Category Archives: Hollywood

The Wisdom of Hollywood Screenwriters

From where do we draw wisdom? First and foremost, Seraphic Secret relies on the Torah—written and oral—on the lessons of 3,000 years of Jewish history, and on the common sense advice of my wife Karen. And then there are the movies, a moral landscape of immeasurable power where searing images and razor-sharp dialogue deliver lessons [...]

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Friday Fashion: Hollywood Males It In

The operative word is effortless. In truth, Chaplin’s style was only achieved through the superlative tailoring of the English Savile Row firm, Anderson & Sheppard. As the new book, Anderson & Sheppard: A Style is Born, edited by Graydon Carter and Cullen Murphy, makes clear, the venerable British tailors  shunned actors and other show-biz types [...]

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Friday Fashion: Hollywood on Parade

Seraphic Secret was glancing through the latest issue of the “National Enquirer” the other day—how else am I going to learn about what’s going on in Hollywood?—and was horrified to discover that this tabloid has a rather unhealthy fixation on celebrity photos that focus on cellulite, disheveled stars in flip-flops  taking out the garbage, and [...]

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Clark Gable: A Child… A Bull… No Filth

John Lee Mahin (1902-1984) was one of the greatest screenwriters. His credits include some of Hollywood’s most enduring classics: Scarface (1932), Red Dust (1932), Bombshell (1933), China Seas (1935), Wife Versus Secretary (1936), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) with uncredited contributions to, among others, A Star is Born (1937),  Test Pilot (1938), Gone With [...]

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Friday Fashion: Turban Time in Hollywood

  When asked to define the essence of Hollywood glamour, the multi-talented director Edmund Goulding replied: “It’s the magnetism that changes the current of every movie fan’s life and persuades a girl that she must have a dress like the one Joan Crawford wore in her last picture. It’s the mesmerism that induces a boy [...]

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Raoul Walsh: Man + Woman = Movie

In a long and exhausting story conference at the dawn of my screenwriting career, as Brian De Palma and I wrestled with the Byzantine plot of Body Double (1984) I asked Brian what on earth was the motivation for our main character’s line of action. “There are only two valid dramatic motivations for anything,” said [...]

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William Powell’s My Man Godfrey: Lost & Found

Certainly one of the most talented and able actors during Hollywood’s Golden Age, William Powell personified the image of the sophisticated man about town ready to disarm with the perfect quip. In My Man Godfrey (1936) the classic screwball comedy in which he starred opposite the great Carole Lombard, Powell found the ideal vehicle as [...]

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Seraphic Secret Hollywood Star Quiz: Answer Revealed

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Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1940′s: 1946—1949

We continue our series of the Twenty Greatest Movies of each decade. Here are our our picks for the last five great movies of the 1940′s. 16. Notorious, 1946. No American actor has tampered with his own charming image more successfully than Cary Grant. In Only Angels Have Wings (1939) he is the tough boss [...]

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Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1940′s: 1944—1946

We continue our series of the Twenty Greatest Movies of each decade. Last week we listed the first Ten Greatest Movies of the 1940′s. Our list continues with the next five great movies. 11. Double Indemnity, 1944. Once again, a Barbara Stanwyck performance that is nothing less than perfection. This time Stanwyck plays bad blond [...]

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