Seraphic Secret

Robert J. Avrech: Emmy Award winning screenwriter. Movie fanatic. Helplessly and hopelessly in love with my wife since age nine.

Chanukah

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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Rita Hayworth in the famous gown Jean Louis designed for Gilda, 1946
Jean Louis: “But, you know, Columbia didn’t have many stars to design for. They had Rita Hayworth. Period. So I tried to make everything for her very special, because it was also my chance to do things, to do special things. She was very easy. She wore what we gave her. Rita was absolutely the most marvelous girl, but she stand like this, and that’s it, you fit her. She hate to fit. ‘Get me out of it.’ That’s it. That’s all she says. But I had great freedom in how I dressed her. She never, never said I don’t like one thing – she’s really wonderful, no trouble. With Rita you always had to design to show off her body – not her legs, but her body; I mean you couldn’t put her in a business suit. Not because the studio would have objected, but because that was her personality. Rita Hayworth was known for that, for being a beautiful woman, and people didn’t want to see Rita Hayworth in a business suit.”
—excerpt “People Will Talk” by John Kobal

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Chanukah 2020, The Battle Continues

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Here is a timeless message from Simon the Maccabee:

“We have not taken a foreign land, nor did we take the property of others — for this is the inheritance of our fathers, which was for some time unjustly possessed by our enemies. But we, having the opportunity, returned to us the inheritance of our fathers.”

— First Book of the Maccabees, 15:33-34.

“לא ארץ נוכריה לקחנו ולא ברכוש זרים משלנו, כי אם נחלת אבותינו, אשר בידי אויבינו בעת מן העיתים בלא משפט נכבשה. ואנחנו כאשר הייתה לנו עת, הושיבונו נחלת אבותינו” (ספר מקבים א, טו’ לג-לד) [Read more…] about Chanukah 2020, The Battle Continues

Chanukah Before Extermination

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Chanukah in the Westerbork Camp, Netherlands
Uncredited and Undated Photograph
Westerbork was established by the Dutch government as a camp for Jews fleeing persecution by the Nazis. It was taken over by the Germans in 1942, at which point it became a transit point for shipping Jews to the extermination camps. Approximately 98,000 Jews were deported from Westerbork. Virtually all of them perished. Among the victims who went to their deaths through Westerbork were Anne Frank and her older sister Margo.

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“The golden age is gone, and with it most of the people of great taste. It doesn’t seem to be any fun any more.”
— Joan Bennett in a 1984 interview

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Chanukah 2019, The Battle Continues

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Here is a timeless message from Simon the Maccabee:

“We have not taken a foreign land, nor did we take the property of others — for this is the inheritance of our fathers, which was for some time unjustly possessed by our enemies. But we, having the opportunity, returned to us the inheritance of our fathers.”

— First Book of the Maccabees, 15:33-34.

“לא ארץ נוכריה לקחנו ולא ברכוש זרים משלנו, כי אם נחלת אבותינו, אשר בידי אויבינו בעת מן העיתים בלא משפט נכבשה. ואנחנו כאשר הייתה לנו עת, הושיבונו נחלת אבותינו” (ספר מקבים א, טו’ לג-לד) [Read more…] about Chanukah 2019, The Battle Continues