Seraphic Secret

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

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“The trouble with Hollywood is that the producers and agents are the aristocrats… which made actors who make their living in Hollywood usually feel they are some sort of scum. They looked for other means of showing off and were great on rallies for political candidates.”
—James Mason

Robert Delaunay
Eiffel Tower and Gardens, Champ de Mars, 1922
Oil on canvas, 178.1 x 170.4 cm
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.,

 

Brenda Marshall, 1942, who gave up her film career to be Mrs. William Holden, wearing a gown by Milo Anderson

 

Italian poster for the Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall film To Have and Have Not (1944), released in Italy after liberation from German occupation in 1945

 

Brigitte Bardot and Kim Novak at the Cannes Film Festival, 1955

 

Horst P. Horst
Portrait of Barbara “Babe” Cushing Mortimer Paley, Vogue, February 1946

 

“In 1957, after I landed a part in a Broadway revival of Mister Roberts, the playwright William Inge came backstage one night and invited me to a party. There were only two people there: Mr Inge and an absolutely stunning lady. He introduced us, but I didn’t catch her name. She was a mature woman, with a low, kind of whisky voice, but she had a youthful energy about her. And she was funny, not only laughing at my jokes but making me laugh, too. I was bowled over. She was wearing a silk blouse with nothing underneath—highly unusual for the 1950s. And when she caught me staring at her beautiful breasts, she just smiled and said: ‘My eyes are up here.’”
—Burt Reynolds recalling his only encounter with Greta Garbo in his autobiography “But Enough About Me,” 2015.

 

Robert Delaunay
Portrait of Madame Heim, 1926
Oil on canvas, 120 x 75 cm

 

Model wearing a suit, hat and gloves by Adrian, 1947
Gilbert Adrian, who had been the head designer for MGM, left the studio in 1941 to start his own fashion line based in Beverly Hills

 

The 1947 Norman Timbs Special, with its front-mounted cockpit and curves leading to a raindrop tail. Timbs, an Indy racing engineer, made the car with a Buick Straight 8 engine placed at the rear of the chassis.

 

Dovima modeling an evening gown by Jole Veneziani in a photo by Richard Avedon for Vogue, Milan, 1958

 

French poster by Boris Grinsson, The Lady from Shanghai, 1948

 

“You know the old story of the chameleon. Put him on green, he turns green. Put him on black, he turns black. But if you put him on plaid, he explodes.”
—Jean Seberg, who committed suicide in 1979, age 40.

 

Robert Delaunay
The Eiffel Tower and the Airplane, 1925
Oil on canvas, 155 x 95 cm
Courtesy Galerie Le Minotaure, Paris

 

Jean Seberg (1938-1979) wearing a hat by Yves Saint Laurent, 1963. Photo by Carlo Bavagnoli

 

Art Deco Chrome “Superlectric” Toaster Series 66, 1930s

 

The Tarot Reader, Bridget Tichenor and Jean Patchett in an Irving Penn photo for Vogue, 1949

 

The Hamilton Coronado, 1937, Art Deco wristwatch features 14K white gold, black enamel, and blued steel hands.

 

“I buried my negatives in the ground in order that there should be some record of our tragedy.” – Henryk Ross
Photographs of the Jews of the Lodz Ghetto, Poland; top photo, self-portrait

 

Lielle Meital wishes all our friends and relatives a beautiful and peaceful Shabbat.

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Comments

  1. “She was wearing a silk blouse with nothing underneath—highly unusual for the 1950s. And when she caught me staring at her beautiful breasts, she just smiled and said: ‘My eyes are up here.’”

    That to me is an enigma of so many woman. Wear something revealing, then chastise the man for looking.

    Marion Davies, in her book The Times We Had said some interesting things about Garbo. For one she forbade anyone not necessary on her set, but was always coming to Marion’s set.

  2. Re Burt Reynolds anecdote. Fun and believable. Wish I could have been there and known him. The opposite of my view on James Mason, an able man who always communicated self pity and pointless anger.

  3. The Norman Tibbs Special looks fast, but placing the engine at the rear of the chassis seems like it would hurt handling….

    I love the 2 Eiffel Tower paintings,

    BB and Kim Novak — 2 beauties together! As I’ve told Robert before, Kim was (in my youth) my ideal of a blonde, sex goddess. Even her bare back looks incredibly sexy.

    I love the Hamilton watch — uber Art Deco!

    I love reading about the various women you post here! Well done, Robert.

  4. Lielle Mietal looks like the girl in the third Lodz photo.

    The woman’s clothes from the 1950s looks so much better to me, probably because I was a boy then.

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