoman, the “purrfect” villainess,
from the Batman TV seriesJune 27, 2008
Hollywood Hair
Gene Harlow by George Hurrell
Clark Gable by C.S. Bull
Robert Wagner, '52
Shirley MacLaine, '55
James Dean, '55
Jean Seaberg, '57
Burt Lancaster, '57
Leslie Caron, '55
Tony Curtis, '52
Audrey Hepburn, '56
Elvis Presley, '56
Lilli Palmer, '56
Charlton Heston, '50
Claire Bloom, '52
And finally:
Yul Brenner, '57
Karen and I wish all our friends a lovely and restful Shabbat.June 18, 2008
Cyd Charisse, 1921 - 2008
The Official Cyd Charisse WebsiteJune 04, 2008
Since You Went Away
Jennifer Jones, Claudette Colbert and Shirley Temple in
Since You Went Away.
Jennifer Jones, Robert Walker and Joseph Cotton in
Since You Went Away.
Thoughts on the great black actress Hattie McDaniel: If McDaniel were alive today and looking for work in Hollywood, she would have to contend with Hollywood's anti-overweightism, a prejudice more deeply entrenched than past Hollywood racism. She would never, or almost never, be asked to play a romantic lead. She would be playing tediously heroic, Oprah-style black women: teachers, social workers, principals, welfare mothers, and nurses—Mammy with an education, Aunt Jemima, R.N. 
Hattie McDaniel (center), Chairman of the Negro Division of the
Hollywood Victory Committee, poses with a group of entertainers and
hostesses before a performance and dance for soldiers stationed in
Minter Field.
Jennifer Jones reads Margaret Buell Wilder's Since You Went Away,
the novel on which the film is based.
Except for Robert Walker's Bill, who is a little too aw' shucks in places, the performances are all superior. Need I point out that they don't make 'em like this anymore. 
Joseph Cotton and Shirley Temple, Since You Went Away
Everybody connected with this epic movie—it's three-hours long—sincerely believed that America was a force for good in the world.
Robert Walker, Jennifer Jones, and David O. Selznick. Jones and Walker were married as “Since You Went Away” went into production. But the marriage was rocky. Jones and Selznick were having an affair. Cast and crew reported that the tension in the studio was unbearable as Jones and Walker worked before the camera, with Selznick behind the lights, insisting that Walker and Jones perform take after take of their love scenes. Jones and Walker separated during production in 1943. Selznick was angrily kicked out of the home he shared with wife Irene Mayer, daughter of powerful MGM chief, Louis B. Mayer. Robert Walker was never the same afterwards. He became an alcoholic and his career nose-dived. Walker pulled himself together for one last absolutely brilliant performance as Bruno, the oddly sympathetic killer in Hitchcock's classic, “Strangers on a Train.” Sadly, Walker did not receive the Oscar he so richly deserved. Robert Walker died, age 32, just seven years after separating from Jones. Selznick and Jones stayed together until Selznick's death in 1965. Jones' only child with Selznick, Mary Jennifer Selznick (born in 1954), committed suicide in 1976. In 1971 Jones married Los Angeles millionaire art collector Norton Simon. When she was in her eighties, Jones conducted tours of her husband's art collection. The couple remained married until Simon's death in 1993. Currently, Jennifer Jones is on the board of directors of the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. Jones hates publicity and refuses all movie related interviews. She handed the Oscar she received for Song of Bernadette to her hairdresser. With good grace, a few days later, the hairdresser returned the precious statue.
Poster art of Jennifer Jones by the great American artist Norman Rockwell for “The Song of Bernadette.”May 26, 2008
Memorial Day, 2008
In February 1954, on her honeymoon in Japan with Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn Monroe took time off and traveled to Korea to entertain the troops. Monroe appeared on stage wearing skimpy outfits in freezing temperatures. The men adored her. She performed ten shows in four days, in front of audiences that totaled more than 100,000 soldiers and Marines.
MM performing “Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend” in Korea.
Dinah Shore, a hugely popular singer, traveled with USO tours throughout Europe. During one of these tours she met actor George Montgomery. They married in 1943. Soon after the wedding, Montgomery entered active service.
In the late 1930's Nazi agents approached Marlene Dietrich and asked her to return to Germany. She flatly turned them down. Dietrich was one of the first celebrities to raise war bonds. She entertained troops on the front lines in dozens of USO shows. Dietrich hated the Nazis and often spoke out against anti-Semitism. Here, she's autographing the cast of Earl E. McFarland at U.S. hospital in Belgium 1944.
Carole Landis probably logged more miles than any other actress in Hollywood during WWII entertaining American troops. She wrote a book about her experiences, Four Jills in a Jeep. Tragically, this generous young woman committed suicide in 1948 while carrying on a desperate affair with the married actor Rex Harrison—a notorious womanizer.
Bob Hope, friend to GI's, entertains American servicemen at the airstrip in Munda, New Georgia, an island in the central Solomons, on Oct. 31, 1944. Hope's commitment to America's troops brought him into four Wars: World War II, the Korean War, Viet Nam and the Persian Gulf War. When on tour the great comedian usually performed in Army fatigues. A 1997 act of Congress signed by President Clinton named Bob Hope an "Honorary Veteran".
Carole Lombard raised millions of dollars selling war bonds. Tragically, she died in an airplane crash on January 15, 1942, after completing an eight-hour sales drive in Indiana in which she raised $2,017,513 in bonds . She was anxious to reunite with Clark Gable; they had only been married for three years. The last thing she said to him was: “You better get yourself into this man's army.”
Following Lombard's death, deeply depressed and drinking too much, Gable rallied and asked MGM to release him from his contract. He then joined the U.S. Army Air Forces. Most of Gable's friends believed that Hollywood's greatest leading man was seeking death. Far too old for active service, Gable worked hard to earn his stripes. Gable trained with and accompanied the 351st Heavy Bomb Group as head of a 6-man motion picture unit making a gunnery training film. Gable flew five combat missions in B17's. In one mission over Germany he was almost killed when a German 20mm shell exploded through the plane's floor and ripped the heel from one of Gable's flight boots. Adolf Hitler offered a bounty to anyone who captured Gable and brought him back to Germany as a POW. Gable was Hitler's favorite actor. Gable left the Army Air Forces with the rank of major.
Jimmy Stewart was a B-24 pilot in World War Two and flew twenty missions over Europe. Stewart ended the war as a command pilot and stayed in the Air Force Reserves until 1968, when he retired as a Brig. General.
The Hollywood Canteen, 1451 Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood, California was open from October 3, 1942 until the end of World War II. The club offered food and entertainment for American servicemen. The founders of the Canteen were Bette Davis, John Garfield and composer Jules Stein. All costs and labor for The Hollywood Canteen were donated by the various Hollywood guilds and unions.
In the Hollywood Canteen, Bette Davis ladles out food for American servicemen. Davis devoted enormous amounts of time to the Canteen and served as its President. When funds ran low, she reached into her own pocketbook to cover expenses. Glamorous stars like Olivia De Havilland, Edward G. Robinson, Hedy Lamarr, Frank Sinatra, Dorothy Lamour, Cary Grant, Lauren Bacall, Randolph Scott and hundreds of others, volunteered to wait on tables, cook in the kitchen and clean up. In 1944, Warner Bros. made a star-studded film—a revue really— about the Hollywood Canteen. When the Canteen closed its doors in November 1945, it had hosted almost three million servicemen.
Poster by by Lawrence Wilbur, 1944
Never ForgetMay 23, 2008
Lillian Gish: Dying for her Audience
Lillian Gish and John Gilbert in La Boheme, 1926.
Director King Vidor, 1931.When she arrived on the set that fateful day, we saw her sunken eyes, her hollow cheeks, and we noticed that her lips had curled outward and were parched with dryness. What on earth had she done to herself? I ventured to ask about her lips and she said in syllables hardly audible that she had succeeded in removing all the saliva from her mouth by not drinking any liquids for three days, and by keeping cotton pads between her teeth and gums even in her sleep.
A pall began to settle over the entire company. People moved about the stage on tiptoe and spoke only in whispers. Finally came the scene where Rudolph carried the exhausted Mimi to her little bed and her Bohemian friends gathered around while Mimi breathed her last. I let the camera continue on her lifeless form and the tragic faces around her and decided to call “cut” only when I saw that Miss Gish was forced to inhale after holding her breath to simulate death. But the familiar movement of the chest didn't come. She neither inhaled nor exhaled. I began to fear she had played her part too well, and I could see that the other members of the cast and crew had the same fears as I. Too frightened to speak the one word that would halt the movement of the camera, I wondered how to bridge this fantastic moment back to the coldness of reality. The thought flashed through my mind, “What will the headlines say?” After what seemed many, many minutes, I waved my hand before the camera as a signal to stop. Still there was no movement from Lillian.
John Gilbert bent close, and softly whispered her name. Her eyes slowly opened. She permitted herself her first deep breath since the scene had started; for the past days she had trained herself, somehow or other, to get along without visible breathing. It was necessary to wet her lips before she could speak. By this time there was no one on the set whose eyes were dry. The movies have never known a more dedicated artist than Lillian Gish.
Lillian Gish almost dies for her craft. 
An early movie magazine featuring
Lillian Gish and John Gilbert.May 15, 2008
So Proudly We Hail
Veronica Lake, Paulette Goddard and Claudette
Colbert, So Proudly We Hail, 1943.
So Proudly We Hail tells the story of the army nurse corps on Bataan and Corregidor. It stars Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard, Veronica Lake, sans peekaboo hairdo, George Reeves and Sonny Tufts. All performances are top-notch.
Veronica Lake as Olivia D'arcy in So Proudly
We Hail, 1943.
The movie is filled with wrenching scenes of friends and lovers parting; the ship leaves Pearl Harbor just before the infamous bombing; the nurses are ordered to evacuate Corregidor, some doomed to wait for the next transport—only there is no next transport. 
George Reeves and Claudette Colbert find time for love during World War II
The nurses struggle with hunger, sleeplessness, meager supplies, ceaseless bombardments, and strategic withdrawals. Sometimes they give way to bitterness: “We called ourselves the battling orphans of Bataan. No father, no mother, no Uncle Sam.” They wait for convoys of supplies and re-enforcements that never come.
Veronica Lake, Claudette Colbert, director Mark
Sandrich and Paulette Goddard, on the set of
So Proudly We Hail, 1943.
For those of you who pay attention to the liberal mainstream media, which gleefully reports each milestone in the American death toll in Iraq, this motion picture honestly reports that 50,000 men died in the delaying action in the Philippines.
May 13, 2008
Jon Voight Visits Israeli Terror Victims
Photo, Associated Press/Sebastian Scheiner, was taken during Voight's visit with victims of Palestinian rocket attacks.Award-winning American actor Jon Voight has visited Israeli victims of Palestinian militant attacks during a trip to Israel.
In Jerusalem Monday, Voight played with children whose fathers were killed in suicide bombings. He also chatted with a man who lost his legs in an attack. Voight was visibly moved by the visit and said Israel shouldn't negotiate with Palestinian militants. He called the attackers "barbarians" who "spat" on Israeli peacemaking attempts.
April 24, 2008
Douglas Sirk Directs Linda Darnell or What They Don't Teach You in Film School
Linda Darnell, studio portrait. Scan courtesy of Dr. Macro.
I've had the pleasure of working with some of the best directors in Hollywood. On location and in the studio it's always fascinating to collaborate with gifted directors and then sit back and watch as the actors breathe life into my pages. 
Director Douglas Sirk. His cycle of lush melodramas were reviled by reviewers during his lifetime but declared masterpieces by a new generation of hip post-modern scribes. Lesson: Film reviewers are, with rare exceptions, slaves to political and cultural fashions—usually left wing. They scrawl film reviews that are, at the core, glorified fashion blurbs. Don't trust them. Trust your eyes and your heart. And, yes, Seraphic Secret.
George Sanders and Linda Darnell in Summer Storm, 1944.
Always fragile, lacking in self-esteem, Darnell was acting in Summer Storm, an adaptation of an Ibsen play, a role she fought for. But Darnell was falling apart as the camera's merciless gaze bore down on her.
Scheduled for release through United Artists, Summer Storm was directed by Douglas Sirk. Filming began in the spring of 1944, with The Wicked and the Weak as a working title. Linda got on well with Sirk, although things didn't always progress smoothly. One particularly bad day, the director had shot sixteen takes of an important scene in a greenhouse. Linda grew tired, embarrassed, and was almost in tears.
Finally, Sirk ordered, “Everybody take a breather.”
Putting his arm around Linda's shoulder, he said, “Now I want you to relax.”
Suddenly he yanked her across his knee and spanked her hard.
“Now you go out there and do that scene right!” he snapped.
The spanking so shocked and infuriated her that she went back on the set and made the scene one of the best in the picture. “After that, Sirk and I got along better than ever,” she said.
The Son of Stranger Among Us
Seven Samurai and Baby
Carmel Myers: The Rabbi's Beautiful Daughter
Colleen Moore: The Stars and Stripes
Colleen Moore's Wedding Night
One Hairstyle, Three Memoirs: Alma Rubens, Colleen Moore, Louise Brooks
Theda Bara: The Vamp Adopts the Troops
Movie Magazines: They Don't Print 'em Like They Used To
Alma Rubens: Dope Fiend, But Not a Jewess
Wallace Reid: Hollywood Shooting Star
Olive Thomas: Hollywood's First Suicide
Mary Pickford: The Greatest Movie Star
Seraphic Secret Chats with Actress Coleen Gray about John Wayne, Howard Hawks, and Stanley Kubrick
Susan Peters: The Great Unknown and Tragic Actress
The Blond Machine Gun: Jean Harlow
Peg Entwistle & The Hollywood Sign
Brigitte Bardot & Sean Connery in Shalako—Sorta
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:45 AM | Comments (9)
April 16, 2008
Joy
My friend screenwriter David Sacks (Third Rock From the Sun, among numerous credits) made a short film in Jerusalem that's timed for Passover. The words, for those who don't speak Hebrew, are: “Reb Nachman Me'Uman,” Rabbi Nachman from Uman.
Me'Uman serves as a double entendre: it can mean "from Uman" — Rebbe Nachman's burial place, but it also can mean “believed” or “accredited.” — מאומן.
This is in reference to Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, (1772-1810) a great and holy Hasidic leader, whose teachings, even in death, continue to inspire Jews from all walks of life.
This is David's directorial debut and I think you'll agree that he is the Jewish Busby Berkeley—without the beautiful chorus girls.
Enjoy!
To view more compelling and delightful shorts, go to Jewish Impact Films.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:07 AM | Comments (13)
April 15, 2008
The Persecution of Brigitte Bardot
Brigitte Bardot in Shalako, 1968
The Orwellian persecution of the great film icon Brigitte Bardot continues. Freedom of speech is dead in France. Bardot is being prosecuted—for the fifth time—for insulting Islam.
Meanwhile, Jew-hating Imams safely spew hatred and call for violence from hundreds of mosques in France and all across Europe. The gutless French choose to repeatedly persecute the one woman in France who dares speak the truth about Muslim jihadists.
Seraphic Secret has long maintained that within two or three generation—unless the French radically reform her policies of appeasement—France will be an Islamic State ruled by Sharia. Jews are now emigrating from France to Israel, America and Canada in record numbers.
The larger question is: How long before Europe becomes Eurabia? Make no mistake about it, all of Europe is in play.
French former film star Brigitte Bardot went on trial on Tuesday for insulting Muslims, the fifth time she has faced the charge of "inciting racial hatred" over her controversial remarks about Islam and its followers.
Prosecutors asked that the Paris court hand the 73-year-old former sex symbol a two-month suspended prison sentence and fine her 15,000 euros ($23,760) for saying the Muslim community was "destroying our country and imposing its acts."
Since retiring from the film industry in the 1970s, Bardot has become a prominent animal rights activist but she has also courted controversy by denouncing Muslim traditions and immigration from predominantly Muslim countries.
She has been fined four times for inciting racial hatred since 1997, at first 1,500 euros and most recently 5,000.
Prosecutor Anne de Fontette told the court she was seeking a tougher sentence than usual, adding, "I am a little tired of prosecuting Mrs. Bardot."
Bardot did not attend the trial because she said she was physically unable to. The verdict is expected in several weeks.
Complete article at Ynetnews.
BB says: “I am fed up with being under the thumb of this population
which is destroying us...”
Scans courtesy of Dr. Macro.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 02:57 PM | Comments (26)
April 11, 2008
Less Dialogue is More
Vivien Leigh, Robert Taylor, Waterloo Bridge, 1940
I'm working on a script, specifically a scene where the main character, The Hero meets The Woman for the first time.
I've written this scene maybe ten times.
The dialog is clever and sharp and, and just this side of tender.
But something is wrong.
This has been going on for days.
I move on. I never stay on a scene that's not working. The rule is just keep moving forward, build the structure and then go back and rewrite.
But I wake at four in the morning—mind whirring away—the scene is driving me crazy.
Why can't I get it right?
Maybe I have no talent. Perhaps my entire career is an elaborate hoax.
And then last night I was watching Waterloo Bridge, and there's a scene where Robert Taylor meets Vivien Leigh for the first time, and you know what they say to each other?
Nothing.
They just look at each other and —
It. Is. Magic.
It. Is. Perfect.
Vivien Leigh, Waterloo Bridge, 1940.
I rush to my library, grab legendary director Mervyn LeRoy's autobiography, Take One, flip madly through the pages and find the following passage regarding production on Waterloo Bridge:
One of the key scenes was the one in a nightclub on New Year's Eve, in which Vivien and Bob were supposed to meet and fall in love. He was leaving the next day for the front. It was a scene that [screenwriter] Behrman, [producer] Franklin and I had spent a lot of time on, and the dialogue between the two was, we had all thought, beautiful and tender. But on the set it just didn't seem to work too well. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn't put my finger on just what it was.
At four in the afternoon, after some hours of fruitless fiddling with the scene, I told everybody to go home. I sat there, in that make-believe nightclub, with just one small work light to give me illumination. Over and over, I read the scene, read the words that Sam, Sydney, and I had labored to get right. I was still there at two in the morning, when suddenly the answer came to me.
“No dialogue!” I said, aloud. “No dialogue at all!”
I realized at that moment what silent directors had always known, and what I should have known too. Often, in great emotional moments, there are no words. A look, a gesture, a touch can convey much more meaning than spoken sentences. Since sound came in, we had become dependent on it, perhaps overdependent on it. It was time to go back to basic human behavior, and often human beings say nothing. This scene was one of those times when silence was more expressive than dialogue.
Oh my, nothing ever changes.
I've just rewritten my scene. Of course, there is no dialogue. And it works.
Only problem is, I don't have the durable Robert Taylor or the luminous Vivien Leigh to play the scene.
No, my actors will appear on Jay Leno and reveal themselves as dopey mortals; they'll show up in the pages of the National Enquirer as feature players in some sordid affair, or they'll travel abroad and make poisonous comments about America.
The power and glory of old time Hollywood stars is forever gone and because of this motion pictures have been reduced to the size of cancelled postage stamps.
Robert Taylor, studio portrait.
Most actors keep copies of their films. But Robert Taylor, always a modest man, was an exception.
In the last months of his life, dying of cancer, Taylor asked for just one print of one picture he had made—Waterloo Bridge. At the time, Taylor was under contract to Disney. The studio acquired a copy of the film for him, and with friends the dying star watched it over and over again.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:47 AM
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And now, a moment of silence for one of the great stars of motion pictures, Charlton Heston 1923-2008. I will be writing about this great star in the future, but for now I want to to tell you that of his films two of my absolute favorites are Major Dundee1965, and Touch of Evil, 1958, probably the last American noir movie. Major Dundee was a troubled production with director Sam Peckinpah over budget and over schedule. The studio was going to fire Peckinpah but Heston stepped in and surrendered his salary in a deal to keep Peckinpah on board. Heston's performance as an Ahab-like Union officer pursuing murderous Apaches into Mexico with a band of Confederate POW's and drunken mercenaries is towering. Touch of Evil was directed by Orson Welles. In this brilliant film—with the greatest one-take opening sequence in film history—Heston plays a Mexican cop. It's a steely, modulated performance very different than the larger than life characters he was known for in biblical epics such as The Ten Commandments 1956, and Ben Hur, 1959 Heston is the last of the great Hollywood male stars. Our friends at Libertas have some beautiful posts about Heston. Libertas posts an address delivered by Heston at Harvard in 1999. Here's the opening sequence from Touch of Evil. It was shot with a Chapman Crane. It took all night to get this extremely complicated shot. The difficulties in getting everyone to hit their marks at precisely the right moments cannot be over emphasized. Originally, the studio ran the opening credits over this stunning sequence which absolutely ruined the effect that Welles was creating. Now, in a restored DVD the credits have been removed and the scene runs as originally intended. The actress playing Charlton Heston's wife is the wonderful Janet Leigh. “I can part the Red Sea, but I can't part with you [the audience], which is why I won't exclude you from this stage in my life. For now, I'm not changing anything. I'll insist on work when I can; the doctors will insist on rest when I must. If you see a little less spring to my step, if your name fails to leap to my lips, you'll know why. And if I tell you a funny story for the second time, please laugh anyway.” — Charlton Heston on his diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, 2002
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:50 PM
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Hollywood's latest anti-Iraq war film has flopped badly at the box office. What a shock. Maybe Obama's, ahem, former Pastor, Jeremiah Wright, will give a sermon blaming it on, y'know, “Israel, that dirty word.” Oh wait, Hollywood is controlled by Jooz. So confusing. To read the complete article, go to Libertas.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 05:27 AM
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Colleen Moore's starring vehicle, Flaming Youth (1923) was an international hit. Moore, born Kathleen Morrison, (1900-1988) and her husband John McCormick embarked on a grand tour of Europe to simultaneously promote the film, Colleen's career, and enjoy a belated honeymoon. Colleen's look, specifically her bobbed haircut, was now a global fashion rage. Where did Moore and her mother get the idea for this cubist cut, so markedly different than the opulent tresses in favor at the time? Moore explains that her mother copied the look from a favorite childhood Japanese doll. The new hairstyle sends a message: this young lady is independent, plucky, fiery one moment, down-to-earth the next, tom-boyish but completely feminine; she's the decent and adorable American girl next door who can be a boy's best friend when he's growing up and then magically blossom into the love of his life. In Dublin, a celebrity starved crowd of 10,000 frantic fans broke through a police cordon and grabbed at Colleen who was wearing a stunning cape covered with intricately stitched tiny feathered plumes. Finally, John had to lift Colleen and carry her to the car where she arrived “looking like a plucked chicken.” In Switzerland the mayor of Zurich arranged a dinner party in Colleen's honor. An orchestra was present to play the the American national anthem. Colleen describes the scene in her fine memoir Silent Star: In 1930 Soviet director Sergei Eisentstein came to Hollywood to set up several motion picture projects. The film genius who directed Potemkin met everybody in the business, partied like a pro, but, naturally, got stuck in development hell, and returned to mother Russia without a deal. Studio heads were baffled by his adaptation of Dreiser's An American Tragedy. Eisenstein said a great deal about Hollywood and the decadent capitalists he encountered. He judged Marlene Dietrich dull, Greta Garbo stupid. But Collen Moore, rhapsodized Eisenstein, was the only intelligent woman he met in Hollywood. Do check out the fine and valuable website, The Collen Moore Research Project. It is under constant construction. Among many other things there's substantial information about Colleen's first husband, studio executive John McCormick, who was, in many ways, responsible for steering the meteoric rise of her flapper film career. Unfortunately, he was also an alcoholic and a deeply disturbed man. Director Mervyn LeRoy in his fascinating autobiography Take One, describes a terrifying night when McCormick, on a bender, tried to throw Moore out of a N.Y. hotel window. Leroy—from an assimilated Jewish San Francisco family—saved Moore's life by smashing McCormick over the head with a chair. The gallant and properly violent Leroy—at the time a top “comedy constructor” for Moore—remained as her protector the entire night, the two of them aimlessly walking the streets of New York. In Hollywood past and present, major movie stars have major tzuris. In fact, Moore and McCormick's troubled relationship inspired George Cukor's insider Hollywood drama What Price Hollywood in 1932 as well as the three versions of A Star Is Born. Tragically, Flaming Youth, is presumed to be a lost film. Perhaps somewhere in an attic in middle America or in an archive in Eastern Europe, lies a decaying copy of this legendary motion picture. I wouldn't be at all surprised. And as an example of how a lost film suddenly shows up—in this case Czechoslovakia—a Colleen Moore movie, Her Wild Oat, long considered gone, gone, gone, has now been rediscovered and expertly restored. This article is an interview with archivist and historian Joseph Yranski who met Colleen Moore in the early 1970s, and remained friends with her until her death in 1988. Yranski was indirectly responsible for the rediscovery of Her Wild Oat. Colleen Moore and the six-year-old Mickey Rooney in Orchards and Ermine, 1927 Here's The Scarlet Letter, starring Colleen Moore and Alan Hale, 1934. This is a sound film, late in Colleen's career. Moore was primarily a comedian but here she was trying to broaden her horizons as an actress. I haven't yet seen this film so I'm clueless. But anything with Colleen Moore is interesting. Broken Hearts of Broadway, 1923, this is just before Moore broke through as a major star. Colleen plays the role of Mary, an aspiring actress who arrives in New York all young and wholesome. Will she betray her friends for fame and fortune? This is a charming show-biz morality tale, and Moore, as always, is genuine, vivacious, and utterly magnetic. Off-screen Ray possessed a massive ego, was difficult to work with, spent his fortune lavishly, and went bankrupt when he produced and financed his own pictures. In 1935 Ray published a collection of short stories titled Hollywood Shorts, Compiled From Incidents in the Everyday Life of Men and Women Who Entertain in Pictures. Anthony Slide, in his seminal volume Silent Players, reports that, “an undercurrent of anti-Semitism is evident in a number of stories, suggesting that Ray blamed his downfall on the Jewish studio bosses such as Adolph Zukor, who came along replacing the earlier gentile producers such as Thomas H. Ince.” Sigh. I saw The Busher on TCM—I have a TCM addiction and I am powerless to control it—a few months ago. Moore, just 19-years old, was not yet a star, just another feature player trying to claw her way from the middle ranks. But as soon as she appears on-screen—behold!—a refreshing, exuberant presence. The petite and vivacious Moore just blows the grinning, eager-to-please Charles Ray right off screen without even trying. Fortunately for Colleen, the camera never picked up that she had one brown eye and one blue one. After her retirement from motion pictures in 1935, Colleen Moore dedicated herself to an ongoing project: building the world's most dazzling and elaborate doll house, actually a fairy castle. She toured with the doll house to raise money for children's charities. The house is an engineering marvel. It has its own miniature sophisticated lights and wiring, a self-contained plumbing system, and a miniature library with books signed by some of the greatest authors of our time. Every single detail of the castle is simply breath taking. The fairy castle is on permanent exhibition in Chicago's Museum of Science of Industry. Here's the homepage. Colleen Moore was Mervyn Leroy's champion in Hollywood. She mentored the luminous teen-age Loretta Young and cast an inexperienced but jaw-droppingly handsome Gary Cooper in his first starring role opposite her in Lilac Time. Moore believed that Leroy, an incredibly bright and creative young man, could develop into a fine director. And she was right. So let's close with Leroy's warm words about this important actress and icon of the silver screen: Links:
Karen and I wish all our friends a lovely and meaningful Rest in Shabbat.
April 05, 2008
Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston in El Cid, 1961
Charlton Heston as Major Dundee, 1965
Orson Welles and Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil, 1958March 31, 2008
Stop-Loss: Loser
Ryan Phillipe in Stop-Loss.I’ve asked around and the scuttle is that Stop-Loss cost $30 to$40 million to produce. With its advertising budget you can easily add another $10-$15 million.
Gee, all that dishonest advertising on Fox News [translation for oh, so witty liberals: Faux Noise] and you still got yourself a stinker-roo.
Hey, I have an idea… Because that’s like twelve pro-defeat, anti-American box-office humiliations in a row, why don’t you stop making them…?
And here's Dirty Harry's review of Stop-Loss. Which sounds like a public service announcement designed to save your hard-earned dollars.March 24, 2008
Colleen Moore: The Stars and Stripes
Colleen Moore, studio portrait in the Stars and Stripes.We'd no sooner sat down than the mayor, with a small bow to me, signaled the orchestra, who started playing “My Country,'Tis of Thee.” We all got up and stood very silent. When we sat down again, I said to the mayor, “That was the English national anthem, 'G-d Save the King.'”
I should have kept my mouth shut. The mayor sent for the orchestra leader, spoke a few words to him in German, and no sooner had we started the soup course than the orchestra struck up again, this time with John Philip Sousa's “Stars and Stripes Forever.” The Mayor stood up, beckoning to all of us, saying excitedly, “Stehen sie auf, bitte—everybody please stand up.”
