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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On watching the Psycho shower scene for the first time: “When I saw it, and I saw it cut together, and I saw the boom, boom, and the music and everything, I absolutely went… I just was crazy. I really screamed. I never take a shower. I cannot take a shower. ‘Cause it never dawned on me until that moment how vulnerable and defenseless one is. It never entered my head until I saw that.” —Janet Leigh

Cecilia Beaux
Self-Portrait, 1894
oil on canvas
Unframed: 25 x 20 in.
Framed: 30 x 25 1/4 x 1 1/8 in.
National Academy Museum, New York

 

Irish actress Peggy Cummins (1925-2017) was put under contract to Twentieth Century Fox by Darryl F. Zanuck and slated to play the lead in Forever Amber. Instead, Linda Darnell got the lead. The studio claimed that Cummins looked too young for the part. Cummins was crushed and thought of returning to Great Britain. But Cummins was soon cast as Annie Laurie Starr in the B film classic, Gun Crazy, 1950), the movie for which she is best remembered. Funny how things work in Hollywood. Forever Amber is a competent bore that hardly anyone remembers, whereas Gun Crazy has been recognized as a classic.

 

Gun Crazy was released in some territories with the alternate title, Deadly is the Female.

 

Harold Feinstein Reflected Self-portrait in a “Take Your Own Photos” Booth Mirror, Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York, 1973

 

Claude Monet (1840-1926)
Meule
signed and dated ‘Claude Monet 91’ (lower left)
oil on canvas
28 5/8 x 36 ¼ in. (72.7 x 92.1 cm.)
Painted in 1891

 

Ann Miller, c.1945
“Honestly, I have had to live like a high priestess… It is a very, very lonely life. When you work the way I work — that means hard — there’s no time for play.”
—Ann Miller

 

Samuel F.B. Morse
Self-Portrait
Watercolor on ivory
Unframed: 3 1/4 x 2 5/8 in.
Framed: 12 x 11 1/4 in.
National Academy Museum, New York
Gift of Samuel P. Avery, John G. Brown, Thomas B. Clarke, Lockwood de Forest, Daniel Huntington, James C. Nicoll, and Harry W. Watrous, 1900

 

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Refugee Reunion, New York, 1946

 

De Bethune Dream Watch 5 in Grade 5 titanium. De Bethune is an independent Swiss watch company who produce horological masterpieces. To test drive this dream and find out the cost you need to make an appointment. Or you can buy a home, and a Morgan auto.

 

Harold Feinstein Reflected Self-portrait in Beauty Parlor Window
New York City, 1964

 

1960 Morgan Plus 4 is the Morgan I would purchase.

 

Marlene Dietrich, 1935
“Most people who make movies are in real life a bitter disappointment. I, on the other hand, am so much better in real life.”
—Marlene Dietrich

 

Will Barnet, Self-Portrait, 1981. Oil on canvas, 31 ⅛ × 45 ½ in. National Academy of Design, New York © 2018 Will Barnet Trust / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

 

Photo by Yusuke Sakai

 

Photo by Robert J. Avrech

 

W. Eugene Smith
Orson Welles arrives at the premiere of Citizen Kane, 1941

 

Rick McGinnis
Alcazar, Seville,
Spain, 2007

 

Three-tiered Seder plate
Moshe Zabari, Israeli, b. 1935
New York, New York, United States, 1984
Silver: fabricated, spun, hammered, embossed, welded, and forged; formed wire; lucite tiers
Overall: 14 1/2 × 18 1/4 in. (36.8 × 46.4 cm)

 

Pinchas Tzvi wishes all our friends and relatives a peaceful and healthy Shabbat.

 

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Comments

  2. Marlene Dietrich…reminds me:

    In the 1950s, Erich Maria Remarque came to a friend with a dilemma: two women were pursuing him.

    “So I said, ‘Oh, really, Erich, that sounds terrible, who are they?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘one of them is Paulette Goddard and the other is Marlene Dietrich.’ So I said, ‘Well, Erich, my God, you’re in real trouble here.’ But he was deadly serious. ‘Which one do you think I should go for, Douglas? ‘That is a terrible dilemma, Erich, I mean, my God, this is something we have to think about very carefully.’ ‘You know,’ he said, ‘Marlene is very attractive, but Paulette is really good at the stock market. I think I should go for Paulette.’ So I said to him, ‘Well, Erich, the stock market is very important, no doubt about that.’

    As a Remarque fan, I certainly hope he was kidding about this decision process. (Which would tend to belie the title of the autobiography I am quoting from: Erich Maria Remarque: The Last Romantic.)]

    • I think I would have gone for Paulette. Not that I wouldn’t love to have known Marlene but wasn’t she pretty ambiguous sexually? I read somewhere that she was bisexual.

      Funny how things work in Hollywood. Forever Amber is a competent bore that hardly anyone remembers, whereas Gun Crazy has been recognized as a classic.

      Which goes back to what Wm Goldman said on the movie business: “Nobody knows nothinkg”. Wish I had kept that book.

      I too love that beauty parlor picture, although probably not for the reasons Feinstein intended. I barely see him…but those 2 women…I take my elderly mother to the beauty shop monthly and didn’t realize how hard those beauticians work. 8 hours on your feet constantly. With her cigarette, she shows that.

      The Morgan: Darn it Robert! Get one! So what if Karen laughs at you. Your perception of others thinking you are in a mid-life crisis for getting one is wrong. When your days are coming to an end, will you be glad you never got one?

      That is reserved for middle-aged men driving red Corvettes, Ferraris, Porsches, et al.

      If you drive a Morgan those who know, know that you know sports cars and have it for the driving enjoyment.

      • “I take my elderly mother to the beauty shop monthly ”

        My mother lived to 103 and never washed her hair. She went to the beauty parlor every week or two and, late in her life, had a defrocked Chicago priest who lived in her building and drove a taxi take her.

  3. Awesome post this week, Robert. So many great photos and paintings.

    I’m not sure about that “watch” (and I hesitate to call that horological masterpiece a watch).

    My favorites images this week are:
    1) the green Morgan,
    2) Peggy Cummins
    3) the Beauty Parlor photo (the look on her face is priceless)

    Marlene had a very high opinion of herself! 🙂 and Rick’s photo looks like a painting.

    I imagine this post was scheduled, but please update us on your progress as soon as you or Karen are able. Have a wonderful weekend.

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