—Jimmy Stewart
![“Why, she was pressed, does she think she provoked such strong feelings of empathy from her audiences? After all, she was not a sex symbol (‘I sure wasn’t’), so what was it - her beauty, her vulnerability, her sense of humor, her sensitivity? - that gave her that special aura? 'It’s impossible for me to know,’ [Audrey Hepburn] said with hesitation, 'but if you asked me what I would like it to be, though it may sound presumptuous to say so, it’s an experience I’ve had with other performers who somehow make you open up to them. For me, it always has to do with some kind of affection, love, a warmth.’ 'I myself was born with an enormous need for affection and a terrible need to give it,’ she went on. 'That’s what I’d like to think maybe has been the appeal. People have recognized something in me they have themselves – the need to receive affection and the need to give it. Does that sound soppy?’” -excerpted from New York Times interview, April 1991](http://www.seraphicpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/audreyh.jpg)
‘It’s impossible for me to know,’ [Audrey Hepburn] said with hesitation, ‘but if you asked me what I would like it to be, though it may sound presumptuous to say so, it’s an experience I’ve had with other performers who somehow make you open up to them. For me, it always has to do with some kind of affection, love, a warmth.’
‘I myself was born with an enormous need for affection and a terrible need to give it,’ she went on. ‘That’s what I’d like to think maybe has been the appeal. People have recognized something in me they have themselves – the need to receive affection and the need to give it. Does that sound soppy?’”
-excerpted from New York Times interview, April 1991
Photo by Eve Arnold. The film was written by MM’s husband Arthur Miller expressly for her — and it is terrible. This was Clark Gable’s last movie.
![“[Herrmann’s score for the sci-fi classic The Day The Earth Stood Still] was another scoring milestone that anticipated the era of electronic music with its then unheard of instrumentation for electric violin, electric bass, two high and low electric theremins, four pianos, four harps and a ‘very strange section of about 30-odd brass.’…What the film needed was an extraterrestrial strangeness, a sense of the bizarre and unsettling; this Herrmann achieved through his wisely sparse electronic soundtrack. If the music’s impact is lessened today, the reason is not the score itself but the host of inferior imitations its success spawned.” -excerpted from A Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann by Steven Smith](http://www.seraphicpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/day.jpg)
If the music’s impact is lessened today, the reason is not the score itself but the host of inferior imitations its success spawned.”
-excerpted from A Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann by Steven Smith
Q: A critic who admires your work very much said that, in The Trial, you were repeating yourself…
Welles: Exactly, I repeated myself. I believe we do it all the time. We always take up certain elements again. How can it be avoided? An actor’s voice always has the same timbre and, consequently, he repeats himself. It is the same for a singer, a painter…There are always certain things that come back, for they are part of one’s personality, of one’s style. If these things didn’t come into play, a personality would be so complex that it would become impossible to identify it.
It is not my intention to repeat myself, but in my work there should certainly be references to what I have done in the past. Say what you will, but The Trial is the best film I ever made…I have never been so happy as when I made this film.“
-excerpted from Orson Welles: Interviews
“Dandridge was a staggeringly beautiful actress. She was born and raised in Los Angeles, in an upper-middle-class family. In the late 1940s or early 1950s, one of her uncles died and the family went to Augusta, Georgia, for the funeral. She described the utter terror she felt in that small Southern city – the looks the people gave her, the comments they made, the blatant racism and hatred she encountered there.”
-photographer Phil Stern
“My retribution is greater. With all my heart, I still love the man I killed.”
-W. Somerset Maugham, The Letter (1925).