We all stood, the orchestra finished, we sat down, and the American consul and I burst out laughing. When the mayor asked what we were laughing about, like an idiot I said, “That wasn't our national anthem. That's a march.”
The mayor, red in face, sent for the orchestra leader, spluttering German at him. The leader turned to me and asked the name of our national anthem. I said, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
He returned to the bandstand, the mayor watching him with an eagle eye. A few moments later the orchestra struck up “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” the mayor rose, saying, “Stehen sie auf, bitte,” and a tableful of by-now bewildered guests stood at attention once again. When we sat down, I smiled at the mayor and said, “That was lovely,”
Colleen Moore, Desert Flower, 1925
Colleen Moore, Her Wild Oat 1927.
On DVD you can see Colleen Moore in Orchids and Ermine, 1927. Colleen plays a shop girl, a flapper, who's looking for a sugar daddy. But she's got to remain a Cinderella at heart, meaning she has to fall in love for the sake of love—not money. There's romance, mistaken identity, and of course true love triumphs in the end. It's a screwball comedy before screwball comedies were invented in the 30's. Moore is brilliant as a gold digger who's not as avaricious as she should be. A classic.
Reel Baseball/The Busher is a collection of baseball-themed silent movies. Colleen Moore co-stars with Charles Ray in The Busher, 1919, about a small town pitcher who is brought up to the big leagues but can't quite make the grade. Colleen plays Mazie, his local sweetheart. Charles Ray was briefly a star of the silent era who specialized in playing rural heroes. On screen Ray was a one dimensional performer who relied on an aw', shucks grin and a standard check-list of hick mannerisms which appealed to audiences—for a short window of time.
Colleen Moore as Mazie in The Busher.
John Gilbert, who rose to be the first million dollar contract matinee idol at MGM, has a supporting role in The Busher film as the spoiled rich kid who's vying for Colleen's affections over Charles Ray's salt of the earth country hero. Tragically, Gilbert, hugely talented but self-destructive, would have a tortuous love affair with the great narcissist Greta Garbo—she left him stranded at the altar—and then, with the coming of sound his career crashed and burned in a terrific orgy of booze and babes.
Colleen Moore was a remarkable girl who grew into a remarkable woman... and became, next to Mary Pickford, the biggest silent film star of them all.
Later, she would retire from the screen at the height of her fame, marry well, and spend the rest of her life doing important civic works in Chicago, writing books, raising her stepchildren, and doting on her grandchildren. She was never anything but a lady, throughout her career and her postcareer life.
Her fame, however, never went to her head in any way. Perhaps because of her affluent background, she was never spoiled by her wealth., never seduced by her notoriety, never changed by her success. She was always sweet—in the best sense of the word—and kind and pleasant to everyone she met. I doubt that there was a man who worked on her pictures who was not platonically in love with her.
Carmel Myers: The Rabbi's Beautiful Daughter
Colleen Moore's Wedding Night
One Hairstyle, Three Memoirs: Alma Rubens, Colleen Moore, Louise Brooks
Theda Bara: The Vamp Adopts the Troops
Movie Magazines: They Don't Print 'em Like They Used To
Alma Rubens: Dope Fiend, But Not a Jewess
Wallace Reid: Hollywood Shooting Star
Olive Thomas: Hollywood's First Suicide
Mary Pickford: The Greatest Movie Star
Seraphic Secret Chats with Actress Coleen Gray about John Wayne, Howard Hawks, and Stanley Kubrick
Susan Peters: The Great Unknown and Tragic Actress
The Blond Machine Gun: Jean Harlow
Peg Entwistle & The Hollywood Sign
Brigitte Bardot & Sean Connery in Shalako—Sorta
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:08 AM | Comments (1)
March 16, 2008
Carmel Myers: The Rabbi's Beautiful Daughter
Carmel Myers (1899-1980).
Pearl has identified the Jewish movie star correctly as Carmel Myers.
D.W. Griffith hired Rabbi Isadore Myers as the Jewish technical consultant on his great epic, Intolerance, 1916. Griffith was so happy with Rabbi Myer's expert advice and attention to detail that he said to the good Rabbi:
“How can I ever repay you?”
Rabbi Myers replied: “I have a daughter who would like to get into pictures.”
Carmel appears fleetingly as a dancing girl in Intolerance, and afterwards was signed as a contract Griffith player a few months prior to Colleen Moore's arrival. They became close friends.
In her book Silent Star, Colleen Moore remembers that a a club for young actresses—Our Club—was organized as a means of mutual support. The young actresses would lunch on Sunday, discuss movies, books, “boys” and generously feed one another tips on what roles were available at which studios. Myers was an active member. A typical meeting included: Anita Stewart, Patsy Ruth Miller, Helen Ferguson, Billie Dove, Virginia Zanuck, Gertrud Olmsted, Julanne Johnston, Clara Horton, Ruby Keeler, Loretta Young, Aline MacMahon, Ruth Roland, Carmelita Geraghty, Pauline Garan and Ann Harding. Mary Pickford was Godmother to this extraordinary gathering of up and coming stars.
Carmel's biggest break came when she was chosen to play Iras in the huge MGM production of Ben Hur, 1925.
Carmel Myers and Ramon Novarro, Ben Hur, 1925
The Rabbi's beautiful daughter was frequently cast as the sexy vamp in silent films. She starred and worked with some of the best known stars of the time: John Barrymore, Mary Astor, Rudolph Valentino, Norma Shearer, Adolph Menjou, Eleanor Boardman, Lon Chaney, and Joan Crawford. Carmel made the transition to sound quite nicely, and as she grew older eased gracefully into character parts. But when the roles got too small she shifted into real estate—always a smart bet in Los Angeles—and launched her own perfume company. In 1951 Carmel had her own TV show for one season. She was married three times, each man was Jewish. This reveals Carmel's deep sense of commitment to Judaism, at a time when intermarriage was almost expected among the Hollywood Jewish elite.
Carmel Myers enjoys humiliating H.B. Warner,
Sorrel and Son, 1927.
A lost Carmel Myers film was recently rediscovered and restored. From Senses of Cinema.
Among the recent discoveries and restorations this year, Herbert Brenon's Sorrel and Son (1927), previously thought lost, proved strong enough to transcend the poor print material. James Wong Howe's camerawork unfortunately could not be properly appreciated, but this is an excellent example of the kind of quality production Hollywood made at the time, and Brenon was nominated for an Academy Award. H.B. Warner gives a moving performance as a gentleman soldier trying to raise his son through hard times, and Carmel Myers especially stands out as a sluttish tavern owner, leading Variety to single out a scene in which she sadistically makes Warner wash the floors: “The manner in which Miss Myers handles this scene is great, and for that reason it is doubtful if it will pass uncensored.”
Almost entirely forgotten now, Carmel Myers was a fine actress and a great star of the silent screen.
Carmel Myers, The Rabbi's Beautiful Daughter
Colleen Moore's Wedding Night
One Hairstyle, Three Memoirs: Alma Rubens, Colleen Moore, Louise Brooks
Theda Bara: The Vamp Adopts the Troops
Movie Magazines: They Don't Print 'em Like They Used To
Alma Rubens: Dope Fiend, But Not a Jewess
Wallace Reid: Hollywood Shooting Star
Olive Thomas: Hollywood's First Suicide
Mary Pickford: The Greatest Movie Star
Seraphic Secret Chats with Actress Coleen Gray about John Wayne, Howard Hawks, and Stanley Kubrick
Susan Peters: The Great Unknown and Tragic Actress
The Blond Machine Gun: Jean Harlow
Peg Entwistle & The Hollywood Sign
Brigitte Bardot & Sean Connery in Shalako—Sorta
Carmel Myers, MGM Photo, The Ship From Shanghai, 1930.
Carmel Myers IMDb
Carmel Myers Photo Gallery
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 04:06 PM | Comments (6)
March 14, 2008
Colleen Moore's Wedding Night
Moore's image of carefree flapper was at odds with reality.
Flaming Youth was a huge hit and propelled Colleen Moore to international stardom—as she knew it would.
Colleen was smart about her career, but like so many young, inexperienced Hollywood actresses, when it came to men her choices were based on on gauzy, romantic notions that were limited to idealized Hollywood images. The hard work of marriage, and the importance of shared values were distant shores that for too many never entered the calculus of love and marriage.
In 1923, Moore, 22, married John Emmett McCormick, 29, a brilliant but highly unstable studio executive who was obsessed with Moore's image and career. Moore was a staunch Catholic who believed in the sanctity of marriage.
During their engagement, McCormick would, without a word, disappear for days at a time, then show up, gaunt, hollow-eyed, shaking, reeking of liquor, begging forgiveness, and pledging his undying love.
Moore's mother counseled Colleen to break the engagement. A wise mother, she warned her vulnerable daughter that marrying McCormick would ruin Colleen's life. But Colleen, like so many young and innocent women was convinced that with time, love and proper nurturing she would change her husband.
Colleen and John were married while Flaming Youth was in production.
In her superb autobiography, Silent Star, Colleen describes the wedding supper. In screenplays we call this foreshadowing:
John proposed a toast to my dad and mother for having given me to him—a funny, sentimental, beautiful toast. Then he downed his champagne in one gulp. Downed a second glass the same way. I remember watching him and thinking what bad table manners.
After the wedding party, Colleen and John drove to their new house where John carried his bride across the threshold.
Ah, romance.
Colleen Moore, studio portrait before she bobbed her hair.
Inside their home, John cracked open a bottle of champagne:
I took only a sip or two, afraid it would make me sick. John drained the entire bottle. His voice got louder. He became glassy-eyed. His mouth hung loose. He no longer looked like himself, but like some caricature of him.
Seeing the bewilderment on my face, he said to me, “It's our wedding night, and I am drunk.”
Then he started to cry—a sloppy, maudlin, drunken berating of self. I stared at him, shocked beyond words at this unknown creature groveling there.
I burst into tears and ran upstairs to our room. Sitting there crying, I wondered if I should go home. I shook my head. How could I face running home to mother on my wedding night?
I went out to the hall to the top of the stairs and, looking down, saw that the living room was dark. A light shone from the guest room. I went down the hall to it and looked in. There was John in his pajamas sprawled on the rug with a nearly empty bottle of Scotch beside him, a large stain on the rug where some of the liquor had run out of the bottle.
I stood there for a moment staring at him. Then I ran back to our room and locked the door and crawled into the big double bed and buried my face in the pillow, sobbing my heart out.
The next morning, Moore unlocked her bedroom door and discovered that John was gone. Moore drove to the studio where everyone crowded round and offered congratulations on her marriage. The crew and actors asked where her husband was—for McCormick had been on location every day, making sure that the studio PR machine was functioning smoothly, promoting Colleen Moore as the next great Hollywood star.
Moore, a thorough professional and a disciplined actress, told cast and crew that her husband had gone to the train station to see his parents off.
Then she went to her director and asked to start the day's shooting.
In Hollywood, then and now, it's all about illusion.
Colleen Moore, Photoplay Magazine.
One Hairstyle, Three Memoirs: Alma Rubens, Colleen Moore, Louise Brooks
Theda Bara: The Vamp Adopts the Troops
Movie Magazines: They Don't Print 'em Like They Used To
Alma Rubens: Dope Fiend, But Not a Jewess
Wallace Reid: Hollywood Shooting Star
Olive Thomas: Hollywood's First Suicide
Mary Pickford: The Greatest Movie Star
Seraphic Secret Chats with Actress Coleen Gray about John Wayne, Howard Hawks, and Stanley Kubrick
Susan Peters: The Great Unknown and Tragic Actress
The Blond Machine Gun: Jean Harlow
Peg Entwistle & The Hollywood Sign
Brigitte Bardot & Sean Connery in Shalako—Sorta
Karen and I wish all our friends a lovely and meaningful Rest in Shabbat.
This Jewish movie star from the silent screen also wishes you
a good Shabbos. Can you identify her? Hint: Her father was a
Rabbi. Answer on Sunday.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:57 AM | Comments (3)
March 13, 2008
One Hairstyle, Three Memoirs: Alma Rubens, Colleen Moore, Louise Brooks
Alma Rubens, Motion Picture Magazine,
Sept 1925.
I don't know about you, but I needed some relief from the endlessly grim news out of Israel.
So: I took a break, bounced around the internet looking for some new information about Alma Rubens, subject of our popular profile: Alma Rubens: Dope Fiend, But Not a Jewess, and found this magazine cover featuring Alma Rubens when she was still a Hollywood star—before her tragic spiral into addiction and self-destruction.
Notice Alma's modern hairstyle: The Bob. This “modern” cut was first popularized in Hollywood by the great silent star Colleen Moore in her film Dinty, 1920. But it wasn't until Flaming Youth, 1923 that The Bob swept the nation.
Colleen Moore and director Mickey Neilan on location, Dinty, 1920.
Until then, the long elaborately curled tresses of Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish and every major Hollywood star were viewed as the desired American look, certainly a Victorian ideal of purity and innocence celebrated in the films of D.W. Griffith and all his imitators. It was Griffith who gave Lillian Gish and Collen Moore their first jobs in motion pictures.
Moore, fifteen-years old, came to Hollywood in 1917 under a six month contract to D.W. Griffith—as a favor to Moore's uncle, Walter Howey, a powerful newspaper editor with the Chicago Examiner. Howey had been able to get Griffith's The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance past the local city censors. When Griffith asked Howey how he could repay him, Howey answered: “Well, I have a niece who wants to get into pictures.”
An obscure Hollywood factoid: In 1928 two of Uncle Walter's reporters, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, wrote a play about him called The Front Page. The play became the basis for four motion pictures, the best adaptation being His Girl Friday 1940, starring Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant as Walter Burns the charming but hard-boiled Chicago newspaper editor who will do and say anything to get a story. Hecht and MacArthur went on to become the two best Hollywood screenwriters—ever.
Anywhoo, back to hair.
Colleen Moore, in her fine autobiography, Silent Star, describes the hard work young female stars went through in order to maintain their elaborate tresses.
Griffith Studios, as well as the others, was strictly do-it-yourself. That included fixing our own hair—washing it, drying it (by hand—hair driers hadn't been invented yet), and putting it up in curlers and rags to make those beautiful long curls that were the current style.
Hairdressing at home and at the studio was arduous enough. On location it was a trial. You had to round up a washtub from somewhere, get a pitcher for rinsing (many, many rinsings to get the bar-soap out of your hair and the shine back in—shampoo hadn't been invented yet, either) and, if you were lucky, someone to help you. Also, plenty of towels. And, of course, on the dusty desert it was not only a trial but an oft-repeated one.
The desert did have one advantage. It was dry. Mary Pickford used to tell me about the problem she had once when she was making a picture on location in a humid climate. Her hair, which was as straight as mine was naturally, would start to droop after a while, so shooting would stop, Mary would put her hair up in curlers and rags, and then the whole company would just sit there for an hour while it dried, so she could go before the camera once again in those famous curls.
Mary Pickford, her cascading curls defined her image.
Lillian Gish, the Victorian ideal. Birth of a Nation, 1915.
Moore felt trapped in the demure ringlets and gingham dresses that she sensed were quickly going out of fashion. When Moore read the sizzling novel Flaming Youth, then learned that it had been optioned for film, she clearly saw her route to stardom.
I begged for the role, but the New York office said I wasn’t the type, I was better in costume parts. I was frantic for fear they’d give the part to someone else.
Colleen’s mother came to the rescue with a simple but brilliant idea, a makeover:
She said, ‘Why don’t we cut your hair?’ I was elated. She picked up the scissors and, whack, off came the long curls. I felt as if I’d been emancipated. Then she trimmed my hair around with bangs like a Japanese girl’s haircut. Five days later I had the part.
And a star was born.
After screening Flaming Youth, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote:
“I was the spark that lit up Flaming Youth, Colleen Moore was the torch. What little things we are to have caused all that trouble.”
Colleen Moore
Three years later, Louise Brooks took The Bob to the next level, molding the cut into a sleek, futuristic black helmet.
Louise Brooks
Here's a short clip of Colleen Moore in “Ella Cinders,” 1926. Ella wants to be a Hollywood star, thus she follows eye exercises in a self-help book. Notice the split-screen special effects. Moore is magnetic, lively and absolutely charming.
At the height of her career she was making $12,500 a week.
Louise Brooks in her most famous role as Lulu in “Pandora's Box,” 1928, produced in Berlin and directed by G.W. Pabst. Whereas Moore danced lightly across the silver screen, an all American girl, desirable but decent, Brooks smoldered, relentlessly burning with amoral sensuality. Brooks made two great films, then self-destructed,
a dipsomaniac, a nymphomaniac and, um, a misanthropomaniac.
Recommended Reading:
Moore's autobiography is one of the best Hollywood memoirs I've ever read. She writes beautifully and articulately about every aspect of her long and incredibly successful career. Moore was smart. She saved her money and wrote a best-selling book for women about investing in the stock market. Moore also devoted herself to building the most elaborate, exquisitely detailed doll house in existence.
You can pick up used copies of Silent Star here.
Louise Brooks authored a fascinating book of essays about her life and Hollywood. Frequently illuminating, often infuriating, it's nevertheless a captivating memoir that reveals Brooks as a brilliant but undisciplined woman. Her fall from grace—she was never a big star—is vividly etched between every line. In life, Brooks lacked all remorse, empathy, or ability to love. Brooks claimed that she never read any of her film scripts. Of course not. She didn't have to. Brooks played Brooks. Plot didn't matter.
You can order used copies of Lulu in Hollywood here.
Alma Rubens: Silent Snowbird was originally serialized in 1931 as a lurid true confession in newspapers as “This Bright World Again.” Probably ghost written, suffering from some melodramatic touches, and Ruben's stuttering desire to cast herself in the best light, this is still an absolutely fascinating document. It's filled with horrifying details of Ruben's narcotic addiction and her penchant for violence. The most powerful section—clearly authentic—is devoted to her forced eight month confinement in a California mental institution. This is a vivid portrait of hell on earth where patients are routinely beaten and sexually abused, where nurses sell liquor to alcoholic patient-prisoners, and where corrupt physicians peddle narcotics to their addicted patients. It's a snake pit, pitiless and horrifying. Seraphic Secret writes about this book in detail here.
You can order used copies of Silent Snowbird here.
Colleen Moore, Motion Picture Magazine.
Louise Brooks, Motion Picture Classic Magazine.
Theda Bara: The Vamp Adopts the Troops
Movie Magazines: They Don't Print 'em Like They Used To
Alma Rubens: Dope Fiend, But Not a Jewess
Wallace Reid: Hollywood Shooting Star
Olive Thomas: Hollywood's First Suicide
Mary Pickford: The Greatest Movie Star
Seraphic Secret Chats with Actress Coleen Gray about John Wayne, Howard Hawks, and Stanley Kubrick
Susan Peters: The Great Unknown and Tragic Actress
The Blond Machine Gun: Jean Harlow
Peg Entwistle & The Hollywood Sign
Brigitte Bardot & Sean Connery in Shalako—Sorta
Let's not forget Anna May Wong, a great actress in silent
and sound films—with a great Bob. Photo circa 1929.
And of course the magnificent Dutch actress Truus van Aalten,
who was enormously influenced by Colleen Moore.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:03 AM | Comments (13)
March 05, 2008
Theda Bara: The Vamp Adopts the Troops
Theda Bara, 1917
In 1918, Theda Bara was one of the three biggest stars in Hollywood. There was America's Sweetheart, Mary Pickford, the biggest movie star in the world, and then the Little Tramp, Charlie Chaplin. After those two came The Vamp, Theda Bara.
She was the hottest sex symbol to hit the motion picture screen since, well, since the flickers started flickering. She was the sexually insatiable woman, the lethal seductress who sucks the life out of a man, then abandons him, leaving only chaos and destruction in her wake.
This was, of course, a carefully created image.
Theda Bara was Theodosia Burr Goodman, (1885-1955) a Jewish woman from Cincinnati who led a quiet and scandal free private life. In fact, she was a bookworm who liked nothing better than to curl up with a cup of tea and devour volume after volume of poetry and art history. She did not drink alcohol, go to night clubs, take drugs, or indulge in wild sexual escapades. She worked hard in the flourishing motion picture industry, saved money and wisely invested her considerable earnings.
A world-weary, hardened show-biz trooper who had failed all efforts at a legitimate stage career, Theda got a break in pictures and patiently cooperated with the outlandish publicity which claimed she was born in the shadow of the Egyptian pyramids, the pampered child of a beautiful French actress and an Italian sculptor.
Fox studio publicity men Al Selig and John Goldfrap—flamboyant geniuses who invented the playbook on celebrity publicity—further embellished this nutty tale as they coached Theda to speak to the press with a heavy French accent.
Draped in velvet cloaks in an overheated hotel room—the press was told that she was accustomed to the desert climate of her native Egypt—Theda dramatically announced to the assembled reporters: “Raised in a huge tent not far from the Sphinx, the oasis, our little home for years, was to us like the Garden of Eden. My mother taught me the languages, expression, and the art of pantomime. On the other hand, my father taught me how to paint, and the beauty and combination of colors. And through the instruction of both I learned the symphony of the soul.”
At the height of Theda's career, while filming The Forbidden Path, and during World War I, Theda received a telegram that she lovingly preserved in one of her huge, crumbling scrapbooks:
Feb.11, 1918: 158th Infantry Regiment selected you for its Godmother by unanimous vote today. This regiment composed of Arizona men all sincere admirers of yourself. Mary Pickford has adopted 143rd Artillery Regiment here. Will be greatly disappointed if you turn us down. Please wire your acceptance at once.
Theda Bara's brother Marque, was stationed at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in the Signal Corps. In 1917 Theda was asked to sign the American flag carried by a company of volunteers from York, Pennsylvania. Graciously, Theda autographed the stars and stripes. In gratitude the regiment sent her an ebony communion cup—unaware that she was Jewish.
This request from the 158th was profoundly touching to the patriotic movie star. She adopted the troops as her boys and finally got to meet the entire regiment in June 1918. She broke down and wept as she spoke to the star-struck soldiers.
“My heart is too full—words can't come. This has been the most glorious day of my whole life.”
The soldiers responded by rewriting their marching song, doing their maneuvers to “Vamp, Vamp, Vamp. The Boys are Marching!”
Theda, along with Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks were the most effective war bond salespeople in the United States. In 1917, on the steps of the New York Public Library, Theda sold $70,000 in bonds a single afternoon. She returned in November and sold another $300,000 worth of bonds during several rallies.
As a first generation American—her father, a tailor born in Poland, and her mother from Switzerland—Theda Bara loved America, was grateful for all the opportunities she was given, and this great movie star went out of her way to support her country and the brave troops who sacrificed so much on the bloody western front.
Theda Bara as Cleopatra, 1917, a lost film
In 1918-19 a flu epidemic swept across the United States. The motion picture business was hit hard. Film and stage shows closed, people wore cotton masks in the street. In October, one hundred and ninety-six thousand people died of influenza in America. World-wide, forty-million people lost their lives.
Theda Bara, the man-eating vamp who made love to men and then cruelly destroyed them, in an act of incredible bravery and compassion, visited veteran's hospitals while the flu was still raging. She refused to wear a face mask, insisting that the veterans should have a chance to look their idol's face.
That's a genuine movie star.
During the mid 50's, in one of her last interviews, she spoke with Hedda Hopper about silent films and the essence of Hollywood stardom: glamour and mystery.
To understand those days, you must consider that people believed what they saw on the screen. Nobody had destroyed the great illusion. Now they know it's all make-believe... It's the stars themselves who have been failing the fans. People have always been hungry for glamour—they still are. But it takes showmanship and a constant sense of responsibility to hold their interest. A star musn't allow her public to see her in slacks. She should dress beautifully at all times—I don't mean in a bizarre way. She must live their dreams for them and remain a figure of mystery. Glamour is the most essential part of Hollywood.
Theda Bara, Motion Picture Magazine
For the information in this brief profile, I am indebted to Eve Golden's book Vamp: The Rise and Fall of Theda Bara. A fine biography of this important star, highly recommended.
Theda Bara: A Biography of the Silent Screen Vamp, With a Filmography by Ronald Genini. Yup, that's the title. Haven't read the book, so I don't have a clue.
Tragically, almost all of Theda Bara's films have been lost or destroyed. She made forty-two films, but the films and clips that do survive are, to judge by reviews and articles, not her best work.
A Fool There Was, 1915 DVD starring Theda Bara, May Allison, Victor Benoit. The film that made Theda Bara an overnight sensation. And yup, this is the movie where Theda commands: “Kiss me, you fool!”
Theda Bara.net
Denny Jackson's Theda Bara Page
Silent Ladies & Gents, Theda Bara: Photo Galleries
Theda Bara: Silent Star of the Month
Theda Bara IMDb
Theda Bara as The Vamp, publicity photo, 1915
Movie Magazines: They Don't Print 'em Like They Used To
Alma Rubens: Dope Fiend, But Not a Jewess
Wallace Reid: Hollywood Shooting Star
Olive Thomas: Hollywood's First Suicide
Mary Pickford: The Greatest Movie Star
Seraphic Secret Chats with Actress Coleen Gray about John Wayne, Howard Hawks, and Stanley Kubrick
Susan Peters: The Great Unknown and Tragic Actress
The Blond Machine Gun: Jean Harlow
Peg Entwistle & The Hollywood Sign
Brigitte Bardot & Sean Connery in Shalako—Sorta
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:30 PM | Comments (18)
February 29, 2008
Movie Magazines
Lily Damita—Screen Secrets, September 1929
Artist: Edwin Bower Hesser
In the early days of tinsel town, glossy motion picture magazines fed the public's voracious appetite for all things Hollywood. The covers were done by brilliant artists. The circulation of some magazines reached as high as five and six-hundred thousand paid subscribers. Newsstand sales increased world-wide circulation to two and three million dollar figures. The influence of movie magazines was enormous—on box office and fashion. There were movie reviews. Behind the scenes stories. Writers went on location with the public's favorite stars and filed breathless reports. There were contests, endless beauty tips, and of course inside gossip on the latest Hollywood romances, heartbreaks and shocking scandals.
Here are some examples of the magazine covers that reached mailboxes in every corner of the U.S.A., from sophisticated cities, where jazz clubs were open all night, to tiny towns that lacked electricity and paved roads.
The snappy cover lines gives you an idea of the sizzling topics—dopey pop-psychology was all the rage—the public devoured: The Arch-Enemy of Beauty: Over-Exercise, The Secret Love Lives of the Stars, Hollywood Beauty Tips, Freak Diets, New Fashion, The Curse of the Platinum Blonde, The Low Down on Hollywood, Clara Bow Shops for a Baby, The Inside Story of a Hollywood Romance, Secrets of a Leading Man, Do You Want a Brand New Personality? Um, possibly, and my personal favorite: What Chance Have You in the Movies?
Sigh.
Eighty years later, change the names, shift a few minor details and it's all pretty much the same Hollywood shuffle. Though the cover art in the old movie magazines is breath-taking, and a good deal easier on the eyes than the post-modern graphic arts that makes my eye-balls bleed when I open a magazine or step into the fluorescent corridors of blinking, screaming cyberspace.
Bask in this gift to our Seraphic Friends.
Ann Harding—Photoplay, 1931
Mary Astor—Photoplay, February 1932
Lois Wilson—Photoplay, April 1927
Billie Dove—Hollywood, October 1931
Artist: Edwin Bower Hesser
Mary Brian—Picture Play, March 1930
Artist: Modest Stein
Francis Dee—Picture Play, May 1932
Artist: Modest Stein
Marlene Dietrich—Silver Screen, September 1931
Artist: John Rolston Clarke
Norma Shearer—Photoplay, April 1932
Artist: Earl Christy
Jeanette MacDonald—Photoplay, July 1930
Artist: Earl Christy
Irene Dunne—Photoplay, October 1932
Artist: Earl Christy
Constance Bennett—Modern Screen, October 1932
Mary Nolan—Motion Picture, June 1930
Artist: Marland Stone
Madge Bellamy—Photoplay, January 1929
Artist: Charles Sheldon
Marian Marsh—New Movie Magazine, September 1931
Artist: Rolf Armstrong
Picture Play Magazine, January 1926
Artist: Hal Phyfe
Images Courtesy of: Operator 99
Karen and I wish all our friends a beautiful and profound miracle in Shabbat.
Carmel Myers: The Rabbi's Beautiful Daughter
Colleen Moore's Wedding Night
One Hairstyle, Three Memoirs: Alma Rubens, Colleen Moore, Louise Brooks
Theda Bara: The Vamp Adopts the Troops
Movie Magazines: They Don't Print 'em Like They Used To
Alma Rubens: Dope Fiend, But Not a Jewess
Wallace Reid: Hollywood Shooting Star
Olive Thomas: Hollywood's First Suicide
Mary Pickford: The Greatest Movie Star
Seraphic Secret Chats with Actress Coleen Gray about John Wayne, Howard Hawks, and Stanley Kubrick
Susan Peters: The Great Unknown and Tragic Actress
The Blond Machine Gun: Jean Harlow
Peg Entwistle & The Hollywood Sign
Brigitte Bardot & Sean Connery in Shalako—Sorta
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:26 AM | Comments (17)
February 27, 2008
City of Angels for S'derot
Paula Abdul
At last, some good news, and Hollywood stars with real voltage stepping forward to support Israel and the embattled residents of S'derot.
