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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peggy
[on being fired from Forever Amber (1947) and replaced by Linda Darnell] “Say it was my lack of experience, say it was the color of my eyes, say it was a lot of little things, but please don’t say I don’t have enough sex.” —Peggy Cummins

Model wearing an afternoon dress by Christian Dior in a photo by Mark Shaw, Paris, 1957
Model wearing an afternoon dress by Christian Dior in a photo by Mark Shaw, Paris, 1957

 

London, 1960, photo by Philip J. Griffiths
London, 1960, photo by Philip J. Griffiths

 

Anne Truitt
Morning Choice
1968
Acrylic on wood
72 x 14 x 14 inches

 

Michael Kenna
Forest of Poplars
Caposotto, Sermide, Mantova, Italy, 2018

 

This floral arrangement was made by the 18th century English artist Mary Delany (1700 – 1788).Her work is often mistaken for watercolors, but the works are, in fact, tiny pieces of paper . Each flower she crafted could be made up of 200 tiny pieces of paper. Delany only started making these exquisite works when she was 72 years old, but she created over 1,000 works before she passed away.

 

“Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism.”
—Bette Davis

 

 

Aristede Maillol
Woman with a Parasol
c. 1895
oil on canvas: 190.5 cm. X 149.6 cm.

 

Brigitte Bardot and Leslie Caron in Cannes, 1953
Brigitte Bardot and Leslie Caron in Cannes, 1953

 

Dovima by William Helburn 1955
Dovima by William Helburn 1955

 

Rick McGinnis
Rose, July 2020

 

Omega has just released the latest addition to its ultra-popular Speedmaster collection the super cool Speedmaster “Silver Snoopy Award” 50th Anniversary. Retail cost is $9,600. More here.

 

“Nothing’s ever easy as long as you go on living.”
—Marilyn Monroe

 

Waterlillies Harvesting Season, Mekong Delta, Vietnam, 2020
Photo by Trung Pham Huy

 

Montgomery Clift and Olivia de Havilland, The Heiress, 1949
Screenplay by Ruth and Augustus Goetz
Based on the stage play The Heiress by Ruth and Augustus Goetz

 

Austin Healy 3000. Built from 1959-1967. This is the same car Steve Martin is driving in Father of the Bride movies, 1991, 1995.

 

Charlie Chaplin with a doll based on his famous tramp character, 1918.

 

Lielle wishes all our friends and relatives the best Shabbat ever and a joyous last days of Succos.

 

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

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Comments

  1. A fraternity brother had an Austin Healey about 1958. Maybe it was an earlier model but it had an aluminum body and, if anyone sat on a fender, if would deform and not return to shape.

    I just read a book titled “Nemesis” which is mostly about Aristotle Onassis, but also had some stories about Marilyn. I don’t know how much of it is true, however.

    Have a great weekend.

  2. If half, if one-fourth, what is said about her childhood and adolescence is true, Miss Monroe had ample cause to be miserable. Poor thing, she was as bright as she was pretty. And a talented comedienne. (Comedy gets no respect, but most actors say it’s harder than drama.) She would have benefited from modern therapies for the sexually abused.

  3. Peggy Cummins and Linda Darnell are an interesting contrast. Both were actively working from roughly 1940 to 1965. Darnell was divorced 3 times and, in 1965, died at the age of 41 from burns she received in a house fire. Cummins was married to one man for 50 years (until his death) and lived to be 92 years old. Not that it is relevant at this late date, but for my money, it must have been the color of her eyes.

    I like the Bardot and Carron photo. Bardot was about 19 and Carron about 22 based on the date. Both women have had interesting lives. After her acting career, B.B. has been most noted for her animal activism and her prosecution for “hate speech” in France – she was critical of Muslim slaughter rituals and the humaneness of the practice as well as immigrant influence on French culture. She has been fined for several convictions of “hate speech”. Carron is famous for her dancing and is reportedly one of the few dancers to have danced with Kelly, Astaire, Baryshnikov and Nureyev. Both woman are still alive. B.B. is 86 and Carron is 89.

    That Austin Healy is beautiful.

    I sometimes wonder if everything wasn’t a struggle for Monroe. My late sister struggled with mental illness and, after her death, I was able to read some of her private journals which described her internal turmoil and the demons which tormented her mind. People can look positively “normal on the outside” while feeling total despair inside their head. I wonder if that was Monroe.

    I love the Christian Dior photo and the London photo too, but the Dovima photo is sexy on a whole other level.

    I love the Omega watch. I can’t afford the watch, but I love it’s style.

    Have a wonderful weekend, Robert.

  4. Love the forest of poplars.

    Marilyn Monroe was pretty wise. I wonder why she was so unhappy?

    The Heli free thousand was a wonderful sports car and like so many were killed off for model year 1968 due to regulations in the US

    67 was the last year of the Cobra, the Healey, and I can’t remember all the rest

    I always viewed it is one step down from a jaguar. It had an idle that was melodious.

    Typical of so many “2+2“ sports cars the back seats were only good for those who had their legs amputated.

    Pretty picture of Dovina! Her name has a small typo

    • I have a love-hate relationship with this iPhone voice transcription.

      Sure it saves time immensely but then you really have to go over it word by word before hitting publish. And make painstaking corrections.

      Healey 3000; not Heli free thousand.

      With that, at 0301, bid you all good night

      • Oh and as Peggy Cummins never actually became a movie star, say it was the whole package and that Zanuck was, and not for the first or only time, mistaken. Further, on the misguided assumption that high billing constitues by itself stardom, that is factually wrong — stardom boils down nicely to one thing, bankability, and within that context, there are multiple levels.

        • Barry,

          But. . . but. . . in 2020, Peggy was listed at #16 on The Irish Times list of Ireland’s greatest film actors. 🙂

          I found this article from 1950 which questioned why Peggy was being ‘kept down’ by the Hollywood machine. In the article they discuss Peggy being replaced on Forever Amber by “the more aggressively mannered and proportioned Miss Linda Darnell“.

          Here is the link:
          https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22825732

          • Joe — being a great actor is an opinion, being a movie star is a state of financial being. She was, from that point of view, simply another Zanuck obsession, along with Bella Darvi and several others. Upon retuning to her homeland, she was still not a movie star, and that includes Night of the Demon. She was a relatively attractive leading lady, but that only makes her one of many. Oh, and Demon in its Britsh and American incarnations, was a commercial failure. Linda Darnell, was a movie star until she drank her way out of it the business.

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