Seraphic Secret

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

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“I don’t think much of most of the films I made, but being a movie star was something I liked very much… My film career faded. A man can go on playing certain roles till he’s sixty. But not a woman… 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

Edward Hopper (1882–1967)
Dawn in Pennsylvania, 1942
Oil on canvas
61.9 x 112.4 cm
Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, Chicago,© Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper, licensed by the Whitney Museum of American Art

 

Richard Avedon, Penelope Tree, New York City, 1967

 

 

Elizabeth Taylor, 1950, photo by Davis Boulton

 

1924 Hispano Suiza H6C Tulipwood 02

 

“Just try and keep up with those feet of his sometime! Try and look graceful while thinking where your right hand should be, and how your head should be held, and which foot you end the next eight bars on, and whether you’re near enough to the steps to leap up six of them backward without looking. Not to mention those Astaire rhythms. Did you ever count the different tempos he can think up in three minutes?” —Ginger Rogers, in a May 1936 interview for Family Circle

 

Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000), The Migration Series, panel no. 31: The migrants found improved housing when they arrived north., 1940–41, Casein tempera on hardboard, 30.48 x 45.72 cm, The Phillips Collection, Washington DC, © 2016 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle

 

RIP Peggy Cummins (December 18, 1925 – December 29, 2017)
Cummins starred in one of my all time favorite films, Gun Crazy, 1950. The Welsh born actress played an American femme fatale in a pitch perfect performance.

 

 

High school prom night, 1958, photo by Francis Miller

 

Earth sculpture by Andy Galsworthy

 

Horst P. Horst
Birthday Gloves, New York
1947
© Condé Nast/Horst Estate

 

Corneille de Lyon
French, 1500/10–1575
Portrait of Louise de Halluin, dame de Cipierre, c. 1555
Oil on panel
21.4 x 17.8 cm (8 7/16 x 7 in.); painted surface: 20.5 x 16.5 cm (8 1/16 x 6 1/2 in.)
Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection,

 

“As an actress, I have always believed that the truer challenge, the deeper obligation, begins after the the camera stops. My role as a woman in my community and in my home has always overshadowed the excitement of any part I have ever played on stage or screen.”
—Ann Blyth

 

Ralston Crawford (American, 1906–1978)
Smith Silo, Exton, 1936–37
Oil on canvas
76.8 x 91.4 cm Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, © Ralston Crawford Estate

 

Eric Swayne, Jacqueline Bisset, 1963

 

Australian poster
The Outlaw, 1941

 

Yiddish Poster: “Remember Once and For All: Spitting On the Floor Is Loathsome and Shameful, Don’t Do It!“, 1923

 

 

 

Mary Carr and Dorothy Mackaill, Kept Husbands, 1931
Screenplay by Louis Sarecky
Adaptation by Forrest Halsey, Alfred Jackson

 

Livia Yarden wishes all our friends and relatives a lovely and meaningful Shabbat.

 

Ed Ruscha, END, 1983, oil on canvas, 36 x 40 inches

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  1. Just watched a Fred and Ginger Marathon. My aunt DVR’ed “Follow the Fleet,” “Swingtime,” “Roberta,” “Flying Down to Rio,” and “Shall We Dance.” Great time!

    (Not unrelated: we also watched a number of William Powell: “Emperor’s Candlesticks”, Flo Zeigfield story, two Thin movies, a Philo Vance film, and “My Man Godfrey.”)

    Fun times. Love the old films

  2. I knew Ann Blyth slightly and Jane Russell better. Ann’s husband, Jim McNulty, was an OB at Good Samaritan in LA. When they close their OB service, he had to move his practice to Cedars. He complained they could not pronounce his name on the PA system but he was joking.
    Jane did very well in LA real estate. She was very shrewd in business although she did not look that smart.
    Neither needed the movie career after the glamour faded.

  3. Re Joan Bennett. Unusual as it may be, her comment is sound and reasonable. When her career spiraled into decline she was coming off a pair of successful films with Spencer Tracy, Father of the Bride, and Father’s Little Dividend, but she married Walter Wanger, an awful jerk, who took her money and put it into Joan of Arc, and when that tanked, shot Jennings Lang, Joan’s agent.

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