Hats off to Sly, Paula Abdul, and Jon Voight.
Los Angeles is proving to indeed be a "City of Angels.’" A host of Hollywood stars, including Paula Abdul, Sylvester Stallone and Jon Voight, will be participating Tuesday in a charity and solidarity concert for the rocket-battered town of Sderot in Beverly Hills.
The concert, entitled "Live for Sderot", which will include a performance by Israeli singer Ninet Tayeb and will be attended by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, will also launch the celebrations of the State of Israel's 60th anniversary in the city.
To read the complete story, please click here.
Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend, Dirty Harry, at Libertas.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:46 PM | Comments (12)
February 26, 2008
Movies as Moral Landscape
The Seven Samurai
Yesterday, in our post, we introduced Gila of My Shrapnel and her articulate dissection, Part I, Part II, of the intellectually bankrupt notes by the director of the film A Death in Jerusalem—a film that is, at best, an ethical black hole.
We said that all movies are, in one way or the other, a moral landscape.
The first moral choice a film maker makes is subject matter.
The second choice is point of view; choosing the main character and supporting characters.
An Arab propagandist cobbled together a film, Jenin, Jenin, actually a blood libel—there is no other phrase to describe this false narrative—a film that spreads the virus that the IDF massacred civilians in Jenin in 2002.
Of course, no such thing ever happened.
It's all a lie. The Big Jenin Lie.
In truth, the final death toll was 56 Palestinians, the majority of them combatants, and 23 Israeli soldiers.
The IDF went into Jenin, a deadly urban environment, with ground troops, in order to avoid inflicting civilian casualties. In making this decision the IDF suffered terrible fatalities, in one single ambush thirteen Jewish soldiers were killed in a narrow alley.
Contrast this with the siege by the Lebanese army on the Palestinian town of Nahr el-Bared, which was indiscriminently shelled for months. Lebanese ground troops were barely used because urban combat is on the side of the terrorists. Of course, we have not seen any films about the massacre in Nahr el-Bared, though the Lebanese Army killed scores of civilians. It seems the world, especially the Arab-Muslim world, has a high tolerance for Arab on Arab massacres.
But as always, Pallywood grinds away with their side of the story—this dark hole of a phrase that passes for intellectual thought is a mask for a series of modern blood libels, one of the most notorious, The al Durah Affair.
My modest local library has Jenin, Jenin on its shelves. I checked it out, screened it and was sickened. It's like watching Nazi propaganda, a series of lies piled upon lies. I talked to the librarian, who knew nothing about the film. She reared back at the notion of plucking it from the shelves because, y'know, that would be censorship. I asked her how she would feel if there was a film in her library that claimed that blacks were never slaves in America, that The Middle Passage was an elaborate hoax. She, a lovely black lady, just stared at me and refused to entertain the notion that there was any intellectual linkage.
America wins wars when Hollywood helps fight those wars. When Hollywood chooses the path of moral equivalency, when Hollywood chooses the squishy, black hole of multiculturalism, then America loses and retreats. Witness, Vietnam. Witness the uncertainty as the American public gazes and blinks in bafflement at Iraq and Afghanistan, front lines in the war on Islamic jihad.
Movies can be world's most powerful propaganda tool, if properly utilized.
I am a screenwriter because as a young, alienated yeshiva student I wandered into a movie theater and saw The Seven Samurai. This towering film, the story of resistance to terrorism, inspired me to become a screenwriter.
Toshiru Mifune in The Seven Samurai
It's a perfect movie, and a movie of perfect moral clarity.
The most Jewish non-Jewish movie ever produced.
And now, as Jew-haters crank out slick propaganda designed to annihilate the Jewish state and the Jewish people, we are witness to Jews who prop up this juggernaut of hate. They are nothing new. The Maccabees declared war against the Hellenized Jews of the Greek-Assyrian Empire, and we must do the same. We too must fight the jihadists and their fifth columnist enablers—with swords, and most certainly with fine screenplays and morally sharp cameras.
Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend, Ari Kinsberg
Jenin Links:
I asked my friend Soccer Dad if he could provide me with some of his invaluable Jenin links and he graciously obliged:
Here's a briefing by Dr. Ephraim Sneh, and Maj. David Zangen Chief Medical Officer of the Jenin Area.
A Lost Soldier, Staff Sgt. Matanya Robinson
A Lost Soldier, Sgt. Shmuel Weiss
Soccer Dad adds: “Shmuel Akiva Weiss was a medic. When Matanya Robinson was shot, Weiss ran to treat him. That's when a sniper shot him. Remember the MDA is not internationally protected, not that the terrorist who killed Shmuel Akiva Weiss would have cared about such things.”
But there was something else the two men had in common.
Soccer Dad notes: A sad post-script, Stewart Weiss, who wrote the above article had a son who was later killed in combat too.
The Ongoing War blogs about the screening of Jenin, Jenin. Here's the summary of this fine and necessary blog: “Many people lack a factual understanding of events in our region because the media often report them inadequately and inaccurately. Our daughter Malki, murdered at the age of 15 in a restaurant massacre in 2001, was a victim of jihadist hatred and barbarism. Jihadism will end in Israel (New York, Madrid, London, Bali) only after people first understand the scale on which it's happening. This war is killing us.”
And finally, PR considerations in The Battle of Jenin.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:51 AM | Comments (19)
February 20, 2008
Alma Rubens: Dope Fiend, But Not a Jewess!
Many persons who have followed my career on the screen and stage mistake me for a Jewess. This belief perhaps was strengthened when I married Ricardo Cortez, my third husband, the only one I ever really loved, and whom I am now trying to divorce.
Although I didn't find it out until almost a year after our marriage, Ric, instead of being a gallant Spanish caballero which I believed him, was the son of a kosher butcher, with a shop on First Avenue, New York City. His real name is Jacob Kranz.Alma Rubens, silent film star turned hopeless drug addict, penned a fascinating, lurid confessional, This Bright World Again, that was serialized in newspapers in 1931.
Alma Rubens, Early Studio Portrait
Her insistence of her non-Jewish roots comes early in Chapter One. She wanted to get the Jewish thing out of the way—fast. She assured her readers that she was of French and Irish ancestry, reared as a strict Catholic. Alma was educated at the Sacred Heart Convent in San Francisco.
But the truth is her father was Jewish. According to halachah, Jewish law, matrilineal descent decides who is a Jew and who is not. Thus, Rubens was not Jewish. But she certainly went out of her way to deny her father's Jewish roots.
Rubens, in a nasty move for the times, outed her husband Ricardo Cortez. No doubt, Alma wanted to damage his fast rising career as a handsome leading man. Cortez, now sadly forgotten, played private eye Sam Spade in the original The Maltese Falcon (1931) and he is perfect. Cortez is far more dangerous and charming than the mannered, lip-curling Bogart.
Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, 1931
There's another Cortez film, practically unknown—I caught it on TCM, G-d bless Robert Osborne—but truly amazing, Symphony of Six Million, (1932) where he plays a brilliant Jewish surgeon—as if there's any other kind. And Irene Dunne, not yet a star, is cast as, get this, a Jewish girl from the Lower East Side who, from childhood, faithfully loves Cortez who gradually abandons his poor Jewish community for the “Park Avenue trade.” Dunne's got a limp and she teaches blind kids. Obviously not the bad girl of the story. Viewer whiplash sets in for yours truly watching Dunne do Jewish with that subterranean Kentucky shicksah twang. It's the only Hollywood film I've ever seen that has a Pidyon Ha-ben, a Redemption of the First Born ceremony, in the story-line.
Though melodramatic and at times stiff, Symphony of Six Million—the title refers to New York's population—is well worth seeking out and screening. It's Hollywood dealing affectionately with Judaism, immigrant Jewish culture and characters.
Interpolation:
Not too many years later, prominent Jewish movie moguls Irving Thalberg, L.B. Mayer, Paul Bern, Harry Cohn and the Warner Bros. stifled genuinely Jewish narratives and such stories almost disappeared from American movies. This ethnic black-out neatly coincided with The Production Code. Hollywood Jews were running scared, anxious to be perceived as loyal Americans, not clannish Jews, and the self-censorship of the Hays Office over issues of sex and race bled directly into the insecure Jewish psyche of the secular, assimilationist Hollywood Jewish elite.
End Interpolation:
Alma Rubens is truly a lost star of the silent screen, but her memoir, almost certainly ghost-written, is absolutely riveting. Now, it's been edited by Gary D. Rhodes and Alexander Webb and published as Alma Rubens, Silent Snowbird.
Translation:
Silent = silent films.
Snowbird = female cocaine addict.
As Rhodes and Webb write in their splendid introduction:
By 1918, actress Alma Rubens was a noted screen personality. By 1920, she was a major star. By 1929, she was hospitalized for drug abuse. By 1931, she was dead from its effects. Little more is generally said of Rubens, one of the great female stars of the emergent feature film industry of the 1910's and one whose popularity continued over a fifteen year period.
Rubens, exquisitely doe-eyed and dark-haired, broke into the film industry in 1914 with appearances in two three-reelers, The Narcotic Spectre and The Gangster and the Girl. In 1915 Rubens starred in The Lorelia Madonna produced by Vitagraph. Rubens got strong reviews for this film and producers noticed. D.W. Griffith cast her in Intolerance (1916) as one of the girls of the marriage market in the Babylonian sequence—I can't pick her out. She also worked with cowboy star William S. Hart in The Cold Deck, (1917).
From these associations, Rubens was offered a contract with Triangle, the studio formed by D.W. Griffith, Mack Sennet, and Thomas Ince. Rubens starred in films opposite Bessie Love and Douglas Fairbanks. Ironically, the three actors appeared in one of the most notorious pictures of the silent era, The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (1916) in which Fairbanks is a cocaine using detective named “Coke Ennyday.”
From 1918 until 1925 Alma Rubens became a Hollywood star before stardom was understood, before Hollywood celebrity was common. She was comfortable in front of the camera and didn't display the formal stiffness that characterized so many early film stars. In a way, Alma was the girl next door. Except she was drop-dead gorgeous, sensuous without the threatening Theda Bara vamp thing that was all the rage at the time.
Interesting to note that Bara was promoted as the exotic Egyptian-born daughter of a French actress and an Italian sculptor. In fact, Bara was a smart, hard-working Jewish woman from Cincinnati: Theodosia Burr Goodman.
Rubens starred in Humoresque, 1920, according to the silent film historian Kevin Brownlow, the “first [Hollywood] Jewish classic,” produced and financed by William Randolph Hurst's Cosmopolitan Pictures. The movie was directed by the twenty-seven year old Frank Borzage, an Italian-American from Salt Lake City. Borzage, one of Hollywood's finest directors, was a former Shakespearean actor who toiled for a while as an extra at Universal, and then signed by Thomas Ince as a leading man. Gradually, Borzage found his way to the director's chair. The script, based on a Fannie Hurst novel, was penned by the great screenwriter Francis Marion.
Adolph Zukor, the head of Paramount, hated the film and could not understand why anybody would want to see a movie about, what he perceived, as lower-class Jews. As Brownlow reports in Behind the Mask of Innocence, Zukor wrote to screenwriter Francis Marion: “If you want to show Jews, show Rothchilds, banks and beautiful things. It hurts us Jews—we don't all live in poor houses.” Humoresque was almost shelved, but when finally released, it was a popular sensation, a big money-maker, and Rubens was catapulted to the deadly Hollywood stratosphere.
Typical of so many Hollywood actresses—the Gish sisters, the Talmadge sisters, and countless others—Alma Rubens was impoverished and fatherless for most of her childhood.
Her love life was a series of disastrous, ill-considered marriages. She married stage actor Franklyn Farnum in 1918. He was 20-years her senior. The marriage lasted about two weeks. He was, she said, drunken, and violent. In 1923 she married Dr. Daniel Carson Goodman, but separated after a few months. He too, she charged, as physically violent and mentally abusive. While working for Fox in 1926, she married the handsome leading man Ricardo Cortez. The only Hollywood actor ever to get credit above Greta Garbo, in The Torrent, 1926.
Ruben's mother, Teresa, was a powerful influence who manged to sock away money and buy some valuable real estate. Rubens, in her memoir, admits that if not for her mother's wise investments, all her Hollywood earning would have gone into her veins.
Alma Rubens, glamour portrait
Rubens claims that her addiction to morphine began in 1923, after marriage to Dr. Daniel Carson Goodman, screenwriter and head of production for Hearst's Cosmopolitan Pictures. Rubens has just signed a contract for a thousand dollars a week.
Then came an illness, painful and nerve-wracking, though of short duration, but which proved to be the ultimate stumbling block upon which my career was wrecked.
It marked the beginning of my addiction to the use of narcotic drugs.
So, what exactly was the nature of Ruben's illness?
Ruben's goes on to explain:
My first shot of morphine, administered to ease my suffering, was given me by Dr. A., now one of the leading gynecologists in the country and a professor in one of our great universities.
Later, when my husband learned the exact nature of the treatment for my womanly weakness—the use of morphine—he called in another great physician, Dr. B., who said it would be a crime to operate on a girl of my tender age—and conceded that his contemporary's treatment was a most proper one.
Womanly weakness.
There is no further explanation.
But a friend who is a physician has this compelling diagnosis:
Rubens may have been referring to Endometriosis, a gynecologic condition where there is thought to be hormonally responsive tissue within the abdomen (endometrial fragments, hence the name), which can become extremely painful at different times during a woman's cycle.
In the days before hormonal therapy injections, and even now, when hormones don't work, narcotics were often prescribed.
The definitive surgical therapy—drastic, last resort, but 100% curative—is ovarian removal, but completely understandable why physicians would be reluctant to perform this on so young a woman.
We know that Rubens was first arrested for narcotics possession as early as 1919, so clearly she was using before she was given her first shot of morphine in 1923 as she claims.
Okay, addicts lie. They like to blame others for their addictions. No surprise there. But let's give Alma the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she was just partying like so many Hollywood starlets then and now, and only seriously got hooked later on.
Rubens blames only herself for becoming a “dope fiend.”
A weak, worldly girl, who hadn't sufficient will power to cast aside the treacherous needle; the insiduous [sic] liquid, responsible for my loathesome [sic] yearning.
Shockingly frank about her frequent violence, Rubens stabs a physician with a pen knife as he attempts to treat her. When she comes home from a sanitarium, pretending that she's cured, she snarls to her mother and Cortez: “You're both fools. I'm still an addict. And now I'm going straight to hell.”
Rubens marches right into her bedroom and shoots up with narcotics she purchased from a corrupt sanitarium physician.
Talk about a full service treatment center.
The actress tracks down a black maid she recently fired for dishonesty from her Beverly Hills home. Rubens trades a $4,000 mink coat for a few day's supply of dope. Rubens catches the look of perfect revenge on her former maid's face as the exchange is finalized. Soon, Rubens is handing over expensive evening gowns, sable and ermine capes, silk lingerie and fine jewelry. Most of the time, Rubens sadly admits, she gets just enough narcotics to get through a few days.
Alma Rubens, studio portrait
There are wild, public incidents. Frequent violent outbursts. There's a loud, drunken orgy in a hotel room. Court orders to have Rubens committed are filed by Ruben's mother. Counter appeals are filed by Alma. At last, an ambulance pulls up to her ranch, Rubens is strapped into a strait jacket and whisked away for a “cure.” Before you know it Rubens escapes and hides away in a cheap hotel with a supply of dope, bathtub gin, and some bad boy junkie she picked up in Chinatown. Reporters from The New York Times—what, you expected The National Enquirer?—get wind of her addiction, and like jackals track her descent.
It's a life so out of control that when she writes about the fist-sized infected abscesses on her thighs, I literally shivered. Reading the memoir I had a hard time believing that this was taking place in the roaring twenties and not today, in the Hollywood Hills or some crime-ridden ghetto.
Of course, like so many true confessions, much of what Alma writes is self-serving, and the reader has to pluck kernels of truth from some pretty sensational fiction cooked up by professional ghost writers anxious to sell a sordid yarn in order to boost newspaper circulation. But the core of the memoir reeks of truth—she's a sad, desperate Hollywood type I fully recognize—and Rubens pulls no punches as she details a harrowing plunge into addiction and moral chaos.
Alma's addiction became public knowledge in 1929 and film roles dried up. She played Julie in the 1929 part-talkie Show Boat. But really, it was all over. Her angelic looks were ravaged by drugs and hard-living.
In 1930 she was arrested in San Diego with narcotics found sewn in the lining of an evening gown. She had purchased the dope in Mexico and tried to smuggle it back into America. Rubens claimed that she was framed.
A few weeks later, Alma Rubens (February 19, 1897- January 22, 1931) died of drug-induced pneumonia. She was 33 years old.
Seraphic Secret Hollywood Profiles of Interest:
Wallace Reid: Hollywood Shooting Star
Olive Thomas: Hollywood's First Suicide
Mary Pickford: The Greatest Movie Star
Seraphic Secret Chats with Actress Coleen Gray about John Wayne, Howard Hawks, and Stanley Kubrick.
Susan Peters: The Unknown & Tragic Great Actress
The Blond Machine Gun: Jean Harlow
Peg Entwistle & The Hollywood Sign
Brigitte Bardot & Sean Connery in Shalako, Sorta
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:52 PM | Comments (26)
February 18, 2008
Home Game
“I had to do something, I wasn't sure what it was, and then I saw some home video that people from Gaza were shooting and it was just so heartbreaking and I said to myself, people have to see this footage.”
Producer Avi Abelow is sitting in my office describing how his film Home Game came into existence. Avi is soft-spoken, modest, but a passionate young man. It turns out that he lives in Efrat, just a few blocks away from Karen's brother David and his wife Elana.
It's a small Jewish world.
“So I started collecting all the footage I could from the settlers in Gaza, the people who were being expelled from their homes.”
“Avi, I have an idea, let's not call them settlers, that's become a pejorative term, let's call them Pioneers. Language counts. Words have power.”
Avi smiles and continues: “Okay, I like that. Anyway, Before I know it I have hours and hours of video and it's all just amazing, but I have no idea how to pull it together. But thank G-d, my editor is a genius. He points out that during the 2005 disengagement, there was a basketball tournament taking place. In other words, normal teenage life was going on in the midst of this horrendous expulsion. So we decide to build the film around the basketball footage.”
“You found your metaphor.”
“Exactly. ”
Home Game is a film about the painful and tragic human cost of the Gaza disengagement, where 9,000 Jews were expelled from their homes by other Jews. It was a triumph for jihad, a success for Islamic terrorism, and a low-point in Jewish history. The expulsion proved that terror works, that those who call for appeasement never learn the dark lessons of history.
Gaza is Judenrein and is now a forward base for Hizbullah and a dozen other Islamic terrorist gangs. Rocket and mortar attacks on Israel have only increased since the expulsion. The Gaza tragedy is a national disgrace and a security nightmare.
The film is a multi-layered narrative that shows the residents of the Gaza villages during the various stages of the expulsion.
These multi-strands are anchored by the basketball tournament. The riveting footage is interwoven with frank yet charming studio interviews with several home team basketball players and a lovely, articulate young Israeli woman who picked up a video camera and became a reluctant but somewhat obsessive chronicler of the horrifying expulsion that pitted Jew against Jew.
There are moments that are so raw, so painful, that you feel as if you're a peeping tom in a terrible family squabble. I almost wept as an anguished female soldier kneels and tries to console her friend while at the same time expelling her from her home. Meanwhile, an irate young man howls at the female soldier's commanding officer: “Look at what you've done to her, look at what you've turned her into. She used to be such a fine girl. Look what you're making her do to her friends.”
Another IDF Officer calmly explains to a Pioneer: “I'm just following orders.”
The Pioneer, an anguished and furious Israeli with a Yemenite Hebrew accent, explodes: “Don't say that. That's a terrible sentence. What will you say to your children tonight when you go home, what will you tell them, that you expelled Jews from their homes!”
The IDF officer does not respond, he just turns around and walks away.
Home Game builds in intensity. Meanwhile, the teenagers, kids who just want to have normal lives, try and lead normal lives as their world crumbles.
This is a powerful film, and I urge everyone, no matter what your political leaning, to purchase it.
Avi Abelow has plans for several more films about the Israeli experience through his new company 12 Tribe Films. We look forward to more great work from this fine young talent.
You can watch the movie online for three days by renting it.
Today's Links:
I have no idea what happened, but I never received Haveil Havalim #154 yesterday. I figured maybe I offended somebody out there in the Jewish blogosphere and was thrust into some kind of cyber leper colony. Anywhoo, I just came across #154 and Esser Agaroth has done a really neat job of collecting the Best of the Jewish Blogosphere. We'd like to thank Esser Agaroth for including our post The Decline and Fall of the State of Israel in this round-up.
Seraphic Friend Treppenwitz comments on the Olmert-Livni plan to surrender the Israeli-Gaza border to international troops. The Definition of Insanity.
Gaza to Denmark: Bomb and Slaughter the Danes. Hey, I wonder how much money the Danes have donated to the peace-loving Pals? Nice payback.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:27 AM | Comments (14)
February 07, 2008
Hollywood Kool-Aid
“I've got a hot political tip for you.”
“I'm listening.”
“What would you say if I told you I have proof that a prominent Republican politician belongs to an organization that just honored a vicious racist.”
I'm sitting in a Beverly Hills restaurant with a Hollywood producer, a close friend who is a moderate Democrat but also a proud Jew and Zionist. Believe me, he's a rare species in Hollywood.
My friend leans forward and narrows his eyes.
“Robert, I'd say lynch the bastard.”
“Excellent.”
“Who is it?”
“Barak Obama.”
My friend visibly deflates.
“Hey, Obama belongs to a Church that honored Louis Farrakhan, an out and out Jew-hater. Is that okay?”
“That was a mean trap you set for me.”
I hold out my hands as if checking for rain.
“I repeat: Is that okay?”
“Of course not.”
“Tell me, how many of our Jewish friends here in Hollywood just voted for Obama?”
“Tons.”
“Why?”
My friend chuckles: “C'mon, you know.”
I do know.
“Race trumps gender, right?” I say.
“Every time.”
“They like the idea of voting for a black guy, well, half black, right, let's be accurate. If this was a Douglas Sirk movie it'd be a big plot point and Barak would be all tortured and yearning for Dorothy Malone and telling her that he's, y'know, sun-sensitive.”
“Yeah, the black thing definitely plays in Hollywood, and of course the anti-war thing. That's huge. Hollywood is anti-war.”
“True. And Obama did say that he'd get together with all the Muslim world leaders to hear their concerns, I'll bet that plays well in in the biz.”
My friend sips his Perrier.
“Oh yeah, they love that multi-cultural yadda-yadda.”
“You know what the concerns of the Muslims leaders of the world are? To destroy Israel, to kill Jews and, let me point out, to eliminate the Zionist Hollywood Studios. We're talking about genocidal regimes like Sudan, Chad, Syria, Iran, Gaza, need I continue?”
“I'm on your side. I voted for Hillary.”
“Can you imagine Obama head-on with the Iranians? They'd eat him alive. Forget the Iranians, he's not even tough enough to negotiate with the studio heads in this town. He'd fold like a cheap suit. He's not tough, he's not ruthless. He does not understand geo-politics nor the jihadist threat. Democrats project their personal desires on his smooth blankness. As for Israel, he'd abandon the Jewish State faster than David Duke, that's so obvious.”
“The thing is, Robert, Jews in Hollywood don't really think about Israel, don't really think about their Jewishness.”
“What do they think about?”
“The next job.”
“Ah.”
“It's all about agreeing with the idiot who can hand you your next gig. That's all. The pressure is from the extreme left. It's enormous and it takes tremendous inner resolve and a fair amount of knowledge to resist. Not many Jews in Hollywood are up to the challenge.”
“Do you realize that John McCain spent more time in captivity being tortured by the North Vietnamese than Barak Obama has been in the Senate?”
“Hey, Democrats want change.” My friend claws quote marks in the air.
“Change what, their diapers?”
The waitress, a sleek and gorgeous out-of-work actress, appears at our table.
“Something to drink, gentlemen?”
I say: “I'll have the Kool-Aid.”
Today's Links:
Pop Quiz. Who said the following and to whom?
Whoever Breaks the Border Will Have His Legs Broken.
1. Israel to Arabs.
2. America to Mexico.
3. Egypt to Gaza
4. Florida to Cuba.
If you answered #3 then you have an IQ above the double digits.
We wait for Peace Now and all the, ahem, human rights groups in Israel to protest, along with the U.N. to pass some really stiff resolutions against the totalitarian regime of Egypt.
Uh-huh.
Vote to Save Jerusalem
The Archbishop of Canterbury Advocates Sharia for Great Britain. Once religious institutions surrender to the jihadists, the next to fall is the secular culture. Seraphic Secret holds out no hope for the once mighty British people, now tragically a mob of appeasers, and we urge the Jews of the British Isles to exit as quickly as possible. Joshua Pundit comments on this suicidal embrace of dhimmitude.
We should not be surprised. The Archbishop of Canterbury has a history of anti-Israeli, morally blind thinking. The man's a fool.
And if you don't think Britain is in terminal trouble take a look at this poll.
Baby Girl and Sister Injured in Qassam Attacks. Once again, we anxiously wait for Peace Now and all the oh-so sensitive leftist, so-called human rights groups in Israel to raise their voices in protest against these war crimes.
What's that we hear?
Oh, right: Crickets chirping.
Iran: Chop Off Bush's Head. I'll bet Columbia University invites this blood-thirsty Ayatollah to their campus for some good old fashioned multi-cultural dialog. And while we're at it, let's allow these lunatics to go nuclear, what could possibly go wrong?
The “Moderate” Palestinian Authority Celebrates the Dimona Homicide Bombers as Holy Martyrs. And Olmert is negotiating with Mahmoud Abbas, this blood-soaked terrorist. Seraphic Secret wonders what message this sends to the Arab world? We also wonder what message it sends to Jewish victims—past and future.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:13 AM | Comments (36)
January 23, 2008
Wallace Reid: Hollywood Shooting Star
Wallace Reid
He was one of Hollywood's leading male stars. Young, handsome, with sex appeal and talent to burn.
But he died young, and apparently drugs were involved.
The year was 1923.
The actor's name was Wallace Reid, and he was a huge movie star—sadly now all but forgotten, and many of his films lost or just turned to dust.
Reid appeared in his first motion picture when he was 19-years-old in 1910 in Chicago. He quickly moved on to the Vitagraph Studios where he hoped to direct, but because of his incredible good looks he was quickly pushed in front of the camera.
The public, especially women, reacted favorably to Wally Reid.
Reid worked for Allan Dwan in 1913 at Universal Pictures. His career flourished and soon he had featured roles in Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916) both films directed by the great D.W. Griffith.
Reid became one of Hollywood's leading men and starred opposite Gloria Swanson, and Lillian Gish.
It was in the new genre of daredevil auto movies—automobiles were changing American life, and that change was reflected in motion pictures—that Wallace Reid gained his greatest popularity. Fast cars roared along narrow, winding roads; sometimes there was a race with a speeding locomotive; at other times a grueling, dust-choking cross-country rally. But always, there was a girl's heart to win at the end of the race. His adoring public worshiped this brash, but basically aw' shucks all-American speedster. Reid's auto pictures included The Roaring Road (1919), Excuse My Dust (1920) and Double Speed (1920).
Wallace Reid, Ann Little, The Roaring Road, 1919
Watching Reid's film work I've always been struck by his delicate good looks, yet at the same time there's nothing feminine about him. He's a rugged, clean cut all-American kid. It's easy to connect with Reid. You like him, don't feel threatened by his chiseled jaw and bottomless dark eyes. He's not the heavy-lidded, mannered Valentino movie star type that caused men to recoil. You sense that Wally Reid's just a regular, unpretentious guy who likes beer and football—and he won't steal your girl.
So popular had Reid become that he was dubbed: The Screen's Most Perfect Lover.
Reid tried to enlist to fight in World War I—he was in great shape and a fine marksmen—but his studio, Famous Players , exerted massive pressure on him to stay home. Instead, Reid sold Liberty Bonds and opened his fine home to veterans.
In the old days, the studios cranked out silent films on an industrial basis. It was exhausting labor. A normal day on-set was usually fourteen to sixteen hours in some of the most inhospitable locations you could possibly imagine. Those were the days before actors were pampered in deluxe trailers with highly paid handlers, agents and lawyers catering to every whim and fancy. No, this was the wild west of motion pictures, and Reid, though making very good money, was working at a soul-killing pace.