![Theda Bara b. Theodosia Goodman, in a publicity shot for A Fool There Was (1915, dir. Frank Powell) (via) “I was held up as one who delighted in the lure of destruction and evil-doing…hardly a day passes that the postman does not bring me letters written along similar lines. Many of them attack me most unmercifully. Some intimate that no woman could portray [femme fatales] without having had the actual experience. Here is a letter I received during the past few months: You are a menace to the human race. Man is a mere toy in your hands or those of women like you. Your type inevitably leads to ruin and destruction. Those glittering eyes are like those of the serpent, except they are more dangerous. Such letters hurt. It is impossible to accustom myself to them. Why do people hate me so? I try to show the world how attractive sin can be, how very beautiful, so that one must be always on the lookout and know evil even in disguise. I am a moral teacher then. But what is my reward? I am detested. People seem to forget that I am only an actress; that an actress should never show her real self to an audience, else she ceases to be an actress.” -Bara, quoted in The Pittsburgh Press (April 1916)](http://www.seraphicpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/theda.jpg)
“I was held up as one who delighted in the lure of destruction and evil-doing…hardly a day passes that the postman does not bring me letters written along similar lines. Many of them attack me most unmercifully. Some intimate that no woman could portray [femme fatales] without having had the actual experience.
Here is a letter I received during the past few months:
You are a menace to the human race. Man is a mere toy in your hands or those of women like you. Your type inevitably leads to ruin and destruction. Those glittering eyes are like those of the serpent, except they are more dangerous.
Such letters hurt. It is impossible to accustom myself to them. Why do people hate me so? I try to show the world how attractive sin can be, how very beautiful, so that one must be always on the lookout and know evil even in disguise. I am a moral teacher then. But what is my reward? I am detested.
People seem to forget that I am only an actress; that an actress should never show her real self to an audience, else she ceases to be an actress.”
-Bara, quoted in The Pittsburgh Press (April 1916)
Wow!
Ok, there is more I want to write, but
Wow!
Myrna Loy: Yes, but there are the parts she played and then there was Loy.
Audrey Hepburn: With her it wasn’t mere sex appeal. There was something else. Her appeal, e.g., in “Sabrina” and in “Charade” — and, for that matter in “Wait Until Dark” — wasn’t sex but an attraction unlike any other female actress I can think of. It would require more analysis than this space has room for.
“Gold Diggers of 1933:” That’s the one where very young (21 or 22) Ginger Rogers sang the pig-latin version of “We’re in the Money.” Quite something to listen to.
“Red Dust”: My favorite movie with Jean Harlow, and there are so many good ones.
Greer Garson: I always thought that if she and Maureen O’Hara ever appeared in the same movie the film would catch fire.
Doug Fairbanks: He and Buster Keaton (for different reasons) are two of the silent stars that I recommend people watch as many of his (their) movies to see the ground they broke for much that followed. Go out of your way to see his movies.
Gary Cooper: Definitely 1930s photo. In that photo he looks much like the photo Edward Steichen took of him in 1930. (See http://www.fep-photo.org/exhibition/edward-steichen-star-power/)
Theda Bara: Some years ago I found references to her (Theodosia Goodman) being the earliest dated — possibly first — bas mitzvah. Her parents were involved in the early Reform movement.
“Klaatu barada nikto. Remember that.”
Wonderful pictures. On Audrey she had a terrible childhood. Her father, fearing the Nazis would invade Britain, takes them to Holland where they of course live under Nazi occupation shortly after. Audrey had a near starvation diet.
She was estranged from her father for the rest of his life, although in later years she tried to reconcile.
As to her appeal? Agreed, she wasn’t sexy – but chic thanks to her wardrobe. She seemed like a very approachable woman.
As I think she was.
Wonderful pictures – thanks for showing them!
You had me with the first photo.
“There ought to be a law against any man who doesn’t want to marry Myrna Loy.”
—Jimmy Stewart
Truer words were never spoken. 🙂
I saw “The Day the Earth Stood Still” in theaters and it was very powerful, even with the poor special effects of the time.
Who was Audrey Hepburn talking about here? or was someone else talking about AH?
“Why, she was pressed, does she think she provoked such strong feelings of empathy from her audiences? After all, she was not a sex symbol (‘I sure wasn’t’), so what was it – her beauty, her vulnerability, her sense of humor, her sensitivity? – that gave her that special aura?
This is an excerpt from a NY Times interview with Audrey Hepburn.