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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“To make a real war movie would be to occasionally fire at the audience from behind the screen during a battle scene. But word-of-mouth from casualties wouldn’t help the film to sell tickets. And again, such reaching for reality is against the law. Anyone seeing the movie will survive.”
—Sam Fuller reassures moviegoers they will not go home with injuries if they go see his latest war movie.

 

Vermeer, The Guitar Player
(De gitaarspeelster)
c. 1670-1672
Oil on canvas
53 x 46.3 cm. (20 7/8 x 18 1/4 in.)
Kenwood House English Heritage as Trustees of the Iveagh Bequest, London

 

Diane Arbus, An Empty Movie Theater, New York City, 1971

 

Origami Chair by Frank Lloyd Wright, 1949

 

Rick McGinnis
Christmas Lights, Los Angeles, Nov, 2016

 

Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park #29, 1970, Oil and charcoal on canvas, 100, 1/8 , x 81 , 1/8 in.

 

Dovima wearing Balenciaga, photographed by Richard Avedon for Harper´s Bazaar, October 1950

 

Joan Miro
Blue III
1961
oil on canvas
355 x 270 cm
Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France

 

Julie Christie shopping for groceries in Malibu (1968, photo by Ron Galella)
On why she isn’t interested in marriage:
“Men don’t want any responsibility, and neither do I.”

 

Gabriel Metsu
Old Woman Meditating
1660-1662
oil on panel
27 x 33 cm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

 

Banana-wielding chorus girls on the set of Busby Berkeley’s The Gang’s All Here (1943) rehearse the Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat routine, which was described by one critic as “a male hairdresser’s acid trip.”

 

Antonio Gaudi
Calvet chair, 1902

 

Barbara Stanwyck by George Hurrell

 

Rick McGinnis
Lightning McQueen, Petersen Automotive Museum, Los Angeles, Nov. 2016

 

John McLaughlin
#26, 1961
oil on canvas

 

The elusive, post-retirement Greta Garbo walking in New York (1955, photo by Lisa Larsen for LIFE)
“I have no plans, not for the movies, not for the stage, not for anything. I’m sort of drifting…Sometimes I put on my coat at 10 in the morning and go out and follow people. I just go where they’re going. I mill around.”
—Garbo, on her life after leaving Hollywood (LIFE magazine, Jan. 24th, 1955)

 

Greta Garbo in Flesh and the Devil, 1926
Screenplay by Benjamin Glazer
From the novel “The Undying Past” by Hermann Suderman
Titles by Marian Ainslee
Uncredited, Hanns Kräly, Frederica Sagor Maas

 

Josef Hoffmann “Sitzmaschine,” Austria 1908

 

Sean Scully, Music, 1986, oil on linen, 96 x 108 1/8 x 3 3/4 inches (courtesy of Mnuchin Gallery)

 

Rick McGinnis, Finca Luna Serena, outside San Miguel de Allende, Nov. 2016

 

Winslow Homer
The Trysting Place
1875
12 × 8 1/16 inches (30.5 × 20.5 cm)
Framed (estimated): 20 × 17 inches (50.8 × 43.2 cm)
Watercolor and gouache over traces of pastel and graphite on cream wove paper
Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey

 

Carrie Fisher and her mother Debbie Reynolds, 1959, RIP

 

Carrie Fisher watches her mother on stage at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, 1963.

 

Debbie Reynolds as Kathy Selden in Singin’ In The Rain, 1952, her best film, and arguably the greatest musical ever produced.

 

Robert J. Avrech
The Twelve Tribes
Acrylic on panel
Each panel 10″ x 10″

 

Zelig Segal
Chanukah Menorah
Heavy silver plated Hanukkah lamp which consists of two sliding bars each notched with eight semicircular openings. When aligned,the notches form receptacles for candles. The bars are made to slide, so that as each day of Chanukah passes, the number of holes can be increased to mark the passing of a new day of the celebration.

 

 

Celebrating Abraham Lincoln, Maayan wishes all our friends and relatives a lovely and inspirational Shabbat and a joyous Chanukah.

 

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Comments

  1. I thought Fuller overly rated and overly theatrical but with an occasional moment, usually manifested by his eye for composition. The only one of his films that I believe worked well from beginning to end was park Row. One to savor in terms of narrative, performance (specially lead actor Gene Evans, but not only) and sophistication.

    And Robert, your grand daughter is just adorable.

  2. Fuller doesn’t seem know that the gunfire during a war movie thing had already happened. During the Mexican Revolution when Huerta abdicated the big Four revolutionaries (Obregon, Zapata, Carranza, and Villa) attended the Revolutionary Convention of Aquascalientes in 1916. While waitng for Zapata the Carranzistas decided to show a movie of Caranza’s entry of Mexico City. Obregon and Villa came and were seated on the stage behind the screen. During the movie when the big scene of Carranza entering Mexico City on his white horse, Villistas and Obregon supporters who hated Caranza opened fire from the audience at Carranza. Since on the screen he was on a horse the shots were all high though it was said Pancho and Obregon left “hurriedly”.

  4. I had an aunt and uncle who had a Frank Lloyd Wright house with furniture he designed. Looking back, it all looked wonderful. The chairs just weren’t comfortable.

    The house was sort of goofy too, at least for living. It too was mighty nice to look at and leave. It may be sacrilegious but, eventually, they added on to the house and got a functional kitchen.

  5. As a rule I don’t care much for musicals. The strangest one I remember seeing was paint your wagon, with both Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin singing.

    A local theater has monthly screenings of classic movies

    I went to see singing in the rain. What a beautiful movie. And then I read that Debbie Reynolds had never even danced before doing this movie.

    So to have these elaborate dance sequences with Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor —/- No pressure there!

    And what a sad story with both Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds.

    What I absolutely loved about the movie Cars was the detailed research they did only to subtly show it and allow certain members of the audience to get the inside joke.

    Like the Lightyear tires.

    I think that people at the Petersen auto Museum have something against me. I wanted to see it for years and every time I have been to Los Angeles it has been closed. The last time for extensive remodeling.

  6. I once shared an elevator with Julie Christie at the film festival in Toronto, back in the ’80s. I was with David Lynch, and he was very excited to be talking to the tiny English lady who seemed to be wearing gardening clothes. It was only after we got out of the elevator that he told me who it was – I honestly didn’t recognize her at all.

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