While making a film called "The Valley of the Giants" (1919), Reid was severely injured in a train accident while on-location.
Cameraman Karl Brown told film historian Kevin Brownlow what happened behind the scenes:
The picture was nearly finished, but there was no way of shooting round Wally. He just had to be there, in front of the camera. So the company, not wanting to lose the investment entirely, sent the studio doctor, with an ample supply of morphine, to the location, where he injected Wallace to the extent that he could feel no pain whatsoever and he was able to finish the picture. But afterwards he was thoroughly hooked. Normally he could have been sent to a sanitarium, to a cure, but he was altogether too good box office. There was too much more to be gotten out of Wallace Reid. So in order to keep the services of this most popular of leading men, they kept him supplied with more and more morphine.
Addicted and in need of increasingly larger doses of the drug to feed his cravings, the studio physicians fed the helpless actor with more and more morphine over the next few years.
Reid fell into a deep depression, and always fond of liquor, his intake increased. The combination of morphine and booze was deadly to Reid's body and to his spirit. The cycle was deadly: shooting one picture after another was sapping what little strength Reid possessed, and it took every ounce of energy to hide his rapidly declining physical and mental condition from his legion of fans. Of course, there was massive strain on his marriage, and what guilt he must have suffered as a father for he and his wife Dorothy had a son, Wallace Jr., and daughter, Betty, whom they had adopted when she was 3-years-old. Reid's life spiraled into a living hell.
Reid with wife Dorothy Davenport
Addiction was little understood in those days, viewed only as a moral stain to be denied and hidden. Treatments were primitive—often fatal.
In 1922 Reid was working on a film called Thirty Days. He was in bad shape, and everyone in the cast and crew were aware of Reid's problem. Some days Wally was barely able to stand up and perform when the cameras were rolling.
Henry Hathaway, assistant director on the picture, recalled to Kevin Brownlow Reid's final breakdown on-set:
He sort of fumbled about, and bumped into a chair, and then just sat down on the floor and started to cry. They put him in a chair, and he just keeled over. They sent for an ambulance and sent him to the hospital.
Wallace Reid's career was finished.
Reid's loyal wife, actress Dorothy Davenport placed Wallace in a sanitarium.
Before entering the sanitarium, Reid told director Cecil B. DeMille, “Either I'll come out cured, or I won't come out.”
On January 18, 1923, Wallace Reid died in his wife's arms. He was 31-years-old.
Wallace Reid: Silent Film Star. Some lovely photos.
Wallace Reid: Classic Films. Here's an excellent site with quite a bit of information about Reid, his career, his tragic addiction, and his lovely wife Dorothy Davenport. There are also fascinating news clips of the time covering the Reid story from Variety, The N.Y. Times, and the L.A. Herald. A heartbreaking time capsule.
Wallace Reid: IMDb. Complete Filmography.
Wallace Reid Double Feature DVD: The Roaring Road and Excuse My Dust.
The Affairs of Anatol, DVD starring Wallace Reid and Gloria Swanson, Directed by Cecil B. Demille.
Wallace Reid: The Life and Death of a Hollywood Idol, by E.J. Fleming.
Wallace Reid: His Life Story, by Bertha Westbrook Reid. This volume by Reid's mother was penned in 1924. I am clueless.
Carmel Myers: The Rabbi's Beautiful Daughter
Colleen Moore's Wedding Night
One Hairstyle, Three Memoirs: Alma Rubens, Colleen Moore, Louise Brooks
Theda Bara: The Vamp Adopts the Troops
Movie Magazines: They Don't Print 'em Like They Used To
Alma Rubens: Dope Fiend, But Not a Jewess
Wallace Reid: Hollywood Shooting Star
Olive Thomas: Hollywood's First Suicide
Mary Pickford: The Greatest Movie Star
Seraphic Secret Chats with Actress Coleen Gray about John Wayne, Howard Hawks, and Stanley Kubrick
Susan Peters: The Great Unknown and Tragic Actress
The Blond Machine Gun: Jean Harlow
Peg Entwistle & The Hollywood Sign
Brigitte Bardot & Sean Connery in Shalako—Sorta
Today's Links:
Congo: Every month 45,000 people die. Since 1998 5.4 million people have died since the war began, nearly half of the dead children younger than 5-years old. In the last year alone more than half a million refugees. True refugees living in mud, and squalor, dying of starvation and disease.
But keep talking about Israel and the so-called Palestinians.
Top EU Official speaks. Wait, is this, er, for real?
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:33 AM | Comments (10)
January 17, 2008
Lights, Camera, Glamour!
This is the museum to visit if you're in Los Angeles, though be careful if you're modest, there are some nude photos in the exhibit.
SANTA MONICA, CA.-The California Heritage Museum is pleased to present "Lights! Camera Glamour! The Photography of George Hurrell. " As studio photographer for MGM, Warner Brothers and Columbia, Hurrell shot some of the world’s most beautiful and intriguing personalities, creating the template for the Hollywood glamour portrait. The exhibition follows his career from his arrival in Southern California as a promising young painter to his acclaim as the foremost glamour photographer of his time.
For the complete article, click here.
The California Heritage Museum is located in an 1894 Historic Landmark house, at 2612 Main Street, in Santa Monica. Hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 11:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. General admission is $5, students and seniors are $3 and children 12 and under are free. Parking is free and handicapped facilities are available. On Sundays, the museum hosts a Farmer's Market in its parking lot. Visitors to the museum can find parking in adjacent "quarter metered" parking lots.
Today's Links:
My novel causes a blogger to detour.
Seraphic Secret has repeatedly stated that there is no difference between Fatah and Hamas except for tactics. Their strategy for the destroying Israel is exactly the same. Here's proof as the, ahem, moderate terrorist leader Mahmoud Abbas erases Israel from a map of the Middle East.
Madness! There is 7.7 biliion pledged to the PA. And 40% is going to Hamas-run Gaza. None of the money will be accounted for. It never is. And almost all the money will be spent on arms and ammunition to kill Jews. The so-called Palestinians have already received enough aid to build several functioning countries, but they have no interest in building a state, only in destroying the Jewish State.
As if we need more proof that the Olmert government is weak and ineffectual. The Hebron Killers are Not Being Pursued. No, they are being held by the PA. Which as you know means "house arrest" a euphamism for having a grand ol' time. We've seen this movie before. The killers get treated like heroes, like royalty, and they walk after the newspapers lose interest. Disgraceful. H/T Kishke.
Melanie Phillips informs us that not-so-great Britain is Slouching towards Dhimmocracy. H/T Judd Magilnick
The Writer's Guild gives a waiver to the NAACP. Just got hit by a massive migraine.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:30 PM | Comments (4)
January 04, 2008
No Yiddish for Hepburn
In 1941, Katherine Hepburn showed Louis B. Mayer the script for a film called Woman of the Year, written by Ring Lardner Jr. and Michael Kanin.
Hepburn was hot, she'd just come off the hugely successful The Philadelphia Story and MGM wanted to stay in business with her.
The script, Hepburn felt, was a perfect vehicle for her and for Spencer Tracy who just so happened to be available.
There was something else about the script that Katherine Hepburn just adored; it allowed her to demonstrate her ability to fire off dialog in a number of foreign languages—including Yiddish.
Mayer told Hepburn that he was anxious to green light Woman of the Year, she could have Spencer Tracy, and script approval.
In addition, Mayer told Kate that she could speak any language she wanted: Chinese, Italian, Persian, but not under any circumstances would he okay Yiddish.
Ring Lardner said: “There was no explanation of the order, and no way to appeal it. They wanted to avoid anything that could possibly stir up anti-Semitism.”
In Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer author Scott Eyman writes:
Over the years, with perfect hindsight, men like Mayer have been castigated for their timidity about appearing too Jewish... But Hollywood was run by Jews within the predominantly Protestant city of Los Angeles. Hollywood was the only place in America where Jews had something approaching absolute power, and Mayer sought to maintain that power by reflecting not merely a Christian point of view, but a Catholic point of view...
The California right wing was deeply suspicious, not merely of leftist Jews, but of all Jews. A California state committee on un-American activities noted “quiet Communistic infiltration into the American Jewish Congress,” adding ominously that “nine out of twenty-one directors of Warner Bros. are Jews; five out of fifteen directors of Paramount Pictures, Inc... Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. and Columbia Pictures have a slight majority of Jews in the directorate.”
And finally, this memo from the brutishly powerful Joseph Breen:
Likewise, in 1932, Joseph Breen, administrator of the Production Code, had written a letter to a Catholic priest in which he characterized Hollywood as "a rotten bunch of vile people with no respect for anything beyond the making of money. Here we have Paganism rampant and in its most virulent form. Drunkeness and debauchery are commonplace. Sexual perversion is rampant... any number of our directors and stars are perverts. Ninety-five percent of these folks are Jews of an Eastern European lineage. They are, probably, the scum of the earth."
No wonder L.B. Mayer was willing to give Hepburn everything she wanted—everything but Yiddish.
Karen and I wish all our friends a beautiful and profound miracle in Shabbat.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 02:44 PM | Comments (5)
January 03, 2008
Have a Plan to Kill Everyone You Meet
A superb report from Michael J. Totten in Fallujah.
A sign on the door leading out of India Company’s Combat Operations Center says “Have a Plan to Kill Everyone You Meet.” For a fraction of second I thought it might be some kind of joke. But I was with the Marine Corps in Fallujah, and it wasn’t a joke.
To read the complete dispatch, please click here.
Will Hollywood option Totten's work and bring it to the big screen?
Well, now that Hollywood has bombed big-time smearing America and American troops with a series of nauseating and just plain bad films, the common wisdom in the town is: Audiences aren't interested in Iraq.
Of course, this is nonsense.
Audiences fled from these pictures because they did not want to see stories where our troops are portrayed as morons, as rapists, as hillbilly sadists. Audiences rejected these movies because, in their guts, they knew that these motion pictures gave aid and comfort to the jihadist cause.
This is not a complicated business or artistic problem. Hollywood has only to look at the war in Iraq with fairness, to remove the far left blinders and present our troops as multi-faceted characters, as professionals who are doing the best job they can in a hell-hole of a situation.
I guarantee that if Hollywood produced films that honestly portrayed our troops in Iraq or Afghanistan or the 40 some odd countries where our forces are currently deployed, audiences would kill to get into the theatres.
But Hollywood seems more interested in propaganda than profits.
Today's Links
Seraphic Friend David Paulin has a wonderful investigative piece in American Thinker about how journalists destroyed the reputation of an American Air Force pilot. 50 Years Later: Bravery Outshines Public Humiliation. This story should be expanded into a book. It's riveting.
From the I-Told-You-So Files: We constantly point out that appeasement brings not peace, but more violence. We insist that appeasement to your enemies does not bring good-will to Israel and Jews, but white-hot contempt. We also think that common sense proves that when Israel withdraws from real estate, Lebanon, Gaza, she is rewarded with missiles, escalating violence, and the infusion of transnational jihadist groups.
Guess what, a study at Hebrew University shows that our, um, right wing views are true.
What a shock.
One more vital point: The Arab-Israeli conflict is too often, especially by the left, viewed out of context. It's not about land, not about boundaries, not about nationalism. It's about Israel's existence. It's about the rise of world-wide jihad. It's about the long war the West must wage against jihadists and their enablers. There are many fronts, economic, military, legal, and Israel is just one front in the long war. To consistently view and act on the Arab-Israeli conflict in narrow, parochial terms is to invite disaster.
Bhutto's Death at the Hands of Islam. An interview with Robert Spencer at Front Page Magazine.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:47 AM | Comments (13)
January 02, 2008
The Best Years of Their Lives
Big Lizards links to a fine article by Joshua Pundit which asks: why were Americans so supportive of World War II, and yet in the current war against global terror there is, if not indifference, downright hatred of America.
So why are Americans not particularly anxious to do everything they can to win this war, as they were during World War II? Why do so many Americans urge appeasement, surrender, and even nakedly support the enemy during wartime?
And a few paragraphs later, the author correctly answers:
So if it wasn't Roosevelt's putative "leadership" that brought virtually Americans on board during World War II, then what did cause that "frenzy of patriotism," and why isn't it happening today? In a single word, the answer is Hollywood.
To read the complete article, please click here.
Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend, Jack
Let me just add a personal observation from over twenty-five years in the trenches of Hollywood. Never underestimate the power of fashion and peer pressure. Most of the people I work with, above-line types, have little real world experience outside of the rarified atmosphere of screening rooms and endless development meetings. Mostly, they are overeducated, overbred, overpaid, elites who desperately want to fit in with the latest Hollywood fashion, be it scented candles or so-called global warming.
It's easier to hate President Bush than to confront the true horror of Jew-hating jihadists who would slaughter every Jew and Christian in America and then rape and subjugate every independent woman in Hollywood.
This is a town that manufactures illusions and the latest dream is that the jihadists who are slipping through our gates will not slit the throats of Hollywood elites because they have produced movies that are, ahem, sensitive to the Arab/Muslim world.
Such is the delusional mind-set of appeasers.
Today's Links:
Fatah Leader Loses Mustache. Nope, we're not kidding. Arab on Arab violence reaches a new level of absurdity.
Seraphic Friend Jameel at the Muqata points out that it's highly inappropriate to blame the victims of terror rather than the terrorists who have committed the atrocity. Of course, when Jews level this charge against other Jews it plays right into the hands of the Arabs who yearn to turn Israel Judenrein. It's also a sickening reminder of the language used by the Germans and their European collaborators who justified their genocidal policies against the Jews by claiming that Jews did not belong in Germany, Russia, France, Poland, Italy, Hungary, well, take your pick of blood-soaked countries . It always comes down to a Jews-don't-belong-here platform that some foolish Jews believe because they are so anxious to please and appease their enemies. Thus are born the Judenrats.
We believe that Jews have the right to live and hike anywhere in the world. And those who blame the dead for their own murders are murdering them a second time—and spitting on their graves. Shame on you.
Elder of Zion presents, drum roll please, The 2008 Dhimmi of the Year Award Goes to... Excellent choice from a wide field of Jew haters and jihadist enablers.
Slipping in Palestine. In which writer/director and far left propagandist Paul Haggis admits that he's completely ignorant about Israel. As I said, never underestimate the power of fashion and peer pressure in Hollywood. It's a culture where facts and history don't carry much weight.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:37 AM | Comments (7)
December 31, 2007
Top Ten Movies of 2007
This is the time of year when people roll out their Ten Best Movie Lists. I have to tell you, the best movies I saw in 2007 were made in the 1930's. But just for the record, my very favorite movie of 2007 was 3:10 to Yuma. It's a classic western, beautifully constructed with three acts, there's great drama, non-stop action, and wonderful performances from Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. For me, this was easily the best film of '07. No other film even comes close.
Now, for the movies you probably never saw, never even heard of, but should definitely screen—and thank G-d for Turner Classic Movies.
10. Purchase Price, 1932, Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, Directed by William Wellman. Wonderful tale of a, er, showgirl who pretends to be a rural mail-order bride in order to escape a nasty gangster boyfriend. Stanwyck is amazing. And you can see that she actually does her own fire stunts in the very last shots of the film. No wonder directors just adored this actress.
9. Virtue 1931, with Carole Lombard and George Brent, great script by Robert Riskin. Pre-code film about a prostitute with a heart of gold and her relationship with a cynical New York cabbie. Lombard is just luminous. This film is gonna make many of you cry. Not that I cried. Oh, no, not moi.
8. Frisco Jenny, 1933, Ruth Chatterton as, what else, a fallen woman who ends up being prosecuted by her long lost son for murder. Directed by William Wellman. Chatterton is amazing. And the ending, well, let's just say it's somewhat unexpected.
7. Man Wanted, 1932, Kay Francis stars with David Manners. Directed by William Dieterle. The script is a clever take on the ambitious career woman and her male secretary. This film is really charming. Kay Francis was a huge star for a fleeting moment. This is one of her best roles. She had a slight speech impediment so her r's came out as w's. So adorable. And what a great clothes horse. You should definitely catch Francis in the Marx Bros. film The Cocoanuts, and her very best film and finest performance is in the Ernst Lubitch classic with script by the great Samson Raphaelson Trouble in Paradise.
6. Lilly Turner, 1933, starring Ruth Chatterton, and George Brent, directed by William Wellman. Another amazing pre-code film about, you guessed it, a noble but fallen woman. Chatterton had great technique and lovely upper-class tones. Here she plays a lowly side show carnival worker. It's a stretch, but hey, that's Hollywood.
5. Ladies They Talk About, 1933, Barbara Stanwyck, and Preston Foster. Babes in prison. Stanwyck has such acting chops. Lillian Roth is in this film and she even gets to sing. The prison cells are decorated just beautifully. The glamorous femme prisoners are always fixing their makeup, rolling up silk stockings, and gabbing away about the lousy men they love. Prison looks just swell. Why would any of them want to leave? Oh yeah, there's a neat plot that's just spinning away.
4. Prisoner of Shark Island, 1936, Directed by John Ford. Great script by Nunnally Johnson. Starring Warner Baxter, and Gloria Stuart, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, unjustly accused of conspiring to murder President Lincoln, suffers on an American Devi’s Island. Powerful film that nobody knows about. Gloria Stewart is radiant. Her most recent role is as the old Rose in Titanic.
3. Midnight Mary, 1933, starring the 20-year-old Loretta Young, Ricardo Cortez, and Franco Tone, from a story by Anita Loos, Script by Gene Markey, directed by William Wellman. An MGM pre-code film about an underworld girl on trial for murder. Great use of flashbacks. Brilliant structure. One great transition after another. Loretta Young is radiant.
2. Cimarron, 1931, Irene Dunne and Richard Dix. This is pretty remarkable film, the only western I’ve even seen that has an identifiably Jewish character in a strong supporting role. From the novel by Edna Ferber. The story of a gun-toting newspaper editor in an Oklahoma boom town with his reluctant wife as the westward expansion continues with one great final burst.
1. Pilgrimage, 1933, Henrietta Crosman, Heather Angel, directed by John Ford. A backwoods matriarch sends her son off to World War I rather than allow him to marry the woman he loves. This film is brilliant. It concerns one of the most difficult characters I have ever encountered in a feature film. A woman who is proud, selfish, obstinate, and vain. But wait, the film kicks into moral gear in the second act and just when you think that all is lost, redemption shines through. Henrietta Crosman was a well known stage actress already in her 70's when she starred in this film. She's all but forgotten now, but her performance in this film is fearless and one of the best I have ever seen. I love this film. It's about family war, love, memory and reconciliation. It's a masterpiece.
My choices for the Best Film Books of 2007 are Silent Movies: The Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture by Peter Kobel and Kevin Brownlow, Preface by Martin Scorsese.
From Publishers Weekly:
For decades, silent films have been disintegrating in warehouses or lost to indifference. Director Martin Scorsese, who wrote the foreword to this book, has spearheaded the preservation movement, warning with every foot of film that is lost, we lose a link to our culture. Kobel, longtime writer about movies, demonstrates the power of silent movies in this spectacular compilation of stills, promo materials and breathtaking posters from the Library of Congress's memorabilia collection. The visual artistry is stunning. Kobel uses these evocative images as a foundation to examine the international film industry from 1893 to 1927. Instead of a chronological treatment, he examines genres such as horror, westerns and comedy, while paying homage to the superb work of art directors, cinematographers and directors. Understandably, a significant section is devoted to actors. As Norma Desmond neatly observes in Sunset Boulevard, We had faces then. Although early producers were loath to highlight specific actors, fearing their popularity would translate into higher salaries, fans were hungry for information about them. In this treasure trove for film buffs, Kobel details the press campaigns that created stars like Theda Bara and Rudolph Valentino, while fan magazines and newspapers deemed them American royalty.
And for a lucid and invaluable look at the Hollywood studio system The Star Machine by Jeanine Basinger.
Amazon Book Description:
Jeanine Basinger gives us an immensely entertaining look into the “star machine,” examining how, at the height of the studio system, from the 1930s to the 1950s, the studios worked to manufacture star actors and actresses. With revelatory insights and delightful asides, she shows us how the machine worked when it worked, how it failed when it didn’t, and how irrelevant it could sometimes be. She gives us the “human factor,” case studies focusing on big stars groomed into the system: the “awesomely beautiful” (and disillusioned) Tyrone Power; the seductive, disobedient Lana Turner; and a dazzling cast of others—Loretta Young, Errol Flynn, Irene Dunne, Deanna Durbin. She anatomizes their careers, showing how their fame happened, and what happened to them as a result. (Both Lana Turner and Errol Flynn, for instance, were involved in notorious court cases.) In her trenchantly observed conclusion, she explains what has become of the star machine and why the studios’ practice of “making” stars is no longer relevant.
My buddy Dirty Harry lists the Ten Films He Hated in 2007 over at Libertas. I'm just amazed that Dirt Harry was able to get the list down to ten. That's discipline.
Enjoy and a Happy New Year to all our Seraphic Friends.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 01:18 PM | Comments (27)
December 26, 2007
Girls' Night out
Here's a business model I did not see coming.
Listen, the motion picture business is in such turmoil, this revolutionary idea might actually work. I hope it does.
Imagine a Hollywood premiere with all the glitz: red carpet, beautiful cast, photographers’ flashing lights, exhilarating buzz. Now, picture that same event with just one difference — only women may attend.
To read the complete story, please click here—even if you are, um, male.
Hat Tip: Seraphic Friends: Kishke, Toronto Pearl
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 02:00 PM | Comments (17)
December 25, 2007
Michael Kidd: Baruch Dayan Ha-Emet
Michael Kidd
Michael Kidd, 92, one of Hollywood's great choreographers died on Sunday at his home in Los Angeles.
Kidd was born, naturally, in Brooklyn, the son of Jewish immigrant parents.
Rule of thumb: everybody in Hollywood is Jewish until proven otherwise.
Kidd's father, Abraham Greenwald, was a barber, and his wife Lillian a wife and a mother. Michael attended New Utrecht High School, where he became hooked on dance.
Michael received a scholarship to the School of American Ballet. Later, touring as a member of the Lincoln Kirstein Ballet Caravan, young Michael Greenwald danced in Billy the Kid.
Hence, Michael Kidd.
Michael Kidd's contributions to the Hollywood musical are long and distinguished, included among his numerous credits are: Guys and Dolls, The Band Wagon, and Finian's Rainbow. Choosing a favorite among so much fine work is difficult, but my favorite film would have to be Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, (1954).
Kidd took a huge chance casting and then pairing several ballet-trained dancers alongside traditional Broadway hoofers. The unusual combination works and Kidd's brew makes for a wonderful and surprising synthesis for this delightful musical Western based on The Rape of the Sabine Women.
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Barn Dance
The barn dance sequence Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is riveting, a musical masterpiece as good as anything Ginger and Fred ever kicked up. It starts out as a barn raising, a community endeavor.
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Barn Raising
Soon we realize it's really about courtship, male-female rituals, the eternal mating dance. Tension is in the air. The whiff of violence is a distinct possibility. But the charming if not quite house-broken brothers have vowed to behave themselves. Naturally, things heat up as provocations by their rivals are heaped one upon the next. The choreography becomes frenzied, a tit for tat affair, a dance of desire, the swooping, diving expressions of bottomless love.
If you pay close attention to the barn dance you'll notice that in the first few formal steps Kidd is slyly referencing numerous John Ford square dance sequences where adorably self conscious couples pair off opposite one another in rigid lines. Whereas Ford's characters adhered to a civilized, geometric choreography, Kidd's dancers explode and implode from the austere boundaries of frontier dance into a series of wonderfully gymnastic and ballet like set-pieces that push the conventions of their community, and at the same time cleverly but most gently extend the established rules of the Hollywood musical.
Kidd was, ahem, kidding us with a nudge and a wink.
It's exuberant choreography; sublime, wonderfully reckless and perfectly harmonizes Kidd's signature mix of hard-boiled movement and heart breaking lyricism. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is one of the great Hollywood musicals whose time has sadly passed.
If you've never seen Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, well, what are you waiting for? If you have already seen it, don't you think it's time to screen it again?
Years ago, with Offsprings #2, & #3 we used to laze around on Sunday afternoons and watch Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Sometimes we'd just fast forward right to the barn dance sequence. My girlses were just hypnotized by the swirling gingham, the layers of lace petticoats, the cinching of corsets, the blushing, girlish images would elicit grins—for hours afterwards.
Digression: Three Musicals
There were three other musicals that my girlses delighted in watching over and over again: West Side Story, You Tube: I Feel Pretty, Singin' in the Rain, You Tube: Gene Kelly Singin' in the Rain, and Ingmar Bergman's The Magic Flute—not quite a Hollywood musical, but oh what fun is Mozart, especially the Queen of the Night's solo. Random You Tube: Queen of the Night Aria.
End Digression
Michael Kidd in Smile, 1975
An obscure, but wonderful little film where Kidd has a featured role is Smile (1975) with a glowing teen age Melanie Griffith in a supporting lead. Kidd plays a faded choreographer trying to rescue a second rate beauty pageant. Jerry Belson wrote the gentle and perceptive script and Michael Ritchie directed with a firm but light hand. This film is a gem. Kidd's performance is pitch perfect and unforgettable. Kidds' best line: No, dear, if you kick and bend at the same time, you're going to knock yourself out. Rent it first chance you get.
Hollywood has lost a giant talent.
Baruch Dayan Ha-Emet
G-d is the Righteous Judge
New York Times Obituary
IMDB for Michael Kidd
You Tube: Seven Brides Barn Dance
You Tube: Lonesome Polecat. An axe, a saw, and a lovely song that's all Kidd needed to create a classic movie moment.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 01:27 PM | Comments (18)
December 24, 2007
Louis B. Mayer Goes to Shul & Haveil Havalim #146
There was no one like him.
And in Hollywood, there will never, ever be any one man who consolidated so much power in such a short amount of time, and changed the face of a single industry—and thus the world.
For sheer ambition coupled with incredible foresight, Louis B. Mayer was the most powerful movie mogul this town has ever seen.
Mogul is not the right word.
Visionary.
That feels better.
But he was also a petty tyrant.
In the early days at his Hollywood studio, when bills were overdue, L.B. used to fake heart attacks when his creditors showed up in his office to collect. Yes, L.B. was quite an actor.
When scandal threatened one of MGM's most valuable leading men, a homosexual, Mayer quietly, but forcefully arranged for Eve Lynn Abbott, Mrs. Keenan Wynn to divorce her husband and marry Van Johnson. Mayer reasoned that all Van Johnson needed to straighten himself out sexually was the love of a good woman.
It didn't quite work out.
L.B. Mayer was a complicated man.
An impoverished Jewish immigrant from Tsarist Russia, Mayer first made a living in the junk business in Canada, but was drawn to the newly born film business as an exhibitor. He soon realized that the power was in production in Hollywood.
In An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood Neal Gabler explains the appeal of the motion picture business to the poor, immigrant Jews:
“There were no social barriers in a business as new and faintly disreputable as the movies were in the early years of the century… Having come primarily from fashion and retail, they understood public tastes and were masters at gauging market swings, at merchandising, at pirating away customers and beating the competition. As immigrants themselves, they had a peculiar sensitivity to the dreams and aspirations of other immigrants and working-class families that made up a significant portion of the early moviegoing audience.”
Mayer transformed his struggling motion picture studio into MGM, the most powerful and profitable studio in Hollywood, where he discovered and made great stars: Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Judy Garland, Myrna Loy, William Powell, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Mickey Rooney, Spencer Tracy, Lon Chaney, Joan Crawford, Katharine Hepburn, Greer Garson and dozens of others.
Mayer loved America and purveyed family values in MGM films. Lacking a formal education, Mayer instinctively distrusted intellectuals and movies "with a message." He wanted good, clean entertainment. He knew that Americans went to the movies to escape their ordinary lives. Hence, he built his dream factory around stars. He disliked most writers and directors, thought them interchangeable and disposable.
Mayer worked hard to discover actors who had that certain star quality. And Mayer almost always found it in their eyes.
Irving Thalberg, Norma Shearer with L.B. Mayer
Mayer put the actors under contract. He had their teeth fixed and capped, their noses made lovely. Studio dieticians pummeled the stunned thespians with grapefruit diets, bruising massages, and pitiless exercise routines. Actors were slabs of raw marble. Mayer and the MGM system he devised with Irving Thalberg were the sculptors who tirelessly molded and polished the final masterpiece. The moral clauses in an actor's standard contract would send ACLU types running to the Supreme Court. Exhaustive screen tests determined which lighting best flattered their faces. Mayer demanded the best and he often reshot entire movies when the original results were not up to his high standards.
