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

by 6 Comments

“I came over here to act, but it turned out all I had to do was to be high-minded, long suffering, white-gloved and decorative.”
—Deborah Kerr

Pierre Bonnard
The Stork and Four Frogs
circa 1889
Dimensions: Height: 159.5 cm (62.8 in.), Width: 163.5 cm (64.37 in.)
Distemper on fine canvas (three paneled screen)

 

Bill Brandt
Penny-farthing for their thoughts, from A Day on the River, 1941

 

Rick McGinnis
Brown Street, Belfast, April 2017; You can purchase Rick’s photo books here.

 

Horst P. Horst
Lisa Fonssagrives hands, 1941

 

An Enicar trench wristwatch from World War I with a surprisingly contemporary teardrop case and integrated compass.

 

“Call me Carmen. I tell you how come thees turbans begin. In Bahia, Brrrazeel, the black womans go to market weeth fruits and vegetables or flowers in beeg baskets which they wear on the head. So I say…thees ees unusual…and I design my turbans from them.”
Carmen Miranda, 1947 interview

 

Ker-Xavier Roussel
The Garden (Le jardin), 1894
Marbeled and stained glass, 15 1/2 x 23 5/8 in., The Phillips Collection

 

Yale Joel
Crowd looking at new model car during automobile exhibit. Paris 1948

 

Robert J. Avrech
Truck 7492
New Jersey, 2019

 

A wise and experienced director offers advice to a first time screenwriter:
“Do you know what film is? The film is an infernal machine. Once it is ignited and set in motion, it revolves with an enormous dynamism. It cannot pause. It cannot retract anything. It cannot wait for you to understand it. It cannot explain itself. It simply ripens to its inevitable explosion. This explosion we have to prepare, like anarchists with the utmost ingenuity and malice.”
—Prater Violet, by Christopher Isherwood

 

Félix Vallotton
Passerby (La Passante) (1897)
Oil on cardboard, 7 7/8 x 11 in., The Phillips Collection

 

Michael Kenna
Tow path, Blackburn, Lancashire, 1984

 

Seraphic Secret friend Bill Brandt writes: “I come here often – last of the real hardware stores. I always wondered why it was called Hollywood hardware…”

 

Bill did a little research and solved the mystery.

 

Ingrid Bergman in Notorious, 1946

 

Ariel Chaim Avrech Torah and Mantle 
Photo by: Steve Cohn Photography www.stevecohnphotography.com (310) 277-2054 © 2019

 

Pinchas Tzvi wishes all our friends and relatives a sweet and meaningful Shabbat.

 

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Hollywood Hardware is the kind of store where someone will spend 15 minutes with you to find that metric bolt you need. For a sale less than $1. The Sacramento metro area had a handful of these stores; we are down to 2 now around town.

    I try to patronize them whenever I can over the big box stores.

    Until they put up that sign, I thought they were just named after…..Hollywood.

    They are pretty much the same since 1948.

    Beautiful photos by you Robert and Rick!

    And a beautiful and succinct description of the film medium by Prater Violet.

  2. I also love hardware stores. When I was a boy in Chicago, my father used to spend time in Matushek’s Hardware store that literally stocked everything, including guns. My father bought my first shotgun there, an Ithaca 20 gauge. There used to be a nice big one in Pasadena that stocked fishing gear including fly tying equipment and flies.

  3. Just for fun – that photo with the Isherwood quotation is of actor-director Frank Borzage (with his hand on the tripod) and cinematographer L. Guy Wilky shooting a scene for the 1916 western “Land o’ Lizards,” made by the American Film Company in Santa Barbara.

    Not that I knew that off the top of my head, but I knew I had seen that picture before and went scurrying through my books. It’s from Robert S. Birchard’s “Silent-Era Filmmaking in Santa Barbara.”

Leave a Reply