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 9 Comments

“The only reason they come to see me is that I know life is great — and they know I know it.”
—Clark Gable

Hercules Seghers, Dutch c. 1589 – c. 1638
Pile of Books
etching
20.5 x 9.4 cm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

 

Rick McGinnis
Beartooth Pass, Montana, July 2016

 

Albrecht Dürer, The Large Turf, 1503. Watercolor and gouache on paper, 41 x 32 cm. Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

 

Erwin Blumenfeld, Evelyn Tripp, in the Sargent dress by Christian Dior. A variation on a photograph that appeared in Vogue US, November 1, 1949 © The Estate of Erwin Blumenfeld

 

Pieter de Hooch, Woman Reading a Letter, 1664, Oil on canvas, 55 x 55 cm, Szépmûvészeti Múzeum, Budapest

 

Thomas Nozkowski
Untitled, oil on linen on panel, 22″ x 28″ (55.9 cm x 71.1 cm), 2009, © Thomas Nozkowski, courtesy Pace Gallery / Photo by: G. R. Christmas

 

“I had become a new kind of sex symbol – the woman men wanted to go to bed with, but not until you married her. Sexy but pure. One thing I was careful about in those films was to avoid vulgarity, which I truly despise. I liked those scripts about the man-woman game as long as they were done with style and wit and imagination. In my vocabulary, vulgarity begins when imagination succumbs to the explicit.”
—Doris Day

 

Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Lady Mary Guildford, 1527, Oak, 87 x 70,5 cm, Art Museum, Saint Louis

 

 

Carole Lombard and William Powell in My Man Godfrey, 1936
Written by Eric Hatch, Morrie Ryskind, Gregory LaCava (uncredited)
“Oh Godfrey, now I know you love me!”
“I do not love you and you’re going to get me all wet!”
“You do or you wouldn’t have lost your temper. Oh, Mother — Godfrey loves me! He put me in the shower!”

 

Rick McGinnis
Montana, July 2016

 

Photo by Hengki Koentjoro

 

Gerrit van Honthorst, The Matchmaker, 1625, oil on canvas, 71 x 104 cm (Centraal Museum, Utrecht)

 

Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire in Top Hat, 1935.

 

Ginger and Fred together again in the 1980s.

 

Doni Silver Simons
Untitled
Acrylic on canvas, 30″x30″
2009

 

Elsa Lanchester on the set of Bride of Frankenstein, 1935
“The swans in Regents Park in London inspired me in my performance. They’re really very nasty creatures, always hissing at you. So I used the memory of that hiss. The soundmen ran some of my hisses and screams backwards to add to the strangeness. I spent so much time screaming that I lost my voice and couldn’t speak for days.” —Elsa Lanchester

 

Lucas Cranach the Elder, David and Bathsheba, 1526, Oil on panel, 38.8 x 25,7 cm, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Germany.

 

Pin-up artist Zoë Mozert paints Jane Russell for the Howard Hughes Production of The Outlaw, 1943

 

 

 

Gustave Young
Gold and nickel-plated Colt Model 1877 Sheriff’s Model Lightning double action ejectorless revolver.

 

Erwin Blumenfeld, Ruth Knowles, Vogue, c. 1949 © The Estate of Erwin Blumenfeld

 

James Siena, Recursive Dented Lobes, 2006-2014 enamel on aluminum 19-1/4″ x 15-1/8″ courtesy of the artist and Pace Gallery

 

Rick McGinnis
Boston, June 2016

 

Gerrit van Honthorst, Samson and Delilah, 1615, 37.01 x 50.79 in (Cleveland Museum Of Art, Ohio, USA)

 

Photo by Robert J. Avrech
After the Rain
Doheny Boulevard, Los Angeles, 2017

 

Antoin Sevruguin, Jewish Village Girl, Persia (Iran) c.1880

 

Lielle Meital wishes all our friends and relatives a lovely and inspirational Shabbat.

 

 

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. I believe I asked this question once, but I don’t remember the answer. Did Clara Bow pronounce her last name like “There was a bow in the little girl’s hair” or like “Bow to the captain?” B-O-W can be prenounced either way.

  2. “My Man Godfrey” is a favorite and I have a DVD that I watch every once in a while. It is such a Depression movie. Another I like is “Merrily We Live.” In that one a tramp taken in by a family turns out to be a famous author gathering material. The bum, down on his luck, who turns out to be rich or famous or powerful (Superman) made those audiences feel better about their lives.

    “Topper” is pure escapism but similar.

  3. I like Doris days quote. In fact I can say that I actually slept in her room. But she wasn’t there.

    This was at the El Rancho hotel in Gallup New Mexico. For some decades when westerns were filmed in the area production crews would stay here

    One of ricks Montana shots reminds me exactly of old US 40 leaving soda Springs into Donner Lake. They kept that small section of highway because it is absolutely beautiful

    Finally I think I read somewhere that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers save their movie studio from bankruptcy with their movies

    • None of the major studios went bankrupt. None. Nada. Zero. And Republic got added. So you can safely say that everyone who was successful saved their studios and their jobs. As in Claudette Colbert, Clark Gable, Shirley Temple, Mrs. Gable, Loy and Powell, James Cagney and the other Powell, Dick…not quite an endless list, but significant. And Gene Autry riding up on the outside.

  4. “My Man Godfrey” is a marvelous movie and it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing those roles as well. I merely thought that until I saw the 1957 remake which convinced me I was right. June Allyson and David Niven are pretty fair actors in their own right but they didn’t bring the magic of Carole Lombard and William Powell. (For that matter whom ever played the father was no Eugene Pallette.)

    I understand remakes are a Hollywood standard and without them we’d never have had “The Maltese Falcon” but you’d think they’d recognize when it was done right and stop. I wonder if Harrison Ford regrets his starring in a bad remake of “Roman Holiday.”

    • I didn’t even know those remakes had been made. I also did not see the “Thomas Crown Affair” remake. That is another favorite. I showed it to my kids about 20 years ago and they could not get over how good it was.

    • Sabrina, not Roman Holiday, was remade with Harrison Ford. I thought well produced and charmingly played with the added advantage of not having Humphrey Bogart get the girl, something that had been intended and prepared for Cary Grant.

  5. The Durer painting looks like a photograph and the Koentjoro photo looks like a painting. That must say something about art and human nature but I don’t have time to expand on that thought right now.
    Any idea if that is how the “Jewish Village Girl, Persia (Iran) c.1880” dressed every day, or was she dressed up for a special occasion (or to have her picture taken)?

    Thanks again and have a wonderful Shabbos.

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