Case in point: Greer Garson. Mayer discovered the lovely but struggling actress on a trip to England. He attended the St. James Theater expecting to see a musical. He was disappointed to discover that the play was a melodrama. But Mayer was knocked out by the luminous, patrician redhead actress. At intermission Mayer offered Garson $500.00 a week at MGM. Garson, divorced and supporting her mother, demanded $1,000. After storming away in fury, Mayer returned and relented. Greer Garson had that intangible something Mayer was seeking. It transcended beauty which tends to become tedious. No doubt Mayer glimpsed it in Greer Garson's extraordinary gaze.
MGM Star Greer Garson
In America, Garson's screen tests revealed that her face was difficult to photograph, her particular radiance elusive to the camera. Mayer was persistent. He assigned top notch director Sidney Franklin to shoot elaborate screen tests. Franklin shot several reels and finally discovered how best to light, and which lenses and diffusion to use on the new actress. Mayer put her on a strict diet—she lost over 15 lbs.—and a series of make-up tests finally perfected her cinematic image. Greer Garson's first film for MGM was the classic Goodbye Mr. Chips. Garson was nominated for an Academy Award but lost out to Vivien Leigh for her performance as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind. For ten years Greer Garson was MGM's leading female star.
The MGM studio taught the up and coming stars how to dress, walk, talk, dance, sing, MGM even had a fencing teacher on staff. Actors were never interviewed on their own by newspapers or magazines. The studio PR people did all the talking. Mayer constructed their careers as carefully as an architect built a skyscraper—understanding the entire time that, ultimately, it was the public who would have the final say on who was and was not, a movie star.
Mayer's father was a Hebrew teacher; Orthodox, Yiddish-speaking, he was quite distant and rigid. Their relationship was strained. But Mayer always honored his father, and never quarreled with him in public. Mayer brought him out to Los Angeles, built him a house and took care of him all the days of his life.
When he was head of MGM, Mayer demanded that his wife Margaret get rid of their second set of dishes, so that “they could be as American as possible.”
And yet, Mayer, in some ways, was still a shivering, shtetl Jew.
Once, Mayer's daughters Irene and Edie were sitting on the porch of their Santa Monica home and MGM actress Joan Crawford came jogging past in shorts and a blouse with no bra. The girls, teenagers, waved and invited Crawford to stop by for lunch. L.B. came home, heard the story and exploded: “How dare you socialize with an actress?”
Mayer would not allow Edith and Irene to go to college. He was afraid they would be negatively influenced. He married them off as soon as he could. Irene married producer David O. Selznick, and Edith married producer William Goetz.
For the most part, Mayer left his ritual Judaism behind. But on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur he always went to shul. But unlike all his Hollywood friends, he declined to attend the elegant Reform synagogue that he helped build on Wilshire Boulevard. No, Mayer would daven downtown at a small Orthodox shul where his father felt comfortable. Even after his father passed away, Mayer—the immigrant who was desperate to be authentically American—continued to avoid the Reform synagogue on the Days of Awe and davened at the cramped but traditional Orthodox shul.
Mayer said: “There I put on a tallis, I stand with other Jews as my people have done for thousands of years—and I feel closer to G-d.”
To read about Mayer, I suggest Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer by Scott Eyman. To my mind, the best volume about a fascinating and complex man. I relied on material from Eyman's book for this essay.
Haveil Havalim #146 is finally here.
A day late, but Soccer Dad was probably huddling with David Beckham, giving the sports icon some soccer advice.
Meanwhile, we'd like to offer some advice—to Mrs. Beckham AKA Posh Spice: Lady, why don't you try and smile every once in a while? Really, when on the red carpet, Mrs. B. invariably plasters a fierce expression on her face that announces: Hey, I'm pretty and I'm bi-polar and I'm Lizzie Borden's long lost sister.
We also strongly suggest that Victoria Beckham get some calories in her body—fast. Really, somebody feed that lady before she disappears.
Anywhoo.
We'd like to thank Soccer Dad for including Seraphic Secret's Ninotchka and I in this fine overview of the best of the Jewish blogosphere.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:20 AM | Comments (26)
December 09, 2007
The Greatest Movie Star: Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford
The most successful star of the silent era was not Charlie Chaplin, but Mary Pickford. Pickford was a huge box office draw, an international star, and a strong woman who took control of her own career.
Mary Pickford said it best: “My career was planned. There was never anything accidental about it. It was planned, it was painful, it was purposeful.”
Charles Rosher, the great pioneering cameraman said: “She knew everything there was to know about motion pictures.”
She was born in Canada, Gladys Smith in 1892. Her family endured poverty and her father died when she was six-years-old. Charlotte, her mother, took in sewing to make ends meet for Gladys and her sister Lottie and brother Jack.
Things changed in 1898 when Gladys, age six, made her debut on stage in Toronto. Within three years she was a well known theater actor.
Gladys went to New York and talked her way into theater impresario David Belasco's office. She wouldn't leave until he hired her. She was only 14-years old. Already she was tough and determined and wouldn't take no for an answer. Belasco didn't like her name. Gladys Smith. Too plain. He renamed her Mary Pickford.
She was a tiny, fragile creature with a mountain of corn-silk curls. She was also talented. Things went well with Belasco. But soon enough Pickford and her mother heard that the The Pictures were paying five dollars a day. Pickford and her mother took the trolley downtown to the Biograph Studios, and demanded ten dollars a day because she was a "Belasco actress."
D.W. Griffith hired her and paid her price.
Mary quickly became an audience favorite. She became known as the Biograph Girl. There was one Biograph Girl before Pickford; Florence Lawrence, was the first movie star, but she committed suicide by eating ant paste after a series of tragic professional and personal setbacks, and is now all but forgotten.
Mary quit the theater as she grasped the enormous artistic and financial possibilities of the new motion picture industry. She appeared in dozens of films, switching easily between comedy and drama, westerns and melodrama. She was learning her trade; how to play to the motion picture camera—very different than theater acting.
Mary didn't like the thick pasty makeup they were using at Biograph. She claimed it made her "look like Pancho Villa." So Mary went out and bought her own high quality materials and blended her own makeup especially for the camera—and demanded reimbursement from Biograph.
Working with Griffith was not easy for Mary. She didn't fit his vision of a helpless Southern maiden. She wasn't a pliant actress like Lillian Gish. Director and star fought on and off set. She once bit Griffith. He shoved her.
Pickford signed with Famous Players Lasky. The company set up Artcraft Pictures to release the films of Mary Pickford. She was the first actress to have her own production company. She was paid $10,000 a week plus half the profits in her films, or half a million dollars, whichever was greater. Such was Mary's popularity with the public that she now had complete creative control over her films; from script to final cut.
Poor Little Rich Girl, 1917, was a huge hit. Here she plays a lonely little girl whose wealthy parents neglect her. In this film Pickford also dresses up as a boy, a motif that will appear over and over again in her work, something her fans simply adored.
In Stella Maris, 1918, Pickford plays two roles, Stella, a wealthy, bed-ridden young woman, overprotected by her family, and her deformed servant, Unity Blake. It's a remarkable performance and the double exposures are first rate as Pickford acts with herself.
Mary Pickford in Stella Maris, she's playing both roles
By the end of 1918 Pickford's image was that of a feisty young American girl, no longer a child, not yet a woman. It set the pattern for the rest of her career, and some would say, locked her into a formula she could never escape, "America's Sweetheart."
Mary behind the camera
By now she was at the peak of her career on the screen making such films as The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) Stella Maris (1918) "Daddy Long Legs" (1919) and Heart O' the Hills (1919) Mary had been married in name only to Owen Moore for years and around the time of the bond tour began an affair with Douglas Fairbanks, both thought that this might damage their career's, they married in 1920 and rather than damage them,they became even more popular as a couple. in 1919, together with Chaplin and Griffith, Mary and Doug formed United Artists which gave the four most important people in the movie industry complete license over their own productions. Mary and Doug were now treated like Hollywood royalty and drew famous names from home and abroad to their house named "Pickfair"by the press.
Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks
Throughout the twenties Mary slowed down her film production to one quality big budget production per year. Films like Tess of the Storm Country (1922) Sparrows (1926) and My Best Girl (1927) maintained her success but by the end of the decade Mary's screen persona was starting to look dated in the wake of the flapper culture.
Armed with a microphone and a new short haircut Mary embarked on her talkie debut in 1929 called Coquette and she won the Academy Award for best actress. However Mary became another casualty of talking pictures, together with the public failing to accept her in adult roles, her movie career was over by 1933. By 1936 Mary's marriage to Doug was also over, probably due to the loss of his film career and his constant globe trotting. In 1937 Mary married her "My Best Girl" co-star Charles"Buddy" Rogers , a marriage that was to last forty three years. Over the next years she engaged herself in some film production work and promoted several charities.
In 1976 Mary received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Academy Awards. Later in her life she became dependent on alcohol and a virtual recluse behind the walls of "Pickfair." On 29th May 1979 Mary died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Santa Monica, California. She was 87 years old.
From the Mary Pickford Homepage.
Mary Pickford played little girls but she never had a childhood. As a young woman, her life was absorbed with hard work and business. She was the first great motion picture celebrity. When she was in Europe with Douglas Fairbanks, they were mobbed by crowds so vast that Fairbanks had to carry her on his shoulders lest she be consumed by the adoring fans. There is a picture of Fairbanks reaching out to get hold of his tiny wife and she looks absolutely terrified.
Pickford married young to an alcoholic actor, and it was rumored that because of a messy abortion she was never able to have children of her own. (She and her third husband Buddy Rogers adopted two children.) Mary lived through her brother Jack's messy life, and his marriage to the troubled actress Olive Thomas, and Jack's early death at age 36. Mary's closest companion was her mother Charlotte, who endured a terrible and painful cancer and died at age 55 in 1928. Her sister Lottie died at age 41.
Mary Pickford was not sentimental about her life: “I've worked and fought my way through since I was twelve.”
Film historian Kevin Brownlow correctly said of Pickford: “The ideal American girls is still the Mary Pickford character: extremely attractive, warm-hearted, generous, funny—but independent and fiery-tempered when the occasion demands. She had legions of imitators, but no rivals.”
Also highly recommended is Kevin Brownlow and John Kobal's Hollywood: The Pioneers. The essay and photos are simply breathtaking. Brownlow is the major historian of the silent era and the world owes him a debt of gratitude for his work in preserving valuable films and precious memories which otherwise would have been lost.
The Mary Pickford Photo Gallery. From the Mary Pickford Library. Beautiful.
Mary Pickford Photo Gallery, studio photos, posters, one-sheets, stills from her films, and behind the scenes shots.
Mary Pickford Rediscovered by Kevin Brownlow. I haven't read it yet. My bad. It's on order.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:01 AM | Comments (8)
December 07, 2007
Not According to Script
Today is Dec 7, a day that will live in infamy.
Before, during, and after World War II, Hollywood supported America and her allies in the battle against genocidal enemies. Make no mistake about it, the value of Hollywood films during war is incalculable. Our images shape opinion and memory. In fact, America has never lost a war without Hollywood's support. Hollywood cheered the defeat of America in Vietnam, thus enabling the Vietnamese gulags and mass murders carried out by the Communists, and of course the subsequent Cambodian genocide.
Times have changed.
A generation of Hollywood talent, reared on the myths of heroic opposition to the Vietnam War are making the decisions now. And their decisions are so out of step with mainstream America that it's not just fiscally irresponsible and artistically disastrous, but movies that actually enable the enemy are given the green-light.
Say what you will about the old Hollywood moguls; they were crude, they were ruthless, they often treated talent like cattle. But they loved America. Almost every original studio head was a dirt poor Jewish immigrant fleeing pogroms, who made it in the Goldina Medina, the Golden Land. They were grateful to live in America, grateful for our freedoms, and they placed the enormous weight and prestige of their studios behind the war effort.
Now, the studios, broken vessels unsure of the new media at hand, piloted by clever ivy league graduates, compete to make films that besmirch our troops and make filth of America's name. At the same time—and they never foresee the terrible consequences of their ghastly productions—strengthening the hand of Jew-hating jihadists, barbarians who would gladly slit their throats as quickly as they would slit my throat.
Before the strike, I had a meeting with a Hollywood producer and we were discussing the failure of the recent tsunami of anti-Iraq war films. The producer said:
“Well, I guess audiences aren't interested in Iraq.”
“I think audiences would be very interested in Iraq if we made films where American troops weren't portrayed as psychopaths, rapists, and hillbilly war criminals, but as honorable, multi-faceted warriors who are fighting the scum of the earth.”
“Huh, never thought of that.”
The guns of war have fallen silent for Hollywood. Studio executives, who could once count on Americans filling theaters for just about any war movie they produced, are finding this year's war flicks to be a bunch of duds. "Lions for Lambs," Robert Redford's case against the war in Afghanistan, is a flop. It stars Mr. Redford, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise and may not make back its $35 million price tag. Brian De Palma's "Redacted" played to empty seats. Even "The War," Ken Burns's much-anticipated World War II documentary that aired on PBS in September, met a less-than-explosive reception.
But Americans haven't lost their taste for war footage. They've just found a better place to see the type of war film they actually enjoy watching. Some of the hottest videos on YouTube are of actual battles that have taken place in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is footage that often hasn't made its way onto the nightly news or CNN--although some of it has--but it's largely unadulterated film that shows American soldiers in action, bringing the full weight of American military might to bear against the enemy. And in most of these films, it's clear who the enemy is.
To read the entire Wall Street Journal editorial by Brendan Miniter, please click here.
Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend MoChassid.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:06 AM | Comments (4)
November 30, 2007
Charlie Wilson's War on History
Hey kids, let's not go to the movies.
Here's tinseltown's latest delusion: the cold war was fought and won by, get this, an alcoholic, stripper-addicted, cocaine snorting, Democratic congressman.
Not Conservative President Ronald Reagan.
The name of the film is Charlie Wilson's War.
Oh, and the screenplay is by, what a shock, uber-leftie Aaron Sorkin, who has had his share of, er, substance abuse problems. And let's not forget that Sorkin's series, The West Wing, was but an Orwellian extension of the Clinton White House.
So: Duh.
Not that Sorkin or the left cares about such facts but America did not arm the Mujahadeen, or Osama bin Laden, as this film posits for obvious ideological reasons. In fact, America aligned itself with the Northern Alliance, led by General Ahmed Shah Massoud a group who are pro-American, anti-Taliban, anti-al Qaeda, and even now fight alongside American troops against radical Muslim terrorists. Massoud was assassinated by Osama bin Laden's agents on September 9, 2001.
Meanwhile, back on planet earth, Seraphic Friend Dirty Harry had to sit through this latest cross-hairs-of-the-left-assault on history. Talk about above and beyond the call of movie-going duty.
Due in theatres Christmas day, the makers of Charlie Wilson’s War position their advertising with megawatt-stars Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts romantically gazing at each other as though this is You’ve Got Stinger-Missiles instead of yet another down-with America film more likely to die at the box office than not. And while I try to stay out of the box-office prediction game, after catching a sneak preview last night I will predict word of mouth will do CWW no good. It’s not only politically illiterate, the second-half collapses into an episodic mess leaving its characters in the Afghan dust.
To read Dirty Harry's complere review, please click here.
Karen and I wish all our friends a beautiful and profound miracle in Shabbat.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:42 AM | Comments (3)
November 19, 2007
Farewell Israel: A Review
In the West, people have short memories, or no memories at all, especially when it comes to Islam. And the jihadists use this against us.
Our terrible ignorance plays itself out every day, every hour, in Israel's battle for survival against her Arab enemies. Most in the West see the conflict as a simple battle about land and refugees.
This is an infamous lie. A crucial link in the strategic plan to defeat and slowly dismember Israel in diplomatic stages rather than through war.
It's a battle of Islam against the Jews. The issues of so-called occupation, so-called refugees, are merely fig-leafs for the true religious confrontation that animates the Islamic war against Jews and Judaism.
Farewell Israel: Bush, Iran and the Revolt of Islam written and directed by Joel Gilbert lays out the true nature of the Arab Israeli conflict with an unblinking eye. He is eloquent about the Islamic point of view, which should put to rest, once and for all, the notion that we are are all alike:
First, an understanding of the Islamic world view, from the point of view of Muslims. In the West, there is a huge gap in understanding Islam on every level, from the man on the street, to Jewish and Christian religious leaders, to our elected officials. Only by gaining an understanding and appreciation of Islam's world view, through its historic trials and its theology, can the West begin to deal with the real issues and challenges.
Second, misunderstanding leads to war. Israel's lack of understanding of Islam, its values and goals, have lead it to a policy of surrender of territory, based on the belief that it will achieve "Peace" in Western terms. In reality, "Western Peace" between Israel and Islam is unattainable. Peace can only be achieved in Islamic terms - "Peace with Justice" - which requires the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state. Muslims have 1,400 years of experience and holy scriptures to refer to that deal with Jews. Because Judaism predates Islam, Jews have no such foundation in dealing with Muslims, hence the Israeli misunderstanding, and the Islamic advantage. That's why when the Israelis negotiate anything, they give up everything, and in return receive nothing.
Gilbert is a gifted Islamic scholar who speaks Arabic and knows Islamic history cold. His film lays out the bitter and bloody confrontation between Islam and the Jews from the time of the prophet Muhammed to this very day. The film is an historic journey from the birth of Islam, through its 1,200 year imperial reign over much of the civilized world, to the last 300 years of its decline, dominated by the West, and humiliated by the very existence of a Jewish state.
Farewell Israel makes clear that it is a religious duty for every Muslim to reject Israel. The film also shows how Israel tragically misunderstands Islamic goals and values, hence a parade of Israeli and American politicians play into the hands of Israel's enemies at each and every turn.
Finally, Gilbert's film focuses on the Iranian strategy for acquiring weapons of mass destruction to eliminate Israel, and the West's inability to deal with this existential threat.
Gilbert believes that Israel cannot survive. He believes that Israel faces two choices: abandonment by America and eventual military annihilation, or dhimmitude.
I met with director Joel Gilbert and discussed his film. I voiced my concerns about his "pessimistic" vision. Joel countered that it was a "realistic" vision.
It's an odd feeling, discussing the annihilation of the Jewish state, the murder of millions of Jews with a Bob Dylan look-alike, an earnest and likable Jewish man who wants nothing more than to warn the Jewish people and the Western world about the Islamist cut-throats oozing through our doorways.
I diagree with Joel. Obviously.
Israel, Jews, have always fought against enormous odds.
I believe that Israel will, must, in the near future, launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities and eliminate the Persian nuclear threat. I also believe that the Palestinians will overplay their bloody hand and launch a series of horrific terrorist attacks against Israel that will force Israel, once and for all, to smash Hamas and the PA, and send their leadership packing to Tunisia once again, never to return. And if any Arab country dares attack Israel, Israel should retaliate with such force and such power that this country must accept an unconditional surrender. No more cease-fires. No more last minute reprieves by petro-dollars.
In any case, save for its conclusion, Farewell Israel is a powerful film, an informative film, and I urge everyone to order Farewell Israel and screen it for as many of your friends as possible.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:53 AM | Comments (4)
November 18, 2007
Redacted: The Review
Seraphic Friend Dirty Harry should get a Purple Heart.
The man has sat through and reviewed every Bush-bashing, America-hating, anti-military, jihadist-enabling movie that Hollywood has released in the past several months. So punch drunk is Dirty Harry that he told me in an email after he saw Fred Claus that it "looks like Citizen Kane compared to all the dreck he's been exposed to."
You should know that Dirty Harry is a pious Catholic who curses in Yiddish when he gets really angry about important stuff like, y'know, movies.
It's a-dorable.
Anyway, every single one of these Hollywood dogs has tanked at the box office—as we predicted—and Redacted will be no different. It's already playing to empty houses.
Why does Hollywood keep producing movies that are such obvious losers at the box office?
That's easy.
Most Hollywood writers, actors, directors and executives are far more interested in being popular with one another than in in making a profit. They care more about fashionable politics and groovy little film festivals than fiscal responsibility.
Thus, by leaning hard left Hollywood's elite gamble they can safely fail upwards.
Brian DePalma’s latest weapon in Hollywood’s merciless crusade to see the Iraqi people abandoned tries to convince us that the Iraq War has dehumanized the U.S. Soldier and Marine to such a degree that they are now either capable of raping fifteen year-old girls, or standing by and allowing it to happen. This is how DePalma justifies his anti-war sentiments, by twisting a tragic true story into a morality play that argues the Iraqi civilian would be better off liberated from our monstrous Marines and left to the whim of terrorists and death squads.
The incident is exploited with the zeal, though none of the talent, of Leni Riefenstahl, to demonstrate that an innocent Iraqi family wasn’t machine gunned and their daughter raped and murdered because of the actions of a few out of a few hundred thousand. No, it happened because George W. Bush went to war with Iraq; because of the stress of danger and boredom that comes with misguided foreign policy.
To read the complete review, please click here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:17 AM | Comments (2)
November 16, 2007
Crypto Tinseltown Republicans
Confess that you're a drug addict, an alcoholic, a gambling degenerate, and Hollywood liberals will shower you with support, love and best of all, offers of employment.
As long as you adhere to the prevailing arch liberal political ideology.
Come out publicly as a Conservative and prepare to take some pretty serious hits—socially and professionally.
Believe me, there is no one as close-minded as a Hollywood, ahem, progressive.
I've experienced it first-hand time and again.
The Hollywood liberal mind-set is reminiscent of Soviet totalitarianism. If you don't adhere to the party line you are seen as the other; not just someone with a different political point of view, but as a dangerous virus, an evil thing to be mocked and shunned.
No wonder so many Hollywood Conservatives stay in the closet.
Republican presidential candidates have been drawing support — and cash — from Hollywood celebrities, but few of the stars in super-liberal Tinseltown want to be publicly linked with the Grand Old Party.
One high-profile celebrity, when asked about her political views, even had her lawyers declare "our client's rights of privacy and other legally protectable intangible rights" and warn that she should not be labeled a Republican.
To read the complete article, please click here.
Hat Tip: Seraphic Son-in-Law, and Seraphic Friend Libertas
Karen and I wish all our friends a beautiful and profound miracle in Shabbat.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 11:26 AM | Comments (8)
November 13, 2007
Cowards Make Anti-War Movies
In the latest round of war movies the heroes are not the Soldiers and Marines who every day fight and defeat a vicious and barbaric enemy–the heroes are reporters, lawyers and activists.
And since every story requires a villain, the real enemy–Mohammedan Jihadists–are replaced by neo-cons, politicians, Soldiers and Marines.
Please go to Seraphic Friend Libertas for the complete article.
And let's not forget Project Valor-IT Veteran's Day Fundraiser, to provide voice-activated lap-top computers to injured and disabled veterans. Please donate generously. This is a very important tzedakah, charity.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 03:44 AM | Comments (3)
November 02, 2007
I'm on Strike
This just showed up in my mailbox.
The WGAW Board and WGAE Council have unanimously approved a strike, based upon the unanimous recommendation of the WGA Negotiating Committee. The strike will begin at 12:01 AM Monday, November 5, 2007. Note: Picketing and other strike support assignments will be finalized and communicated over the weekend. All WGAW members should monitor the www.wga.org website for more information.
The last strike writer's was in 1988; it was long and bitter. I have a feeling this one is going to be even worse. The writers and the studios are very far apart on any kind of agreement. New media means lots and lots of money and the Writer's Guild is not about to give away what could be golden residuals.
Karen and I wish all our friends a lovely and meaningful Shabbat.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:59 PM | Comments (14)
November 01, 2007
Jimmy Carter: Man from Hell
Seraphic Friend Dirty Harry really should get combat pay, he actually sat through the entire Jonathan Demme bio-pic Jimmy Carter: Man from the Plains.
Dirty Harry told me there were six other people in the theater.
That's a stunner.
Yup, the film has bombed, hugely. Even liberals haven't bothered to hand over their hard-earned money to watch Carter spout his Jew/Israeli-hatred.
But look, there's always the souk in Gaza, where pirated DVD's will go for about, um, half-a-shekel. I'd like to see the Hollywood unions sit down and negotiate with Hamas for royalties. They can offer, I dunno, Jimmy Carter's land in Georgia in return for a cut of the gross profits.
Over the course of a month, in November of 2006, academy award-winning director Jonathon Demme and a camera crew tagged along with former President Jimmy Carter during a nationwide book tour for his provocatively titled, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. What may have been a quaint documentary about a former President hyping his umpteenth book ended up being a fly-on-the-wall account of a man’s evolution from Worst President Of The 20th Century into an international disgrace.
You would think an in-depth look at a retired President against the backdrop of worldwide controversy couldn’t lose, but under Demme’s heavy hand and desperate desire to salvage his subject through a Chinese water torture of Carter repeating his arguments ad nauseum, the 125-minute Plains feeling like a 60 Minutes segment produced in Hell, and offers no new insight into a man I didn’t know that much about to begin with.
The film’s enemy, besides the duller than dishwater Carter, is repetition, and not just of Carter’s defense of the indefensible. Scene after scene of Demme’s subject walking in and out of hotels, signing books, and having cell phone problems play out like your Uncle Milton and Aunt Minnie’s home movies. The lowlight is watching a television make-up artist put lotion on Carter’s hands. Not one hand, both — and the girl’s thorough. The highlight is a Charlie Rose interview, and when you’ve peaked with PBS, you know you’re in trouble.
To read Dirty Harry's complete review, please click here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:47 PM | Comments (10)
Anti-war Movies Hurt America
Our good friend Govindini Murty, co-founder of the Liberty Film Festival and now Hollywood correspondent for the new Fox Business Network has a fine op-ed piece in today's New York Daily News about Hollywood's war on America's troops.
If Tokyo Rose were alive today, she wouldn't get jail time—she'd get a three-picture deal.
Throwing all caution and fiscal sanity to the winds, the Hollywood establishment is releasing a slate of anti-war films that do violence to the cause of American victory—and to the art form of film.
Art is best served by an open competition of ideas. When only the anti-war left is allowed to make films in Hollywood and pro-American voices are excluded, the result is movies that are ideologically rigid, morally shallow and creatively sterile. Is it any wonder that recent anti-war films like "Rendition" and "In the Valley of Elah" have bombed at the box office?
Hollywood's enforced ideological conformity is obvious: "Elah," the Tommy Lee Jones vehicle now in theaters, and "Redacted," directed by Brian DePalma and set for release later this month, both depict American troops in Iraq as murderers and psychopaths. "Rendition," released last month, asserts that the American government allows innocent Muslim civilians to be tortured. "Lions for Lambs," featuring Robert Redford and Tom Cruise, depicts a venal Republican senator risking the lives of American troops in order to advance his political career. "Stop Loss," starring Ryan Phillippe, posits that the only noble American soldier is the one who refuses to serve.
Even the relatively tame "The Kingdom" concludes with a coda that draws a moral equivalency between American CIA agents and Saudi terrorists.
These films and others are the crescendo of three years' worth of anti-war films. Even our sacred memories of World War II have been tarnished in recent years by films like "The Good German" (a ghastly, morally confused remake of "Casablanca").
This proliferation of anti-war cinema in the midst of a war is unprecedented.
To read the entire article, please click here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 11:29 AM | Comments (2)
October 24, 2007
Actress Coleen Gray: Daggers to my Knees
Coleen Gray
“Do you remember any direction that Howard Hawks gave you?”
“Oh yes, he told me to imagine daggers to my knees.”
”Meaning?”
“I should feel weak with passion, romance.”
I'm talking with Coleen Zeiser nee Coleen Gray, about her short but memorable appearance in one of the greatest American movies ever made, Red River. Coleen plays Fen, John Wayne's first love who is murdered by Indians early in the film.
“What was Howard Hawks like as a director?”
“Oh, very relaxed and easy going. There was a cowboy who was having trouble with his scene and Howard just took him by the arm and they walked off for a while and chatted. And you know the producers were looking at their wrist watches because time is money, and then Howard and the cowboy-actor returned, they did the take and it was just perfect. That's how Howard did things. Quiet, relaxed, no big drama.”
“And Duke, how was he to work with?”
“Oh, very easy. John Wayne was tall and good looking, very quiet and hard working, a real gentleman. You have to remember I was a young, innocent girl and just concentrating, really wanting to do a good job.”
“You are spectacular, truly memorable.”
Coleen shrugs, smiles. I get the feeling that Red River, made in 1948, is for Coleen, a distant, lovely dream.
I remember the first time I saw Red River, I was a dopey yeshiva student in Brooklyn, confused, lonely, struck by the brilliant imagery, the larger than life conflicts, the towering score by Dimitri Tiomkin, and the incredibly literate screenplay by Borden Chase.
Coleen Gray's brief appearance is memorable for her beauty is luminous, and her love for the John Wayne character is absolutely palpable. Fen's terrible death haunts Wayne and motivates him for the rest of the movie.
Red River also has one of my favorite scenes of all times. Joanne Dru is shot in the shoulder by a poison arrow and Montgomery Clift, get this, sucks the poison from her wound. Joanne slaps him, cause, y'know she loves him and hates him at the same time — and then she faints.
I mean, this is like heaven for a movie-mad yeshiva kid from Brooklyn.
Anywhoo.
Coleen played Fay in The Killing directed by Stanley Kubrick. Her two scenes with Sterling Hayden are notable for the utter sincerity of the love and devotion she projects to their relationship. Coleen is the exact opposite of Sherry, the bad girl character played by Marie Windsor. It's a stark and fateful contrast and Kubrick's casting is just perfect.
Coleen Gray, studio portrait, 1950's
A few days later in a phone conversation, Coleen tells me how disappointed she was in Kubrick as a director.
“I had seen Killer's Kiss and it was really wonderful and I was so looking forward to working with him. But Kubrick was so distant. I wanted direction. I wanted to know how to make my performance better, but he didn't say anything.”
“Maybe your choices were just what he wanted.”
“Well we always want to do better, don't we?”
“Do you remember anything else about Kubrick?”
“He was a slight man, a bit disheveled. Oh, and he wore clod-hopper shoes.”
Regarding Sterling Hayden Coleen says: “He was intensely focused. There wasn't a lot of chit-chat on the set among the actors. You just learned your lines and did the very best job possible. You know how it is, Robert. Making movies is hard work.”
It's the best kept secret in Hollywood.
Coleen adds: “I just love the way Sterling checks out the automatic rifle. He does it with such authority. That's because he was in the service and he knew about guns.”
“Hayden was also in the OSS and parachuted behind enemy lines during World War II. He was quite a man.”
“You know who else was marvelous in the The Killing, Timothy Carey, what a wonderful actor he was.”
Carey plays Nikki Arcane, the sniper who shoots the race horse. His unique mouth-full-of-marbles delivery is utterly unique in American movies which favor well rounded vowels. Kubrick once again cast Carey in Paths of Glory.
“The whole cast was just amazing,” Coleen says, “Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook Jr., and that wonderful Russian wrestler Kola Kwariani, every player was just perfect.”
“It's an amazing film. Just 84 minutes, it's lean and mean and completely unpretentious. It's actually my favorite Kubrick movie.”
“Yes, before Kubrick became all full of himself.”
In the noir classic Nightmare Alley, Coleen gives a memorable and sensual performance as Molly opposite Tyrone Power.
“Tell me about Edmund Goulding, the director.”
“Oh, Eddie was a real pro, very precise in all his direction.”
“Yes, Goulding was one of those Hollywood directors who knew his craft from top to bottom. We'll not see his like ever again.”
Coleen Gray and Tyrone Power in Nightmare Alley, 1947
Directed by Edmund Goulding
From IMBD: “Coleen Gray was born in Staplehurst, Nebraska in 1922. After graduating from high school, Coleen studied dramatics at Hamline University graduating with a bachelor of arts degree. Coleen then decided to see America and traveled to California, stopping at La Jolla, where she worked as a waitress. After several weeks there, she moved to L.A. and enrolled in a drama school. Her performances attracted a talent scout from 20 Century-Fox studios where she signed a contract after a screen test.”
Coleen tells me that she co-starred with Bing Crosby in Riding High, and now Coleen does a mock bow as she reminds me that this musical was directed by Frank Capra.
Coleen played Nettie in the famous Kiss of Death written by the great screenwriters Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer and directed by Henry Hathaway.
“You remember the scene where Richard Widmark throws the old lady in the wheelchair down the stairs?”
“Well, sure, I mean that's classic.”
“You know who was really in the chair?”
“A stunt double, I assume.”
“Rod Amateau, my Jewish husband.”
“He was a fine writer/director.”
“Yes, he was.”
“Coleen, I hope you don't think this is really stupid, but I really want to get your autograph.”
Coleen waves her hand as if swatting a fly, then tells me that it's time for me to speak.
Coleen rises, marches to the podium, and here at the Luxe Hotel, Brentwood, I watch and listen as this lovely lady, a real presence from my movie mad life, gives me a truly generous introduction before I speak to the Bel-Air Republican Women Federated.
For one brief moment I am trapped between past and present, and a sob like a walnut, is trapped in my throat.
I have traveled so far, from Brooklyn to Hollywood, and yet I still feel so fragile.
We are all so fragile.
I speak for about thirty minutes: I speak about Hollywood's capitulation to the poison of multiculturalism, I speak about Hollywood's flight from the war on terror. Naturally, I tell the ladies about The Seven Samurai, and how it can serve as a model on how to fight terrorism.
I tell these wonderful and committed ladies that America and Israel are the front lines in the battle against jihad.
I thank the Bel-Air Republican Women Federated for providing me with a kosher lunch.
Afterwards, Coleen slips an envelope into my hand. My honorarium.
I'm too embarrassed to ask Coleen for her autograph. I don't want to make a nuisance of myself.
But when I get home, I open the envelope, and there's a note from Coleen, a private note, a prayer for me and Karen and for Ariel ZT'L—and Coleen's flowing signature.
Her handwriting is so lovely it looks transcribed by an angel.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:25 AM | Comments (13)
October 19, 2007
Seraphic Friend Fox Hollywood Correspondent
Seraphic Secret is proud to announce that:
Starting tonight Friday, Oct. 19th Liberty Film Festival Co-Founder GOVINDINI MURTY will appear on the Fox Business Channel on Fridays at the conclusion of the 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific (1:00pm - 2:00pm Eastern) news hour to discuss the business and politics of Hollywood. Be sure to tune in Fridays for a special look at what’s coming up at the weekend box office, and what political agenda is driving Hollywood’s business decisions!
To find channel listings in your area for The Fox Business Channel, go to the official Fox Business Channel website.
Original article here at Libertas.
We have known Govindini Murty for several years. Govindini and her husband Jason Apuzzo have changed the political and moral landscape of Hollywood through the Liberty Film Festival, and now even greater things are happening in association with the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
When Seraphic Friend Jake Novak, a producer on the new Fox Business Channel, mentioned that he was looking for a bright and independent Hollywood correspondent, we immediately recommended Govindini.
It also helps, we confess, that Govindini looks like a perfect fusion of Hedy Lamarr and Paulette Goddard.
Brains, beauty and Conservative politics.
Sigh.
Fox Business Channel is going to bury the competition.
We look forward to Govindini's reports from Hollywood. In a media which is saturated with, Paris, Brittany, and Linsday crap, we are certain that Govindini's Hollywood reports will be witty, articulate and deeply informative.
Karen and I wish all our friends a lovely and meaningful Shabbat.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 11:13 AM | Comments (3)
October 17, 2007
Is Hollywood Liberal? Duh
Is Hollywood filled with wide-eyed liberals?
Or is it, ahem, non-partisan?
Do they churn out movies that attack our troops and the current administration?
You need to ask?
From Variety via Libertas, a list of Hollywood moguls and their campaign contributions.
Just follow the money.
Was going to do this myself but Variety saved me the time. Here’s a presidential donor list of Hollywood nabobs. Have a good chuckle at all the early Obama supporters who then gave to Hillary. It’s well known around town that if she wins Obama-only supporters will be killed in all sorts of strange accidents.
Click here to go to Libertas and acess to the list.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:12 AM | Comments (2)
October 15, 2007
Jake & Fox Business Network Launches
Seraphic Friend Jake Novak is hard at work as a producer over at the new Fox Business Network. That's why his fine and insightful comments have been appearing with somewhat less frequency here on Seraphic Secret.
We forgive Jake, and wish him and the new network the best of luck, and great ratings.
Anyway, we just received this e-mail from Jake and proudly pass it along to all our friends:
Fox Business Network launches this Monday, Oct.15th. My show will be the 12-2pm show Eastern Time, (9-11pm Pacific).
We have been working around the clock to provide viewers with business news that won't scare them off, won't confuse them, and won't bash people for the "sin" of wanting to make money.
That said, all the editorial aspects that will set FBN apart will not be in place on day 1. We need to focus on getting "clean shows" on the air. Also, expect the news media to tear us up considerably in the papers on Tuesday. But right off the bat, expect to see a network and a show, (my show), that celebrates the capitalist spirit that made and maintains America and her people.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 11:38 AM | Comments (7)
October 11, 2007
Farewell Israel
Farewell Israel: Bush, Iran, and the Revolt of Islam is a new film that's about to be released.
The website is beautifully organized. There's's a clip from the film, an interview with director Joel Gilbert, and the music is performed by Bob Dylan's Highway 61 sidekicks.
Seraphic Secret will be screening "Farewell Israel" in the next few days and we'll post a review for you.
Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend, Michael Makiri
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 03:52 PM | Comments (11)
Dennis Prager Hosts Films on Islamic Terror
Dennis Prager will be guest-hosting a special evening of films about Islamic terror on Thursday, October 18 as part of the Liberty Film Festival Screening Series. The David Horowitz Freedom Center and Liberty Film Festival are proud to screen Brooke Goldstein and Alistair Leyland's new film "The Making of a Martyr" along with Pierre Rehov's "The Road to Jenin." Dennis will speak before the films and will host a special Q&A session with filmmaker Brooke Goldstein afterward to discuss the threat of Islamic terror to Israel and the West. The films will be screened at the Harmony Gold Preview House located at 7655 Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. The wine and cheese reception and registration opens at 6:30 p.m. and the screening will begin promptly at 7:30 p.m. Each film is 60 minutes long and deals with related aspects of the War on Terror. Tickets are $15 and must be purchased on-line or by calling the Center at (323) 556-2550 x209.
FILMS:
"The Making of a Martyr" directed by Brooke Goldstein and Alistair Leyland is an award winning film about a 15 year old Palestinian teenager who is recruited to become a suicide bomber. The filmmakers risked their lives to travel to Palestinian towns and interview the terrorist leaders who recruit children to be suicide bombers - and interview the suicide bomber himself. The film has won rave reviews on Fox News and CNN for its uncompromising portrait of Islamic terror - and of the tragedy it wreaks by brainwashing entire generations of Islamic children to devote their lives of violence.
"The Road to Jenin" directed by French-Algerian filmmaker Pierre Rehov, debunks the myths surrounding Israel's military action in the Palestinian town of Jenin after Palestinian terrorists carried out the Passover bombing. Pierre and his team interview the victims of the Passover bombing, and go into Jenin in the aftermath of the military action and reveal that the much-publicized "Jenin massacre" was a fabrication of Palestinian propagandists working to discredit Israel. The film interviews Palestinians in the town of Jenin who were present at the time of the military action, and shows on-camera the false nature of their claims. "The Road to Jenin" reveals the frightening power of Islamic radicals and their credulous allies in the media to bend the truth and fabricate Israeli "atrocities" in order to undermine Israel and further their own political goals.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)
September 30, 2007
Hollywood Fraggers
The Los Angeles Times has been running a dialog between Andrew Breitbart and David Ehrenstein about Hollywood's recent surge of anti-military, anti-victory movies.
Breitbart is conservative and deeply suspicious of Hollywood's suicidal plunge to the left.
Ehrenstein is leftist and well, he doesn't notice any left wing bias in Hollywood. He just sees, er, patriotic free speech.
Which is a lot like saying that a marriage is solid because the husband abuses his wife.
Click here for this rather weird exchange.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 06:47 PM | Comments (6)
September 26, 2007
The Hollywood Surge is Failing
Not too long ago I predicted that In the Valley of Elah, Hollywood's latest smear against our troops, would flop—big time—at the box-office.
That was an easy call.
The per theater average of Elah indicates that only the earnest, dopey Sundance fanatics turned out for the first weekend—all 85 of them. The film is a stench of red ink, a jihadist enabling loop of anti-American sedition.
However, Elah will do a very brisk business in the black market souks in Gaza, Judea and Samaria.
You think I'm kidding?
I wish.
There are consequences in the Arab/Muslim world to producing such movies. Jihadists use them as recruiting tools; they are proof that we infidels are so corrupt, so decadent that we don't even bother to defend our own values. These movies show the jihadists that Islam is fated to rule over the infidels.
Why do the studios green-light such obvious losers?
That's easy. The execs want to "be in business" with writer director Pauil Haggis, so if he's, ahem, passionate about a project, well, they'll roll with the 120 pages and takes a bath on the bad side of the ledger in the hopes that Haggis with deliver another project that has the faintest whiff of commercial potential.
But more important is the matter of ideology. The executives in Hollywood are, for the most part, arch leftists. They view themselves as the vanguard of the intelligencia and they see it as their duty to deliver "progressive" messages to the great unwashed.
That's you.
They also like to give each other meaningless awards at boring, endless dinners shows.
They love to congratulate themsleves on how brave they are for making films that are cutting edge and anti-establishment.
Conveniently forgetting that they are the etablishment.
In any case, there are a few more anti-American films surging out of Hollywood and they too will implode.
Finally, we in Hollywood need not churn out only mindless entertainment (though I happen to love mindless entertainment) in time of war. Casablanca is a war film, a stirring patriotic movie that is a classic. It won the Oscar in 1942.
Now, what do all these films have in common — besides being passionate indictments?
They all flopped. Or will, soon enough. (Except for, maybe, The Kingdom, which apparently has an appalling whiff of vigilantism.) And this is something we out here in Hollywood just cannot wrap our minds around.
What the hell is wrong with this country? We support the troops, showing them as the dysfunctional, murdering, drug-addicted, red-state crypto-rapists in need of psychoanalysis we all know they really are. Hey — even the Marine officer in Alan Ball’s award-winning American Beauty a few years back was humanized by making him a sadist and a closet queen. And this is the thanks we get?
These days, when you go in to pitch a new war movie, the first thing the studio exec does after offering you some bottled water and asking you whether you’ve yet given to Al Franken’s senatorial campaign, is warn you that “we’re trying to avoid jingoism here.” In the old days, we made a million Bataan movies but only one The Best Years of Our Lives. It the interest of fairness, it’s time to change that. As some snarky punk — I think it was Robert Frost — said, “a liberal is a man too broad-minded to take his own side in argument.” That’s us, baby — in spades!
To read the entire article, please click here.
Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend, Dr. Carol
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:52 AM | Comments (4)
September 17, 2007
In the Valley of Elah: The Review, Better than the Movie
I have not seen "In the Valley of Elah," Hollywood's latest assault on the American military, but my good friend Dirty Harry over at Libertas has, and he is one brave man. I dunno, maybe he's getting paid for Hazardous Screening Duty. In any case, as I said, I have not seen the film but from Dirty Harry's description I can guarantee no one else in America will bother to see it either. Yup, sounds like the only solid audience for this flick is in Osama's Caliphite Caves in Wackistan and the Al Quada death squads—they can use it as a recruiting tool.
Elah is a near-perfect example of agenda over quality filmmaking. To portray even a single soldier back from the war as grounded, honorable, and worthy of admiration (like 99.9% are) undercuts the anti-war message. But to portray every soldier as unstable and cruel is weak one-dimensional storytelling. It’s the same when it comes to the Iraqi victims. There are two and neither is humanized or even given a face. They’re blurs useful only as props to defame our soldiers. Had the Iraqis been real people the story would’ve been stronger because the horror of the crime would’ve been more real. But Haggis knows that putting a human face on the Iraqi people works against his anti-war sentiments. If we start seeing Iraqis as human we might find it harder to agree with Haggis and abandon them to the death squads and al-Queda.
To read the rest of the review, please click here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:33 AM | Comments (3)
August 31, 2007
Obscure Movies for Labor Day Weekend
Labor Day Weekend. Some people grill. Not me. No way. Too labor intensive. Some people get in their cars and drive. I'd rather bang my head against the wall for an hour. I hate driving. There are folks who bop on over to their relatives to enjoy a congenial family circle.
Sigh.
No family in Los Angeles.
Offspring #2 and #3 are back East. Everyone is back East — or in Israel.
“It's just you and me,” I say to the love of my life.
So, what to do over the long Labor Day Weekend?
Oh, I know, shopping. Sales. Insane crowds. Sharp elbows.
Forget it. I hate shopping. I buy everything mail order. Clothing via L.L. Bean and Land's End. Karen is hooked on Loehmann's.
I know, let's kick back, watch some movies.
So, I've rummaged through my library and chosen my list of movies to watch over the Long Labor Day Weekend.
But look, I'm not going to tell you to watch Casablanca, or Citizen Kane. You know about the usual suspects already. I'm here to urge you to take a look at a few little-known gems that are now on DVD, movies that you probably missed, but absolutely must see because they are just amazing, better than anything playing in the theaters right now.
There's no theme here, just a bunch of movies that I really love and want to share with you. So, grab your favorite blankie—Karen gave me a cowboy blanket a few years ago that I chew when watching movies—curl up on your couch and hit the PLAY button.
In no particular order.
1. Last Train from Gun Hill 1959, starring Kirk Douglas born Issur Danielovitch Demsky, and Anthony Quinn. This is a classic revenge western.
The storytelling is lean, taut and raw. Kirk Douglas' Indian wife is raped and murdered by Anthony Quinn's son. Douglas and Quinn used to be best friends. Douglas is now a lawman. Quinn, a powerful rancher.
Not a shot or line of dialog is wasted. The suspense builds as Douglas nabs his man and tries to board the 9:00 train from Gun Hill. Carolyn Jones (converted to Judaism when she married producer Aaron Spelling—hey, I couldn't resist.) has a great supporting role as Quinn's bitter mistress who, against her own self-interest, aids the badly out-gunned Douglas. The performance by Kirk Douglas has the power of Greek tragedy. A neglected classic.
2. The Lady Eve 1941, Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck star in this, one of the greatest screwball comedies ever made. Preston Sturges wrote, produced and directed this masterpiece.
Fonda, a rich kid, has been up the Amazon, studying snakes for a few years. Stanwyck, a con-artist, takes one look at Fonda and says: “I need him like the axe needs the turkey.” Sturges wrote this script in Reno while awaiting his third divorce. Hmmm.
Stanwyck is, naturally, after Fonda's fortune. Fonda is bumbling, clueless. There's a classic scene where Stanwyck has maneuvered Fonda into her stateroom on board an ocean liner. She gets him down on his knees, slyly has him change her "slippers." Fonda, who has not seen a woman in years, is positively melting. This might be the sexiest scene in the history of the movies, yet there is no nudity, no kisses are exchanged — and it is hilarious. I have seen this movie a dozen times and it is always fresh, bursting with energy.
3. Fixed Bayonets! 1951, The Korean war has never been a favorite for Hollywood storytellers. But writer slash director Samuel Fuller, family name originally Rabinovitch, isn't much interested in the politics of North and South Korea. As always, Fuller concentrates on the human emotions of his central characters. Richard Baseheart plays a corporal who watches in terror as every officer above him in the chain of command is killed. Baseheart does not want to lead. He can't even squeeze the trigger to kill an enemy soldier. Look, the sets are cheap, production values are crap, but this is a fine film because Fuller understands combat—he fought with The Big Red One in World War Two—and he cares about the ordinary GI.
The story is simple: a platoon is fighting a rear-guard action against an entire North Korean regiment. It's a suicide mission. There's a brilliant scene where the members of the platoon stand and watch the American army retreating along a muddy road. The GI's left behind know that they are as good as dead. The retreating GI's can barely look at the men who are being left behind. The music echoes eerily. Not a word of dialog is spoken. Here is war stripped to its most elemental form.
By the way, see if you can spot James Dean here in his first movie role, with three words of dialog.
4. Duck, You Sucker 1972, Rod Steiger and James Coburn star in Sergio Leone's neglected masterpiece. Coburn plays an I.R.A. dynamite expert who has come to Mexico to continue his, er, activities, on behalf of the revolution. Steiger is a filthy bandit with no interest in politics. Naturally, these two very different characters join forces.
This film was not quite a Spaghetti Western, and the title, well, it sounds just dopey, but believe me, this is not to be missed. There's a sequence where the camera does a simple pan as Mexican soldiers slaughter innocent people trapped in a series of ditches; the camera just casually sweeps along, no cuts, no close-ups, just one long take, and the brutality is just overwhelming. Leone was operatic in the best sense of the word and this might be his greatest film.
5. Strange Cargo 1940, Joan Crawford and Clark Gable. This is one of Crawford's greatest performances. Director Frank Borzage carefully guides her performance and does not let her fall back on her old and reliable mannerisms. She's stripped of all glamor, movie star make-up, and no stunning wardrobe in which to flounce around. Here, she's a hard-hearted "saloon girl" who undergoes a spiritual rebirth during an escape with a gang of convicts from Devil's Island. Gable plays against type as a hard-edged, dangerous convict; the chemistry between Gable and Crawford is just off the charts. This is a powerful film, and a great pairing of two huge stars. We will not see their kind ever again. Guaranteed.
6. Point Blank, 1967. This might be the toughest most relentless revenge-driven movie ever made. Lee Marvin strides through abstract urban landscapes, killing one criminal after another, trying to collect a debt of $93,000. He's been betrayed by everyone, including his wife. This film redefines the modern crime thriller. It's in a whole other category and Marvin is at the top of his game. Director John Boorman is confident of every camera placement. The dialog is crisp and clipped. The screenplay was written by Alexander Jacobs, David Newhouse & Rafe Newhouse. I've heard from several sources that Marvin had a great deal of input into the final script. Use of sound is masterful, brilliant. The movie's final sequence in the abandoned Alcatraz Prison Island is haunting; and in retrospect I now understand that this film was the last great film noir to come out of Hollywood. This is definitely a guy's film. It's violent and yet strangely poetic. There are moments of great tenderness as Marvin expresses an almost boyish love for his double-dealing wife. Point Blank is the odyssey of a tender man transformed into a violent juggernaut by betrayal and disappointment. Lee Marvin's performance is riveting, probably the most disciplined of his career, as he becomes an avenging angel in pursuit of money—and his lost humanity.
7. When the Last Sword is Drawn 2002. What, you thought I was going to recommend a bunch of films and not plug a Japanese Samurai flick?
That'll be the day.
This is an epic movie about a Samurai who fights for money. Yup, you heard me right, money. It's the end of the Edo period in Kyoto and Kanichiro Yoshimura, born Menachem Yosselovich—no, I'm just messing with you— just wants to make enough money to support his family. His quarrelsome fellow Samurai view him as dishonorable, a money-grubbing mercenary.
The flashback structure of this movies is beautiful and multi-layered. I don't want to give too much away except to tell you that it's an elegy for a good man and a master warrior as seen through the eyes of his most fierce opponent.
Oh, and the sword-play is breath-taking. I chewed my blankie to shreds. It badly needs mending.
The screenplay by the remarkable Takehiro Nakajima is a structural masterpiece, and should be studied by all screenwriters and aspiring screenwriters.
This movies understands honor, loyalty, and the abiding love between a man, a woman and their children — the unit that keeps the earth on its axis. By the end of this film my face was wet with tears.
I invite all my readers to chime in with their Labor Day Weekend movie picks.
Karen and I wish all our Seraphic friends a lovely and meaningful Shabbat.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:16 AM | Comments (35)
August 28, 2007
Counterinsurgency in Hollywood
LTC John Nagl is a fine guest on the Jon Stewart Show. Nagl was one of the co-authors of the new "U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual."
LTC Nagl is solid, really funny and deeply human. He sums up the manual like this: “Be professional, be polite, be prepared to kill.”
Perfect.
You can view the Nagl interview here.
You can order the US Army/Marine Corps Field Counterinsurgency Manual here. Essential reading.
Or you can download the entire manual here.
This high-profile appearance is no fluke. General Petraeus is fighting back against the Iraqi defeatists with his own PR machine. Petraeus, more than any other fighting general, understands the importance of propaganda. Let's hope that we will see many more appearances by Nagl and other fine soldiers who speak so eloquently for our country and our troops.
I'd also like to recommend LTC Nagl's Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malay and Vietnam. This is a deeply relevant text for those of us who understand that we have entered a new period of warfare: Fourth Generation Warfare.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 03:45 PM | Comments (3)
August 21, 2007
The Screenwriter's Secret Weapon
“What's the best book on screenwriting?”
This question comes my way about ten times a month.
I have several responses:
1. There are none.
2. There are five pretty good books.
3. There is one good book.
4. Write a few screenplays before you read any books.
5. There is one "best" book — but it's not about screenwriting.
Here's the problem: the one book that everyone uses, Screenplay by Syd Field, has indoctrinated a whole generation of writers and executives into a cult of Syd Field drones. It's actually a good book and his ideas are solid.
But, if you follow the Syd Field method rigidly, as so many do, you end up writing by-the-numbers and the script you produce is, well, bloodless and boring. Which is why so many movies are just plain, well, blah.
At some point, the screenwriter has to let loose and write with his subconscious. He must write with both barrels blazing.
However, in order to do this—write with your subconscious—you have to understand structure, you have to understand classical drama so as not to get lost in the complex forest of your own script; and for this there is no better guide than The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri.
Originally published in 1942, Egri actually discusses theater, he never mentions movies, but his analysis of dramatic construction is so solid that his principles apply to screenplays.
His ideas are classical, timeless.
Egri analyzes the construction of a hero; he delves into why people act the way they do. He shows why the author must start with a basic premise. Egri hammers home the importance of developing the central conflict on the basis of the behavior of your main character — this notion is central, but too often falls by the wayside.
There are two modern American films that strike me as being almost perfect realizations of Egri's dramatic principles: Chinatown, written by Robert Towne, though the tragic ending was written by director Roman Polonski, and The Godfather, written by Mario Puzo, and Francis Ford Coppola.
These are highly personal choices, but in terms of structure, environment, character, dialog, visual language, conflict, plot, antagonists, orchestration of action, rising action, crisis, climax, and resolution — these two films are nearly perfect.
Every really smart screeenwriter I know has read and reread Egri's book. It's our secret weapon.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:02 PM | Comments (12)
August 09, 2007
Hollywood Appeasement, Hollywood anti-Semitism
Gee willikers, what a shock. Hollywood has caved in to a Muslim pressure group.
This is how it works.
A script is leaked, usually by some spineless liberal in the lower eschelons of the Hollywood food chain. A Muslim jihadist front-group sends their thugs-in-suits to Hollywood. The strong-arms get all uppity and self-righteous and use phrases like "multi-cultural," and "we're all the same", and pepper the friendly conversation with the always effective "Islamaphobia." Hollywood liberals cower at the very thought.
But the Hollywood players in the room know what's really going on. They all remember Theo Van Gogh. Everyone is aware of the Muslim cartoon riots. They have all seen France burning at the hands of, ahem, French youth. And the Weinstein brothers have had a nice long conversation with their insurance carrier; they are all too aware of how easy it is to sabotage a film set. The director wants to direct his picture; he's not anxious to return to development hell. And of course, everyone wants the massive payday that comes on principal day of photography.
So: the revisions to the script are hastily made, secretly shipped to the Muslim pressure group for their seal of approval — you won't cut off our heads, right? All concerned blather on about how much better is the script. And like all limousine liberals, convince themselves that they have made the world a better place. Cue: Kumbaya.
Uh-huh.
But: to maintain the edge in the script the writer, director, and producers save all the material that degrades either Jews or Christians. After all, Jews and Christians don't go around slitting throats, rioting in the streets, setting hundreds of vehicles on fire.
Hence Hollywood feels free to slander Judaism and Christianity.
Thus appeasement marches on.
And Hollywood produces, no doubt, another bomb.
Let's hear from the mighty Debbie Schlussel.
To update an old Mark Twain (and Benjamin Disraeli) quote, there are lies, damned lies, and Hollywood scripts.
Sometimes the lies are not what is in the script, but what is removed under pressure from whining, politically correct interest groups. These days, those groups are primarily Muslim and Middle Eastern.
Honor Killing Scene Deleted From "ICE, The Movie" a/k/a "Crossing Over" Muslim groups have successfully gotten scenes—accurately depicting them as terrorists and murderers—removed from scripts or changed to another, more acceptable nationality. Brilliant blogger Sultan Knish drew my attention to the latest such cave-in: "Crossing Over," starring Harrison Ford and Sean Penn and produced by the Weinstein Brothers. I've been writing extensively about this movie and have a copy of the original script.
Muslim Iranians were upset that a scene portrays them committing an honor killing. Late last week, they succeeded in getting it removed from the film. No worries, though, about the anti-Semitic scenes in the movie. Those remain. The Weinsteins and Writer/Director Wayne Kramer are Jewish, and we can't expect them to cave on those the way they did for the "more worthy" Muslims. It's politically correct to attack Jews, not so—these days in Hollywood—to attack those who attacked us before and on 9/11 and repeatedly try to again.
To read Debbie Schlussel's entire article, and the deleted scenes from the script, please click here.
Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend, Jeremayakova
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:25 AM | Comments (5)
July 19, 2007
Jihad Hollywood
Sometimes, I'm just ashamed of the callousness that's displayed by the movers and shakers in Hollywood. Is it ignorance, stupidity, carelessness, or just knee-jerk liberalism? No matter what the cause, it's incredibly destructive, and at this stage in history enables jihad and strengthens a growing Islamic ideology whose chief aim calls for the elimination of the State of Israel and every Jew and Crusader—that's a shout-out to Christians—on the face of the earth.
When Hamas refers to "the occupation" they are talking about the entire State of Israel. It's important to understand these code words when you hear jihadists sloganeering.
If you think Fatah are moderate, well, think again. Their game plan calls for the elimination of the Zionist entity (they don't like saying the word Israel) — in stages. That's a politically acceptable way of calling for genocide.
To summarize: Hamas are openly blood-thirsty and want to jihad now; Fatah disguise their blood-lust behind Holocaust denying President Abbas (neat trick!) and call for jihad one incremental step at a time. Want proof? Just take a look at the Fatah grade-school text books which are filled with Jew hatred, and the negation of Israel's right to exist.
As I've written before:
Hamas is Fatah.
Fatah is Hamas.
All else is hot air.
Recently The New York Times carried a review of a film called Hot House that goes inside Israeli prisons and examines the lives of Palestinian prisoners. We're not recommending the film or the review. But we do want to share our feelings with you about the beaming female face that adorns the article. You can see it here.
The film is produced by HBO. So it's presumably HBO's publicity department that was responsible for creating and distributing a glamor-style photograph of a smiling, contented-looking young woman in her twenties to promote the movie.
That female is our child's murderer. She was sentenced to sixteen life sentences or 320 years which she is serving in an Israeli jail. Fifteen people were killed and more than a hundred maimed and injured by the actions of this attractive person and her associates. Here is the background:
Neither the New York Times nor HBO are likely to give even a moment's attention to the victims of the barbarians who destroyed the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem and the lives of so many victims. So we would be grateful if you would pass along this link to some pictures of our daughter whose name was Malki. She was unable to reach her twenties — Hamas saw to that.
Though she was only fifteen years old when her life was stolen from her and from us, we think Malki was a beautiful young woman, living a beautiful life. We ask your help so that other people — far fewer than the number who will see the New York Times, of course — can know about her. Please ask your friends to look at the pictures — some of the very few we have — of our murdered daughter. They are here.
And remind them of what the woman in the Israeli prison — the woman smiling so happily in the New York Times — said last year. "I'm not sorry for what I did. We'll become free from the occupation and then I will be free from prison."
With so many voices demanding that Israel release its terrorist prisoners, small wonder she's smiling.
With greetings from Jerusalem ,
Frimet and Arnold Roth
On behalf of Keren Malki
----------
Please give your support to the:
Malki Foundation PO Box 23637
Jerusalem 91236 Israel
www.kerenmalki.org
Office Phone +972-2-567-0602
Office Fax +972-3-542-3783
from United States: 1-718-395-2293
To stay in touch with the work of the Malki
Foundation, please join the Friends of Keren Malki Email List
Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend, Estelle Posner
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:19 AM | Comments (7)
July 11, 2007
Massive Moore Meltdown
This is just priceless.
Sicko continues to flat-line at the box office.
When the box-office gets this low, it's all but over. You might as well put Sicko on a double-bill with A Mighty Heart, sit back and watch the audiences flee.
Um, anyone remember the one film that was at its core Conservative and made oodles and oodles of money?
That's right, kids: 300.
Anywhoo!
CNN brings forth Dr. Sanjay Gupta to critique Sicko. Gupta, a respected neuroseurgeon and journalist, who performed surgery on American soldiers in Iraq, cooly chops Moore's piece of celluloid propaganda to shreds, quite politely.
What's a demagogue to do?
Well, first of all, Moore mispronounces Dr. Gupta's name.
Classy move.
Next, Moore avoids talking about his wretched film, any of the facts in said film, and concentrates instead on, ta-da, the War in Iraq and, Bush-hatred.
Always works for the left.
Except even the left isn't buying this bit of deranged celluloid fantasy.
Our friends at Libertas weigh in on this Moorish meltdown.
If you watch the clip, you’ll see that Moore doesn’t address even a single fact brought up in Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s report about how Americans are more satisfied with their healthcare than any other country, etc… Like most leftists Moore uses emotion (in this case indignation over another subject altogether) to ward off the kryptonite of facts. Moore does try to counter CNN here, but he’s forced to either agree with CNN and then asterisk them to death, or come off as shrilly defensive.
To read the rest of this article, and see the Moore meltdown please click here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:46 AM | Comments (16)
July 09, 2007
Sicko Flat-Lining
Propagandist Michael Moore's most recent effort to convince the American public that a government controlled health care system is, ahem, the finest that money cannot buy—is bombing at the box office.
Hey, when Moore gets sick is he gonna paddle over to Cuba for treatment?
Sure he is.
Fly up Canada to wait in line a few months for an MRI?
Uh-huh?
Grab a plane to England to consult Dr. Mohammed Mohammed?
Oh man, I so hope so.
Here's the thing about Communists/Socialists/Utopians/Whatever and their Liberal fellow travelers: you can only lie and obfuscate for so long and then it all catches up with you.
Even with dopey liberal movie-goers who think Fidel walks on water.
And for all you liberal Jews who just adore this latter day Leni Riefenstahl, click here for some cheerful Michael Moore quotes about Israel.
What a guy.
For the rest of the story about Sicko dying at the box office, click here to go to our friends at Libertas.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:19 AM | Comments (15)
July 01, 2007
Communist-O
1. Confession: I have not seen Michael Moore's latest propaganda effort.
2. I'm not going to.
3. I see no reason to screen work that has the seal of approval of The Daily Worker and The New York Times.
4. All movies are moral landscapes.
5. Michael Moore squats on the same moral landscape as Karl Marx, Josef Stalin, and Yasser Arafat; Moore uses the exact same cinematic methods as Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl, but throws in some clever Lucille Ball-type humor to show that he's, er, a regular guy.
6. The following is a clear-headed review of Moore's latest tissue of lies by my friend and colleague Dirty Harry—at the best film site in the known and unknown universe: Libertas.
Michael Moore may call it Sicko, but Anecdotal-O is a much more appropriate title for one of the most unpersuasive documentary films ever produced. In a country like ours with its imperfect healthcare system, Moore spoils any chance he had at making a convincing argument for change by letting his Marxist tendencies get the better of him. Moore doesn’t want to fix anything. He doesn’t want to make anything better. He simply wants us to socialize our healthcare so we can all live in a utopia like Cuba where we’re supposed to believe a visit to the hospital results in you nearly having to fight doctors and fancy medical equipment off like flies.
To read the rest of the review, please click here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 11:00 AM | Comments (13)
June 25, 2007
Killer Fashion Accessories
Our friends at Libertas report that Hollywood dim-star Cameron Diaz was trekking in Peru carrying a "fashionable" Mao tote bag emblazoned with the Communist Red Star, and one of Chairman Mao's cuter sayings: Serve the People. During the Cultural Revolution this was not-so-subtle code for: Inform on your mother, your father, your sister, your brother, your neighbor, or you'll be sent for re-education.
Um, Cameron, The Shining Path, a Mao Communist terrorist group in Peru has slaughtered some 70,000 people. No wonder the good people of Peru got kind of upset at your groovy fashion choice.
Ugly American anyone?
And let us say this: even if you're not in Peru, Cameron, decent people are offended that you carry a Mao bag as a fashion accessory. This is a man who was responsibe for slaughtering over 50 million people.
Has this body count not penetrated the gates of Beverly Hills?
Or are you so fixated on that mean President Bush.
Cameron, Cameron: I officially nominate you for: What Not to Wear. Accessories that celebrate mass murderers are, ahem, a fashion faux pax, big time.
Cameron, a little advice: If ever you go to Israel do not carry shoulder bag stamped with a Swatztika.
Though that same bag will be a huge hit in Gaza.
Be aware, in Gaza, in spite of the great Nazi bag, you will be kidnapped anyway. And you'll just have to be tolerant; multiculturalism, y'know? That's their culture. And all cultures are equally valid and beautiful, right?
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:12 AM | Comments (13)
June 22, 2007
Mighty Jihad Propaganda
The mighty Debbie Schlussel goes to the movies and, gee what a shock, discovers that A Mighty Heart, panders to Muslim terrorists, enables jihadists—and is a mighty piece of junk.
And I thought Hollywood was going to be, y' know honest and show what a hateful, anti-Semitic bunch of barbarians our enemies truly are.
Just kidding.
Long ago, before this film even went into production, I predicted that this would be a love song to, ahem, tolerance and multi-culturalism. In short: a film that CAIR will love. And any film that CAIR loves, is bad news for America, for Jews, for Israel, for western civilization.
Libertas reports that Paramount, cowards to the bone, never spoke to Daniel Pearl's father, but they did set up a special "inter-faith screening" for, yup, you guessed it CAIR, and some far left Jewish nobody.
Look, the studios make not a dime in Muslim countries, so they're not thinking fiscally.
This is about not getting blown to smithereens.
The studio people remember 9-11. They know who the killers are. And like all appeasers, they, um, appease.
Let me just say this to my collegues:
See: Neville Chamberlain. Body count: approximately thirty-million.
See: Israel who expelled every single Jew from Gaza (apartheid anyone?) — and received Quassam rockets in return.
See: The Native Americans who traded, yup, land for peace. And Hollywood makes weepy, self-righteous movies about that atrocity all the time.
Appeasement invites even more aggression. That's pretty much an iron-clad rule of interpersonal and global relations.
Think about the last Hollywood contract you negotiated.
You're smiling because you know I'm dead right.
The rent-a-cop at the studio gates? He's really putting the fear of Allah into our local jihadists—who despise Hollywood because they know that Hollywood is run by Jews and Zionists and nothing the studios say or do will change that loony-tunes jihad fact. It's taught in every madrassa across the Arab/Muslim world, preached in every Mosque from Gaza to Los Angeles; just as they believe that it was really the Mossad who engineered 9-11, and that 4,000 Jews were given notice not to show up for work in the twin towers on that day. They believe all this with perfect certainty, and that's how they live their grubby, violent little lives.
Hollywood should, must, start fighting back, just as Hollywood courageously fought the Nazis and the Japanese during World War Two—by making excellent, pro-American movies. If Hollywood fails to fight, America will lose her war against the jihadists, for Hollywood movies are vital to America's message of freedom and democracy.
Now to poor Debbie Schlussel who had to sit through this mighty dreck:
In other words, don't judge the Muslims. Don't judge the people who barbaricly killed Pearl because he was a Jew. Don't even think that's why they killed him. Understand the murderers. Understand that it's not right for us to keep murderous terrorists in detention with three gourmet halal meals a day and every religious article they'd ever want. Understand that the Wall Street Journal should never help the CIA with intelligence to counter terrorists.
Click here to read the rest of the review, guaranteed more enjoyable than the movie.
May Daniel Pearl's memory be a blessing.
Hat Tip: Seraphic Cholent Friend, Michael Makiri.
Karen and I wish all our readers a lovely and meaningful Shabbat.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:25 AM | Comments (5)
May 29, 2007
Seraphic Movie Pick: Sancho the Bailiff
As most of my readers know, I have a deep and abiding affection for classical Japanese movies. I consider The Seven Samurai the greatest movie ever made; in fact, watching Seven Samurai as an incredibly ignorant and dopey yeshiva high school kid inspired yours truly to become a screenwriter. And of course, when I dated Karen, one of the first films I took her to see was Kurosawa's masterpiece.
There is another great Japanese film that had a profound effect on me when I first saw it over twenty years ago: Sancho the Bailiff, directed by the great Kenji Mizoguchi.
It is finally available on DVD this week from Criterion. This company issues the best DVD's on the market. Criterion transfers are clean, they go to great lengths to get rid of scratches and dust shadows from the original negatives; their subtitles are crisp, easy to read, and the additional information is actually valuable, not the usual junk you get with so many DVD's. Check out the Criterion Collection.
This is not a film about fearless samurai and stark face-to-face swordplay. The movie is set in 11th century Japan, where slavery was not only legal, but considered part of the natural order of things. Sancho the Bailiff is a cruel slave owner, into whose hands fall a young brother and sister, the kidnapped children of a provincial governor who has been punished for his kindness and honesty to peasants. The mother has been sold into prostitution—an even more degrading form of slavery.
As a child, the Mizoguchi family was reduced to abject poverty during the Russo-Japanese War. Kenji's older sister was given up for adoption. But the adopted family turned around and sold her as a geisha. Mizoguchi never recovered from this betrayal to his beloved sibling. Thus, the theme of female servitute and suffering is a constant in his very best work.
The belief that, "Without mercy, man is like a beast," is repeated many times in this epic film that covers over 20 years in the lives of the family. And as in Mizoguchi's other masterpiece, Ugetsu, this is a film of breathtaking beauty and poetry where women and their narrow choices in medieval Japanese society take center stage.
Ugetsu: a week before I married Karen I rushed to see this film to get some chizuk.
Go figure.
Life of Oharu is another Mizoguchi masterwork, and we anxiously wait for a fine DVD transfer.
Be warned, Sancho the Bailiff is a harrowing movie at 2 hours and 5 minutes, but it is among the greatest films ever made and for me a touchstone in my intellectual and emotional education.
Further Mizoguchi Reading:
The Spirit Moves, by Gary Morris. A nice overview of the directors career.
Kenji Mizoguchi, by Alexander Jacoby. Another look at the directors career, but with valuable information about Mizoguchi's early and rarely seen films. Be warned, Jacoby takes swipes at Kurosawa and another great director, Kon Ichikawa. Film critics are a weird bunch; they have this compulsion, clinical really, to elevate one director at the expense of another.
Strictly Film School gives us a nice synopsis of these Mizoguchi greats: The Osaka Elegy, Sisters of the Gion, The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum, The 47 Ronin, Utamaro and His Five Women, Life of Oharu, Ugetsu, A Geisha, Sansho the Bailiff, Crucified Lovers, and Street of Shame.
Adventures in Space, analyzes The 47 Ronin, and concludes that this unusual Mizoguchi film, a Samurai story, is a masterpiece.
This article focuses exclusively on Street of Shame, a post-World War II production, a Mizoguchi film I have not yet seen.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:58 AM | Comments (2)
May 22, 2007
The OC, Libertas Style
Saturday’s festival was a little different than the one held in L.A. every year. It was really a way of introducing Orange County to the movement. Seven filmmakers introduced themselves, talked about their experience as conservative filmmakers in a medium dominated by the left, and showed a few minutes of their work. I’ve no doubt the combined quality of the work and the charm of the filmmakers won the sold-out crowd over.
Because of Shabbat, we could not attend this important event, but Seraphic friend Dirty Harry gives a full report here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)
May 03, 2007
Roseanne: Kabbalist, Bi-Polar Style
I'm a Hollywood screenwriter. I've got a pretty good imagination. I pride myself on wild narrative leaps that seem to make logical sense. But believe me, the wit and wisdom of Roseanne Barr are simply beyond human imagination—and probably beyond medication.
I am a kabbalist, as was Jesus Christ...(the one whom I follow). He tells me to seek first the Kingdom inside of my soul, and leave the rest to Him. I must in good conscience speak out against injustice especially when the agents of that injustice invoke God. Some blogger calls me a religious bigot for saying these things, and for saying that it takes lots of ritual abuse of children to turn out a "believer". Guilty as charged, and ready to burn at the stake if called to.
The woman is not only ignorant, but she is stark raving mad.
Anyway, Roseanne Barr hates Israel so much that she just can't accept the job from The View.
Ready to burn at the stake if called.
Aw shucks, the little mynx is such a tease.
I just found out yesterday that Seraphic Secret was nominated for Best Series in the JIB Awards for my How I Married Karen Series. Two chapters are posted as samples: Backstory and Seraphic Duel.
The voting is open only until Sunday. I've sort of missed the boat, but even without asking for votes I'm now in second place.
Anywhoo!
I take a great deal of pride in this series and would greatly appreciate your vote in this First Round, so please click here to vote for Seraphic Secret's How I Married Karen.
Thanks so much.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:38 PM | Comments (4)
May 02, 2007
After Rosie... Roseanne
I think the zionists made a huge mistake when they factioned the left in Germany. They ended up trading jewish lives for land, instead of standing together with the socialist factions that oppossed hitler. Zionism was the last nail in the casket of European Jewry. The arab's protection is the only reason any holy site remains in israel. the jews line up to stone women who try to access those sites. I saw it with my own eyes. The arabs do not invade other countries. The israelis do. I am sick of israel and I am sick of zionists. They are propped up by evangelical christians who cannot wait for the arabs to kill them so that their genocidal war god whom they misname jesus can come back.
the jews are raised to be suicide bombers too...
Yup, Barbara Walters is thinking of giving Rosie's chair to Roseanne Barr, the woman who blogged this tissue of filth.
Nice move Barbara.
I have a better idea: give the empty chair to Michelle Malkin.
But that won't happen. Michelle is:
1. Conservative.
2. Articulate
3. Witty sans vulgarity.
4. Pretty.
5. Pro-American.
6. Pro-Israel.
7. Did I mention, pretty?
Barbara prefers hideous, left-wing, anti-Semitic cretins. They are good for ratings. And they make Barbara look, um, civilized.
To read the entire story, and sample the sophisticated wit and wisdom of Roseanne Barr please click here and go to the mighty Michelle Malkin.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 01:50 PM | Comments (10)
May 01, 2007
Moderate Muslims?
Since 9/11, many of us have wondered: Where are the moderate Muslims? If they are out there, why are we not hearing more, and getting more help, from them in the fight against our common foe — the totalitarian Islamists?
Te read Frank Gaffney, Jr.'s entire article, please click here.
Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend, Yonoson Fisgus M.D.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 04:50 PM | Comments (0)
April 23, 2007
I Miss the Blacklist
It is easier to blame films for these spree killings than guns. Guns have been a part of America since America began. I’m no sociologist but these school and workplace shootings appear to be a fairly new phenomenon of the last few decades — and it’s been in those years that guns have actually been harder to get because of gun control laws. However, access to film images of violent nihilsim and the glorification of the anti-hero seem to correlate with the rise of the spree killer. That could be a spurious correlation like the relation between between ice cream sales and rape, but it’s worth thinking about.
What’s troublesome about those who blast movies for their negative effect on society is their lack of intellectual honesty. If images can indeed alter behavior, why is it only the violent image that offends? In 2005 16,692 people were murdered in America. In that same year 45,669 people were diagnosed with AIDS, and over 17,000 died. Sex delivers a death sentence to more people in this country than violence and yet few of those lashing out at violent images seem to care about the hyper-sexualization of the motion picture that has risen along with rape, teen pregnancy, and unwed motherhood… Which brings me to the Imus flap.
To read Seraphic Friend Dirty Harry's entire article at Libertas, please click here.
Speaking of Hollywood blacklists, here's my article: Help, I'm a Hollywood Republican.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 11:00 AM | Comments (13)
April 13, 2007
The Film PBS Does Not Want You to See
"Islam vs. Islamists" focuses on the courageous Muslims in the United States, Canada and Western Europe who are challenging the power structure in virtually every democracy that has been established largely with Saudi money to advance worldwide the insidious ideology known as Islamofascism. In fact, thanks to the MacNeil-Lehrer film, the PBS audience will shortly be treated to an apparently fawning portrait of one of the most worrisome manifestations of that Saudi-backed organizational infrastructure in America: the Muslim Student Association (MSA). The MSA's efforts to recruit and radicalize students and suppress dissenting views on American campuses is a matter of record and alarming in the extreme.
In an exchange with me aired on National Public Radio last week, however, Robert MacNeil explained why he and his team had refused to air "Islam vs. Islamists," describing it as "alarmist" and "extremely one-sided." In other words, a documentary that compellingly portrays what happens to moderate Muslims when they dare to speak up for and participate in democracy, thus defying the Islamists and their champions, is not fit for public airwaves – even in a series specifically created to bring alternative perspectives to their audience.
To read the rest of this article by Frank J. Gaffney Jr., please click here.
In short, P.B.S feels that the filmmakers are being too hard... on the Jihadists.
And be sure to read Libertas on how the jihadist appeasers at P.B.S. are shutting down the voices of the moderate Muslims.
What else can one expect from people who readily travel to Damascus to chat, preen and pose with an assassin, a state sponsor of terrorism, but refuse to debate on Fox News. It's the same mind-set.
From Hollywood, those righteous Liberal souls who are always lecturing about free speech and endlessly reminding us about the blacklist, (with nary a word for the victims of Stalin's crimes, 50 million dead) perfect, progressive silence.
Well, of course, they're too busy buying gazillions of carbon credits, fighting the true evil: global warming.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:47 AM | Comments (4)
April 06, 2007
Hollywood Heroes, Hollywood Morons
It is instructive to compare the personal character and integrity of today’s Hollywood celebrities and those of fifty or sixty years ago. Today, of course, we have 9/11 conspiracy theorists like Rosie O’Donnell and Charlie Sheen. Hanoi Jane Fonda is still active, while Michael Moore’s Web site calls the terrorists who are murdering our men and women in uniform “Minutemen.” The following information is primarily from Wikipedia which, although we recognize that it is not always authoritative or entirely accurate, is probably good enough for our purposes.
For the entire article by Bill Levinson in the fine blog Israpundit, please click here.
Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend, Maurice Sonnenwirth, M.D.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:52 PM | Comments (10)
March 20, 2007
Hollywood Ponders 300
I meet with some Hollywood movers and shakers. We are here to discuss a script that I have written and how to get it off the ground, but invariably the conversation has turned to the huge and "unexpected" box-office success of 300.
A powerful Hollywood Agent says: “My girlfriend dragged me to see it 'cause all the guys are so buff.”
“That was so totally an 'Ab Filter', and lazily applied,” chimes in a Studio Suit, “didn't you notice, all the six-packs are exactly the same.”
A Powerful Producer theorizes: “My kids say it's like the greatest video game ever.”
Powerful Producer's Finicky Assistant points out: “The Queen's almost-see-through outfits, the little leather straps. May I just say: Fab-u-lous.”
Says a sleek Network Executive. “Actually, it's totally gay porn, all those piercings, so kinky, are you kidding me?” She's clad in an extremely tight Gaultier leather outfit — corseted by a hellishly complicated set of criss-crossing silver buckles. I have no idea how she draws breath.
I should keep my mouth shut.
Do I?
I do not.
“I think audiences are responding to the timeless themes that give meaning to the battle of Thermopylae: the courage of the few against the many; the refusal to submit to tyranny; brave and loyal warriors willing to sacrifice, to die for their country.”
Everyone looks at me like I'm the biggest moron in the world.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 06:57 AM | Comments (43)
March 09, 2007
Hollywood's Quislings
That superb Conservative Hollywood blog, Libertas, reports that Colonel Austin Bay attended a fundraiser for Rudy Giuliani here in La-La Land. Not surprisingly, Colonel Bay had some fairly biting observations to make about the Hollywood community.
INTERPOLATION
If the good Colonel only knew the pathetic intellectual footprint (carbon and otherwise) of this town. I cannot count how many meetings I've gone to where President Bush has beeen compared to Herr Hitler.
What's most amazing is that these people speak so openly, so contemptuously of the President, the entire administration, of all Republicans, Conservatives and oh yes, people of faith, unless of course they happen to be Muslim. Listen, Hollywood people have no desire to get their heads chopped off. They know that Jewish physicians and accountants pose little physical threat; and Christian Evangelicals are, well, just nice non-violent people. Nope, these Hollywood folk just loftily assume that everyone in the room shares their ignorant and depraved opinions.
It never occurs to one of these fashionable and arrogant lefties that there could possibly be a dissenting opinion in the room. They are far too overeduacted, and overbred for such nuanced thinking.
A Republican?
Impossible.
Thye have horns, don't they?
Little do they know that the jihadists hate Hollywood people more than anyone on planet earth.
Let us count the ways.
1. Jews control Hollywood. Don't even try and argue. These people are insane.
2. Hollywood movies spread American culture, which is just pure filth. We call it entertainment. Ah, multi-culturalism.
3. Hollywood movies promote female freedom and licentiousness. Hey, I'm not even gonna go there, I wrote Body Double.
4. Hollywood movies are pornography. The jihadists confirm this by watching them over and over and over again.
5. Hollywood is part of the Zionist world conspiracy. Gee, Exodus was made almost 50 years ago. That's a true conspiracy. Way to go, Hollywood Jews!
6. See #1.
Hollywood figures that as long as they go hard left, vigorously oppose the war in Iraq, make anti-war, anti-Marine, anti-movie-movies like Jarhead, and pro-homicide bombing flicks like Syriana, the jihadists will leave them alone.
Wrong.
It's the exact opposite.
Hollywood has shown the barbarians that they are scared, that they are petrified, thus they signal that they are ready to assume the role of a Quisling.
But Hollywood should take a step back, and give this submissive posture some serious thought: Consider the train bombing in Spain, the subway bombing in London. There have been lethal bombings in Kenya, Indonesia, Jordan, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and a Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires. These are countries that are not in the forefront of the war on terror. In fact, some of these contries are quite terror-friendly.
The lesson is simple. The more you appease, the more the jihadists demand. The grievances of the jihadists are endless and truly unspeakable. In the end, they want you and your children to live in a 7th century caliphite. If you refuse, you die. No more Judaism, no more Christianity, no more Buddhism, no more secular humanism. There will only be some mad form of Islam. And naturally, no more Democracy.
Ladies, say goodbye to your beloved Ralph Lauren, D&G, Prada, and Gaultier. Memo from Footwear Hell: Jimmy Choo and Manolo Blahniks will be Strictly Forbidden. If that doesn't put the fear of G-d into you Hollywood Ladies, I don't know what will. No, your wardrobe is gonna get kinda basic: It's gonna be that shmatta that looks like an L.L. Bean family tent: the burqua; it is basic black, true, but still do you really want to look like a sack of Idaho potatoes? And listen, if you don't get with the program, your pretty little head will be carefully placed on the chopping block, and it will happen in some vast public arena, with pious crowds cheering while chomping down shwarma, and praising Allah, and whack! No more worries about global warming.
Have I mentioned clitoridectomies?
Oh yeah, no more movies. Folks, you are out of your j-o-b-s.
You think this is some wild fantasy?
It happened in a few weeks time in Afghanistan. And England and Europe are slowly making small consessions to the "moderate" Muslim councils every day of the week. And you know what happens when you make endless small concessions? Well, the big concessions just roll right over you before you know what's happened.
It happened to Europe in the 30's. And by the end of the war there were over 75 million dead. And it all started with small concessions to Hitler, who, by the way, started with 12 thugs in a beer hall.
These people are starting with several million true believers all over the world. Several million of them are right here in America. Right here in Los Angeles. In your corner Mosque.
And let me tell you, the jihadists are even more dangerous that the Nazis.
Did you ever hear of a Nazi homicide bomber?
To fight the jihadists one must assume a vigorous and disciplined world-wide offensive posture.
You want to fight the jihadists overseas, not inside the gates of the Hollywood studios. Believe me, if Hollywood continues its blind path of surrender and appeasement, the next explosions will not be special effects.
For no one is safe.
END INTERPOLATION
Anywhoooo!
Here's Colonel Austin Bay:
Hollywood has failed to show up for the War on Terror. By “Hollywood” I mean America’s information and media industry, the various Disney, Dreamworks and Madison Avenue image makers and story tellers that thrive on America’s creative liberty and creative energy. The Bedouin misogynists of Al Qaeda and the motley tinpot tyrants that terrorize Earth’s saddest corners have an information warfare edge. By in large global media give the terrorists and tyrants a pass. It’s bitterly ironic. Media elites whose careers and lives depend on the defense and expansion of individual liberty hammer America with the harshest criticism, strangely equating American inadequacies with the terrorists’ and tyrants’ depravities. In a hundred years –as they survey The War on Terror– historians will ask why America’s most creative and able communicators at best reluctantly engaged in the global battle against the tribal and oligarchic killers who threatened the great political experiment which gave them the chance to create without fear.
For the rest of Colonel Bay's article, please click here.
Karen and I wish all our Seraphic Friends a lovely and meaningful Shabbat.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:18 PM | Comments (8)
March 07, 2007
Confirmed: 13 More 1/2 Hour News Hours
Fox makes it official: "FOX News Channel (FNC) entered into an agreement to order 13 additional episodes of The 1½ Hour News Hour. The show will remain in its Sunday primetime slot (10-10:30 PM/ET) with airdates to be announced in the coming weeks."
Via: Mediabistro.com
Liberals beware. You are no longer sole owners of television comedy. You have, gasp, competition, the thing you most fear and hate. Prepare to be offended. Prepare to have every one of your sacred cows skewered. Prepared to do what you do best: kvetch, kvetch, kvetch.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 01:39 PM | Comments (2)
The New Media Age
By Michael Learmonth
From Variety
Fox News is in talks to pick up the satirical news skein "1/2 Hour News Hour" after strong ratings for the second pilot of the show. The show, which makes sport of skewering the political left, was created by Ned Rice and produced by "24" creator Joel Surnow.
The first pilot enjoyed heavy promotion on FNC and from Rush Limbaugh, who starred in the pilot in a sketch with Anne Coulter.
The second pilot rang in 1.4 million viewers and 443,000 in the 25-54 demo at 10 p.m. on Sunday night, matching the perf of the first pilot, which lifted FNC's numbers in the slot 69% over its first quarter average.
If sustained, those numbers would make it the top show in cable news on the weekend, an indication of the market for a satire show that speaks to conservatives.
Hat Tip: Seraphic TV Executive Here in Los Angeles
For too long the major and cable networks have lived in their Liberal bubbles, willfully and arrogantly ignoring the huge and committed Conservative American audience who thirst for appropriate news and entertainment that speaks to their religious and political values.
Fox Cable News nicely addresses the news problem, to some extent balancing out the mighty Liberal bias in the mainstream media—and is rewarded with strong ratings, blowing CNN out of the water. Now "The 1/2 Hour News Hour" can make a good start towards countering the imbalance in the unrelenting leftist bias in network and cable comedy shows.
It remains for a few smart TV executives to understand that the golden fleece of programming is to be found in quality drama and comedy; television shows that speak to the hearts and minds of Conservative leanings Americans.
These shows will inevitably reap huge financial rewards.
Liberalism, like the dinasours, is an extinct species. It is an exhausted ideology running on the fumes of the New Deal and the Civil Rights movement of the 60's. Thus the shows that count on this tired ideology reflect the source of this exhaustion in tired storylines, hackneyed characters, lame plot-lines and lamer jokes. It's no wonder that audiences flock to "24" and to the "1/2 Hour News Hour." A Conservative world view is, by definition, radical. Hence audiences thrill to new and novel plot twists, and actually delight at jokes, that, surprise, do not make fun of President Bush.
Make no mistake about it, audiences have been conditioned—actually brainwashed—by over 57 years of Liberal television. Thus, Conservative writers bring a fresh perspective to the tube—and to the movie screen—witness the fine box office performance of "Amazing Grace."
Those network and movie executives who are clever enough, and savvy enough, and not trapped by rigid ideologies and grim peer pressure, will tap into the receptive hearts of Conservative America—and it is they who will inherit the new media age.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 01:12 AM | Comments (6)
March 06, 2007
Conservative Comedy Garners Ratings
The preliminary ratings for Sunday "1/2 Hour News Hour" TV's only Conservative leaning comedy show are just about the same and even slightly better than the prelims after the first show on Feb. 18th.
The March 4th show got a 0.9 rating, a 1.5 share and approx. 1 million, 38 thousand viewers. Again, the more complete ratings info will surely boost these numbers as they have every week so far.
But the early indication is that the show completely held its original audience, (and may have added to it... we won't know for another day), which is extremely rare.
And just to compare, at the same time Sunday night the other networks' ratings were:
CNN: 0.4 We suspect viewers tune in to see what Anderson Cooper is wearing.
MSNBC: 0.2 Does this channel really exist?
ESPN: 0.7 Sports, who can argue?
HBO: 0.4 Nudity in ancient Rome, catchy. I see the oxen and horses and mules and I go: whoa, over-budget.
Bravo: 0.7. The name is like so Italian, I expect subtitles.
A&E: 0.6 Sounds like a metal shop in Gary, Indiana.
*History Channel: 1.6* The Dark Ages. Times were even worse back then. How comforting.
MTV: 0.5 Girls, garters, guitars. Enough already!
Showtime: 0.3 Suburban mom sells dope. So HBO. Islamic loonies on the loose, but Islam is totally cool. How very HBO. Showtime: not HBO.
Food Network: 0.5 Yay, Alton Brown, you are The Man. Love your movie references. But please, no more, bi-valves. So not kosher!
*Discovery Channel: James Cameron's "Jesus Tomb special," 2.7*. I guess everybody is now Jewish. (Hat Tip: This is Dirty Harry's line, Libertas) Oy. Talk about break-a-way minyans, quorums.
Disney Channel: 1.5 I love Disney because they cater to a niche audiences. I love a business that's a real business.
Spike TV Showing "The Godfather II." 0.9 The best American movie in the last 35 years chopped up by commercials every 6 minutes, a total shandeh! Still, the audience was there.
Sci-Fi Channel: 0.9 Their SFX are hilarious!
TLC: 0.6 Whenever I feel depressed, I go right to TLC, and immediately feel suicidal.
CNBC: 0.1 This is network fare on cable. You can't fool us.
Hat Tip: Seraphic Executive at a Major TV Network here in Los Angeles.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:36 AM | Comments (8)
February 27, 2007
1/2 Hour News Hour Against the Oscars
Even the RE-RUN of the 1/2 Hour News Hour up against the Oscars did relatively well in the overnight ratings.
The only conservative leaning comedy show on television got a 0.7 rating and about 750,000 viewers. That number will probably rise when the full ratings come in later this week.
That's still 44% more viewers than the Fox News Channel had for that time slot--The Oliver North Show--the week before the original run of the show.
That's 68% better than CNN at the same time this Sunday night.
Clearly, the show has an audience.
Clearly, it should be picked up.
Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend at a major TV Network here in Lose Angeles.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)
True Gore
Gore’s mansion, [20-room, eight-bathroom] located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).
Truth is, these people don't even believe their own doomsday predictions. It's all just feel-good politics.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:00 AM | Comments (11)
February 26, 2007
Oscar Night Snooze
Hey, didn't you just love the way Hollywood royalty went out of their way to thank our troops for all the sacrifices they're making in Iraq and Afghanistan?
(Irony meter is turned up to Stratospheric Level, in case you have not noticed.)
Not one word about the war. Not one word acknowledging our troops deployed in war zones at this very moment.
But Hollywood insists that they support our troops.
Even Mao knew that lefties lie, famously stating: “I like to deal with rightists. They say what they really think — not like the leftists, who say one thing and mean another.”
Disgraceful
In the world according to Hollywood, there is no war against Islamic terrorists — but there is a "climate crisis."
Don't you feel all guilty and awful about yourself? Isn't America just a miserable country for melting all those nice polar ice caps? And aren't the elegant Hollywood stars just wonderful and brilliant for, y'know, bringing this impending apocalypse to our attention?
Oh yeah, aren't you just jumping for joy that the Oscars are Green? You know who are really, thrilled? The Islamic loonies who are trying to destroy western civilization. They're sitting and watching this freak show and going: “These Americans are decadent fools. They are worried about switching off lights in their mansions rather than our jihad against Jews, Christians, Israel and America. May Allah bless them.”
No, the color of Oscar was not green but yellow.
Karen really liked Helen Mirren's gown. Pay attention ladies: that's the look you get when the fabric is expertly cut on the bias. Hey, no snarky cracks! Yours truly has spent years on film sets with incredibly talented costume designers and thus have soaked up some pretty weird bits of Anna Wintour-like ephemera.
Listen, I am secure enough in my masculinity to pass on important fashion tips to our readership.
Oscar Hostess Ellen DeGeneres: her various outfits were, um, very Ringling Bros. Did you catch those white shoes? Frightening.
Melissa Ethridge, did you just say that you have a wife? Head in hands, completely puzzled. Please pass the Valium, Karen.
Hey, one of my tante's is attending the Oscars! How'd she get invited? Oy, look at that black shmata she's wearing. It's a crime against humanity. And what's that Klingon necklace wound around her neck? Oh my gosh, it's not my tante from the Bronx, it's Meryl Streep. Will someone please teach that woman the ABC's of fashion. Did "The Devil Wears Prada" leave no residual effects whatsoever? Fourteen Oscar nominations and she still looks like she just rode in on the shtetl express. Absolutely tragic.
Naturally, "United 93," got the cold shoulder. You know why? Because it's about genuine, existential threats — Islamic terror. It's about Americans who bravely fight back, Americans who realize that the government does not have all the answers, and sometimes good citizens have to organize and fight evil. The film is raw and real and chilling, and it touches the very emotions that Hollywood dares not admit even exist. And it is superbly crafted.
For shame.
The Death Montage. Tears pool in my eyes when I see all the great actors, directors, writers and technicians who are no longer with us. And then a photo of the great Japanese director Shoei Imamura flashes on the screen. How in the world did that I miss that? Now I'm really depressed and fall into a sad silence. The Oscar audience is also silent—because they have absolutely no idea who over 99.9% of the dead are, and care even less. Let me tell you, memories are hyper-short in this town.
A few years ago I was making a film with the great Oscar-winning actress Ellen Burstyn. During a few free hours I quizzed her about her amazing career, spending a great deal of time on her work on Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show. At one point Ellen turned to me and said, "Do you know how rare this is? No one in this town cares about movie history."
The only real Hollywood magic came to us, naturally, by way of the new Apple ad for their new phone. A brilliant montage of Hollywood stars saying hello on the phone — and then a shot of the new Apple phone.
This ad was, I have to tell you, thrilling. Not just because I saw my Apple stock shooting up, but because some of the old shots reminded me of what great Hollywood films used to be.
The rest of the evening, along with the films Hollywood chose to honor, was like a massive dose of Thorazine.
P.S. My apologies to Seraphic commenters whose comments were lost on this post. There was a glitch on Movable Type and I had to rewrite and, sigh, post this anew.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:23 AM | Comments (29)
February 22, 2007
"West Bank" Oscars
By Debbie Schlussel
Will the Academy Awards ever stop sympathizing with Islamic terrorists?
Given recent history--and one of its chosen nominees for Sunday's Oscars show--that's doubtful.
This year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated West Bank Story for Best Live Action Short Film.
A take-off on the movie musical classic, "West Side Story," "West Bank Story" reduces unprovoked Islamic terrorism against innocent, mostly Jewish civilians to a Jets versus Sharks feud, solved with dancing, singing, and hummus. If only it were that simple.
But it isn't. In "West Bank Story," the entire conflict is a matter of feuding kosher and Palestinian falafel restaurants. The entire conflict is solved after 20 minutes of musical numbers and hummus-eating. Apparently, filmmaker Ari Sandel hasn't been paying attention to what really goes on in falafel shops -- and behind Israel's green line, not just the West Bank.
To read the rest of this story, please click here.
Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend and collector of Jewish films, Michael Makiri
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 03:05 PM | Comments (2)
1/2 Hour News Hour: 1.5 Million Viewers!
The news gets even better.
The ratings are in for The 1/2 Hour News Hour on Fox. The heavily-promoted premiere delivered 499,000 viewers in the 25-54 demo and 1,478,000 total viewers.
The show gained about 170,000 demo and around 300,000 total viewers from its lead-in. Half the viewers immediately tuned out, giving The Line Up just 231,000 demo and 787,000 viewers at 10:30pm.
SF Chronicle, Feb. 16: "If 1.5 million viewers watched -- slightly less than Stewart's nightly 1.6 million audience and more than Colbert's 1.2 million -- Surnow said, 'it would be a huge number.'"
-- Update: 10:43am: "The show was definitely popular with Tivo users," an e-mailer says. According to Nielsen's live data, the show averaged 1,398,000 viewers and 442,000 in the demo. The original stats, listed above, are live + same day DVR data, showing that 80,000 total viewers and 57,000 demo viewers time-shifted the show and watched it later in the day.
-- Update: 10:46am: The satire's time slot was up 69 percent in viewers and up 94 percent in the 25-54 demo compared to Q1 '07 to date.
Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend at a major TV Network here in Lose Angeles.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:23 PM | Comments (7)
February 21, 2007
The Big (ger) Liars
"Everybody in politics lies, but they [Bill and Hillary Clinton] do it with such ease, it's troubling."
—David Geffen, to Maureen Dowd, NY Times, Feb 21, 2007
I read the entire column and just burst out laughing.
Listen, if a Hollywood producer, excuse me, the Hollywood producer, is "troubled" by the Clinton's, um, dishonesty, then let me tell you, it must be off-the-charts.
Watch for the Clinton attack machine, and it is vicious, to go after Barack Obama with true killer instincts. Obama has very little experience in politics; he's in for a reality check.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 03:46 PM | Comments (6)
The Ratings Are in for 1/2 Hour News Hour
10-10:30PM FOX 1/2 Hour News Hour:
Rating: 0.9
Share: 1.5
HUT (Households Using Television) Level: 65.7%
Estimated Viewers: 1,033,000
Ratings went up 11% from the previous half hour and fell 33% for the next show, which was "The Line Up."
— Just as a comparison, at that hour CNN did a 0.5 rating with just 570,000 viewers. MSNBC did a 0.2 with 219,000 viewers.
— And at that hour a week before on FOX, they only did a 0.5 with 519,000 viewers for "War Stories with Oliver North."
In English: excellent ratings!
It looks like the only things on Cable that beat it in that time slot were the re-run of Futurama on "Adult Swim" with a 1.4 rating and "Patch Adams" on USA also with a 1.4 rating.
If the show can score another 0.9 for the next new broadcast of the show, it looks like the only Conservative leaning comedy show on TV will probably be picked up.
This is very good news.
Hat Tip: Anonymous Tipster at a major network here in Los Angeles.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 11:53 AM | Comments (4)
February 16, 2007
The 1/2 Hour News Hour
Let’s cut to the chase: Fox News’ Half Hour News Hour, the conservative-leaning comedy show created by producer Joel Surnow (24), is hilarious — indeed is flat-out, gut-wrenchingly funny. I recently watched DVDs of the show’s first two episodes — Episode 1 is set to premiere on Fox News this Sunday at 10:00 PM EST, and will be repeated Sunday the 25th. Episode 2 will air March 4th. These first two episodes of the show provide some of the funniest, most outrageous moments I’ve seen on a major TV network. You simply will not believe some of the things this show gets away with saying and showing, how politically incorrect the show genuinely is (as opposed to Bill Maher), how many taboos it breaks …
To read the rest of the story and an early review go to Seraphic Friends, Libertas.
We urge everyone to watch "The 1/2 Hour News Hour."
Karen and I wish all our friends a lovely and meaningful Shabbat.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 02:14 PM | Comments (14)
February 07, 2007
Notes on "24" Season 6
Okay, we're into Season 6 of 24, and it's time for a few random observations. If you have not seen 24, watch out, there are some spoilers here.
1. Love the fact that the "suitcase nuke" was actually: In. A. Suitcase. Truth is, a genuine suitcase nuke would be quite a bit larger.
2. Said suitcase nuke was detonated by a Toys R' Us looking switch. A real nuke would entail a somewhat more, er, complicated system. But listen, this is Hollywood, we have to make things really simple, and most of all, make drama happen very quickly. Details are often incredibly messy.
3. Also, love that the nuke was detonated "in the Valley" and we have not seen any devastation whatsoever, nor one single fatality. Not even a second degree burn. Besides, who cares about the Valley anyway?
4. This season should be titled: "My Family is More Dysfunctional Than Yours. Much More."
5. Presidential Advisor Thomas Lennox, Peter MacNicol, has some of the best lines ever. And though we're supposed to hate him as some sort of right-wing lunatic gone wild, here's his advice to the latest clueless President of the United States regarding the Islamic crazies: "“With all due respect Mr. President, George Washington’s enemies wore bright red coats and marched in a straight line.” You just gotta love this little guy.
6. Mrs. Graeme Bauer, Rena Sofer -- I gave Rena her first Hollywood job in Stranger Among Us. She's the Chatam Sofer's great, great, great grand-daughter. Anyway, she gets all snarky with Jack when, snarling and armed to the teeth, he busts into her home. She's not worried about national security. Nooooo. It's their, em, personal history that's got her all hot and bothered. What is it with the women in Jack's life? Don't they ever get over him?
7. My favorite Minor Character: The Torture Drug Agent. He carries around this cool, shiny briefcase that has some pretty nasty torture drugs neatly tucked inside with which CTU extracts valuable information from various bad guys -- mostly the dozens of moles who have penetrated CTU. Sheesh, that place has more leaks than the Titanic. Anyway, last episode, when Jack ordered the Torture Drug Agent to "Get the kit!" The look on the Agent's face was like: "Whoa, Jack's gonna torture his very own flesh and blood. This I just gotta see!"
8. Sandra Palmer AKA The First Sister. Man is she the world's most annoying Liberal or what? Joel Surnow is the best known Republican in Hollywood. I can just see him sitting at his computer writing the First Sister's scenes, smoking his smelly cigars and laughing like crazy. Hopefully she will get vaporized when nuke #2 goes off in hour twelve or so.
9. What's with Skinny Attitude Girlfriend of the Guy Trying to Arm the Nuke? She looks like Kate Warner, Season #2. Casting people, please, spread your net a bit wider. G-d, I hope Skinny Attitude Girlfriend turns out to be some brilliant cold-hearted killer, like, sigh, Nina.
10. I miss, sigh, Nina. I really do. She was the best antagonist ever. I know writers. I know scripts. C'mon guys, you can bring, sigh, Nina back to life. Just sit down and, y'know, write Nina, sigh, last one, I promise, back into the show.
11. Chloe. Oh. My. Gosh. Do you really think this new glam look suits you? Karen is still in a state of shock. She wants you to get back into your appropriately ratty sweaters and stop pretending to be someone you're not. Helllooo! Asperger's. Remember? Really, this will not do. We're not even going to bring up Morris and his yucky goatee.
12. Nadia. My vote for the latest CTU mole. Big-time. Why? Because the genius of 24 is going against 40 years of liberal TV brainwashing. The writers are spending all this time building up Nadia as this wonderful loyal Muslim American Babe -- who's not too hard on the eyes. And she's also, get this, a registered Republican. Meanwhile, she's being red-flagged by nasty Homeland Security. Poor Nadia. I'm telling you, it's the perfect set-up for a classic Islamic nut job.
13. Jack is no longer schlepping around his all-purpose, secret agent, man-bag. To which we say: Baruch HaShem.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:49 AM | Comments (38)
January 19, 2007
Liberty Arrives to Ebert & Roeper
My good friend, Govindini Murty, Liberty Film Festival Co-Founder, will be guest hosting for Roger Ebert on The Ebert & Roeper Show this Sunday January 21st on ABC (the show airs January 22 in some parts of the country). The Ebert & Roeper Show is the top-rated film review show in America. Check the Ebert & Roeper website for times in your area. On the West Coast, the Ebert & Roeper Show airs Sundays from 6:30PM - 7PM on ABC.
Govindini and Richard Roeper will be reviewing the new releases Alpha Dog, Seraphim Falls, Catch and Release, Arthur & The Invisibles and Alone With Her. Govindini will also be reviewing the new Criterion Collection DVD release of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo and Sanjuro.
Everybody should tune in and watch for Govindini is deeply Conservative, an acute viewer of films and will, no doubt bring a fresh and appealing critical voice to this show.
Thumbs way up!
Karen and I wish all our Seraphic Friends a lovely and meaningful Shabbos.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 01:02 PM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2007
Conservative News Hollywood Style
Have you ever wished that there was a conservative version of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on TV? Now, There is.
Are you ready for some hip, edgy political satire on late night TV that comes from a conservative perspective?
Joel Surnow (creator/executive producer, 24) has created a right-of-center alternative to The Daily Show called "The Half Hour News Hour."
On Saturday, January 20th (early evening) we will be filming two episodes of "The Half Hour News Hour" back to back. The episodes will be taped in front of a live studio audience at the FOX lot on Pico Blvd in West Los Angeles. The shows are scheduled to air on the FOX News Channel in early February, and if well received, will continue to air on a weekly basis.
"The Half Hour News Hour" is all comedy and will feature guest appearances by high-profile stars of the conservative movement. What's needed is a studio audience of hip Republicans to boost the energy and make these shows something special. We want real republicans, not a hired audience! That's US! The taping will start at about 5:00 PM and will take about two hours. You will be added to the drive on list @ FOX and should plan on arriving to the lot no later than 4:00 PM.
If you'd like to be part of the studio audience for this important and highly entertaining event:
Please RSVP as soon as possible to: hhnh2007@gmail.com -- Make sure to mention in the email that you are with the Hollywood Republicans.
Once we receive your RSVP you will be forwarded more detailed information including the exact time and directions. These free tickets will go fast.
This will be a fun, free event and we will be supporting just the kind of show we want on the air...lets all be a part of it!
Hat Tip: Hollywood Republicans
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:11 AM | Comments (7)
January 15, 2007
Jack Bauer Really Needs a New Cell Phone
"In honor of last night and tonight's four-hour Jack Bauer marathon, we thought it'd be a good idea to examine just how good a cellphone Jack needs on his annual "day of doom".
To read the rest of this article, (no spoilers to ruin your day if you taped all four hours) please click here.
For a while Karen and I were keeping a "Kill Count" for each episode of "24." Let me tell you, each season loads of people are killed in horrible ways. Actually, boatloads of people die. The rule of the show is: if you're not Jack, you will probably die -- horribly. Anyway, at one point I turned to Karen and said: "I think they just passed the one-hundred mark," and that was just for just one season.
Anyway, I stopped keeping count. I was worried that maybe it was not a good sign, maybe I was not too normal, you know.
But, I have discovered, someone who is ahead of me.
Way ahead of me.
This guy does away with our general body count and only keeps track of Jack's kill zone. Whoa, talk about specialization.
Check out this encyclopediac website: Jack Bauer Kill Count. The intrepid blogger breaks it all down into episode, time, Person Perishing, what method and weapon Jack uses -- and, get this, each entry is accompanied by a snapshot and video capture.
Simply breathtaking.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 03:37 PM | Comments (8)
January 10, 2007
My Hollywood Gun, Part III, The Gauntlet
"Attack, always attack."
My friend, the heroic Israeli tank commander, told me that in the first few days of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, both fronts, The Sinai and The Golan, were so weakly defended that had the Egyptian or Syrian high command been strategically bolder, tactically smarter, and their soldiers braver, well, the Arab armies could have achieved massive breakthroughs, and Israel would have found herself facing genocide.
The torture of Reginald Denny.
But small, actually tiny pockets, of brave, determined and very well trained Israeli troops, in some cases, just two or three tanks on the Golan, held their ground and attacked enemy forces sometimes a hundred times their strength.
Screenwriter Escapes DGA Building—Note the Irony
"We had no orders except to hold our ground and whenever possible to attack—always attack."
All this whips through my mind as I aim our car—I'm already thinking of the Lexus as a tank, a Centurion—towards the exit of the parking garage. A knot of rioters are milling about at the exit. It's hard to see clearly but, oh boy, it looks like a few of them are brandishing baseball bats.
I'm gonna make a wild guess and assume that they're not Little League dads.
I haven't turned on the car's headlights. We're still lurking in the shadows, not yet detected by the barbarians.
Good thing the car is fashionably black.
Karen says: “Maybe there's another exit.”
“Nope.”
“How do you know?”
"DGA building. I've been here like a zillion times.”
“What are we going to do?”
We.
The Talmud teaches that when a husband or wife uses the collective we it means there is love in the relationship.
Is there a finer way to enter battle than with the woman I have been in love with since third grade?
Ariel, 11, says: “I have to pee.”
Offspring #2, seven-years old, doubles over with an uncontrollable fit of the giggles. She finds this absolutely hysterical.
“You're going to have to hold it in for a while, Ariel, do you think you can do that?” Karen says.
“I guess.”
“Good boy.”
Karen and I exchange glances. Karen gives me a pale smile of encouragement.
Robert
“I just have to say it.”
Karen
“What?”
Robert
“Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night.”
Karen inclines her head, questioning.
Robert
“Bette Davis, All About Eve, 1950, written and directed by the great Joseph L. Mankiewicz.”
Karen sighs, tolerantly but with affection:
Karen
“Robert, Robert.”
In the back seat, the nervous giggles from Offspring #2 increase tenfold.
My Israeli buddy, the tank commander was fond of quoting Sun Tzu's Art of War, and one of his favorite maxim's was:
Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
Okey-dokey.
I inch the car forward, gain speed, 4 mph, 7 mph...
Now: I switch on the headlights using—surprise, Hi-Beams!—drenching the criminals in white light. I lean on the horn and —
WHOOOOOOOOO!
— and the rioters are drenched in the powerful lights, (those Japanese engineers, G-d bless 'em) and the shrieking horn is amplified by the concrete garage walls. The knuckleheads are blinded, frozen as I bear down on them at what seems like Formula One speed, and now they fall back like bowling pins and —
Steve McQueen in Bullitt.
— and we blow right past them, make a sharp left turn—we're ordered by a street sign to turn right, but that would deliver us to the front of the DGA building and directly into the eye of the mob, and so, tires screeching—hey, just like Steve McQueen in Bullitt—we race away from the theater.
Heaving a great sigh, I realize that I have not taken a breath in, gee willikers, a long, long time.
I zoom down the block, pull over, and gulp oxygen.
“You okay?” Karen asks.
I nod.
But my heart is slamming in my chest like a Ginger Baker solo.
Hey, Los Angeles is Just Like Fatah Land—Only More Fashionable
Karen snaps on her little flashlight, studies the Thomas Guide. Using her index finger, she traces a route home.
“I think we should stick to the main streets, it'll probably be safer.” Karen says.
“You navigate. I'll pilot.”
“Let's get moving.” Karen cautions.
“Check.”
Karen's like: Huh?
I have seen way too many war movies. Seriously.
Anyhoo:
As we cruise through the chaotic streets we spot fires burning all over the city. A canopy of red and orange spreads through the velvety darkness. It's kind of beautiful, like a romantic J.M. W. Turner canvas.
Small businesses are deliberately torched.
Orange streaks of fire inscribe themselves against the velvety sky. It takes me a moment to recognize the distinctive signature of Molotov cocktails.
Los Angeles has turned into Fatah Land.
“Where's the Fire Department?” Karen asks.
Looters help themselves to everything from television sets and stereos to diapers and liquor.
Every so often we hear the distinctive flat crack of gun fire.
Nowhere do we see any police.
Trying to avoid a massive traffic jam, I turn down a side-street, Karen leans forward, spots something and cries:
“No!”
Thirty yards separate us from a group of thugs who are chilling in the street. They watch us with flinty eyes. All wicked and street savvy, they shuffle in our direction.
They're all: yo, yo, yo.
And I'm all: oy, oy, oy.
Call me crazy, but I have a sneaking suspicion they're not looking to discuss the cinema of Oscar Micheaux.
“Let's get out of here,” Karen says.
Who am I to disagree with the love of my life?
I shift into reverse. Back up a few feet, shift into drive, angling for a sharp U turn, but the thugs are coming up awfully fast in my rear-view mirror.
I'm pretty sure one of the locals is toting a Tec 9. Or maybe it's just a chunk of lumber.
And I've got a Swiss Army Knife.
Talk about being out-gunned.
Do not mess with Gloria Grahame.
“Robert...” says Karen says through clenched teeth.
No time for a neat, Driver's Ed. three-point turn.
I blast forward, squeak through a gap between two parked cars, hurtle right up on the sidewalk, and then, ca-runch! yet another bone rattling move down the high curb, back into the street and:
Away.
We.
Go.
“Some move,” says Karen.
She touches my shoulder. And to this very day I still feel the cool imprint of her hand.
It's Karen's way of saying, “My hero.”
Or at least that's what I tell myself.
Entry in Robert's Official Screenwriting Notebook: write this extremely scary, axle-cracking maneuver into your next script—no matter what the subject matter.
“I really, really, really have to pee,” Ariel reminds us.
I hand him an empty styrofoam coffee cup.
Twenty Minutes to Get Anywhere in Los Angeles—Except During, Ahem, Civil Unrest
It takes us over an hour-and-a-half to get home. Normally, this drive would take maybe twenty minutes.
But we have to circle round and double-back countless times in order to avoid choked arteries, major intersections where madness reigns—traffic lights are ignored—and then there are unknown side streets that cause Karen to observe:
“We'll never get out of there alive.”
Listening to the radio we hear about the Rodney King verdict. So that's the grievance du jour.
The Fire Department, we learn, is not being deployed because their men have come under intense gun fire.
We hear—and I have trouble believing this report—that the Los Angeles Police Department has been,"Pulled back for their own safety."
Huh?
I thought that was part of the job description.
Dopey me.
Casa Avrech: I carry Offspring # 2 to her bed where she recites the Sh'ma and then promptly falls asleep. We tell Ariel how proud of him we are. He shrugs. No big deal. Five minutes later he's fast asleep.
Karen, crisp and efficient, pins a bed sheet over the large picture window in the living room. We cannot be too careful. I search the house for a weapon, settle on an old ice ax from my mountain climbing days. It's an elegant tool with wicked potential in hand to hand combat, but obviously useless against firearms or a hail of Molotov cocktails.
Abruptly, I feel a burning pain—a white hot spike—shooting through both my arms. Did I get hit by a stray bullet?
I examine my hands and gosh, my fingers are curled into claws; it takes me a moment to realize that it's caused by gripping the steering wheel so hard. Painful muscle cramps travel from my knuckles into my shoulders. It takes at least an hour for my fingers to relax, for the pain to subside.
On the TV, Karen and I watch as Reginald Denny gets his brains bashed in; we gaze in horror and disbelief as the barbarians dance over his broken body. Tears in our eyes, we see, G-d bless them, pious