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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“She was an absolute genius as a comedic actress, with an extraordinary sense for comedic dialogue. It was a God-given gift. Believe me, in the last fifteen years there were ten projects that came to me, and I’d start working on them and I’d think, ‘It’s not going to work, it needs Marilyn Monroe.’ Nobody else is in that orbit; everyone else is earthbound by comparison.”
—Billy Wilder

Domenico Ghirlandaio (1448 – 1494)
Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni, 1488
Tempera on panel
30 in × 19 in
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

 

Diana Dors’ stunning 1949 Delahaye Type 175 Roadster. H/T Bill Brandt

 

Diana Dors posing with the Delahaye.

 

Rick McGinnis
Portrait of director Sidney Lumet, Toronto, 2007. This photo means a great deal to me. Sidney and I became close when he directed my script for “A Stranger Among Us.” He insisted that I stay on set every day of production and never made any changes in the script without my okay. He was one of Hollywood’s greatest directors, and a true gentleman. Rick McGinnis was kind enough to deliver an original print of this wonderful photo to me in Los Angeles a few months ago.

 

Portrait of Brigitte Bardot by Georges Dambier, 1954.

 

Bathing Suit, American, wool, ca. 1870, designer unknown.

 

Designer Louis Réard, seen here in 1974, invented the modern bikini in 1946. Because his design exposed the bellybutton for the first time  Réard claimed that his bathing suit would be as explosive as the atomic bomb. Thus he named his bathing suit after the location of the first test of the bomb. At first, public reception to the Bikini was lukewarm However, when sex symbol Brigitte Bardot wore Réard’s design on the silver screen, followed by the all-American Annette Funicello, in her movies, the Bikini became a global sensation.

 

Sir Howard Hodgkin, (b. 1932)
Storm, 1996-97
Oil on panel
34 5/8 x 39 in.

 

“It has been written since then that Carole [Lombard] and I had that wedding day planned out for months in advance, but that’s not true. It happened this way. On the afternoon of March 28, I was finished with my scenes [in “Gone with the Wind”] about three in the afternoon. While I was taking off my make-up, the assistant director came over and said I didn’t need to work the next day. I called Carole at once and with the aid of a close friend, we headed out that night to Kingman, Arizona. We took Otto along, not only to untangle any difficulties we might get into, but because he had a new car without license plates which meant we wouldn’t be spotted.
We were married at three-thirty that afternoon and left at five-thirty, getting home the next morning at three. Carole’s mother was there, all excited, which kept us up till five. Finally we got to sleep, only to be awakened at nine to discover forty cameramen, three newsreel men and twenty reporters waiting out in the front yard to interview us. Under the circumstances, David [Selznick] gave me another day off.”
—Clark Gable
John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)
Rosina Ferrara, Head of a Capri Girl, 1878
Oil on cardboard
Signed, inscribed, and dated by the artist at lower right, To my friend Hyde / souvenir of / John S. Sargent / Capri 1878
12 7/8 x 9 7/8 in.

 

Ivy Nicholson in Jacques Fath Dress, photographed by Georges Dambier for Nouveau Femina, 1954.

 

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Erna with Japanese Umbrella (Japanese Girl), 1913
Oil on canvas, 80 x 70.5 cm
Andre de Dienes
Norma Jeane on the Pacific Coast Highway, Oct. 1945.

 

1932 Auburn – V12 Boattail Speedster. H/T Bill Brandt

 

The privilege of being a screen actor is having the opportunity of seeing yourself as others see you. Believe me, it is very traumatic. When I saw myself, I thought ‘Get a train ticket and leave’.
—Lizabeth Scott b. Emma Matzo (1922 – 2015)

 

Filippo Lippi (1406–1469)
Portrait of a Woman, circa 1445
Tempera on poplar wood
19.5 × 12.9 in
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

 

Georges Dambier
Umbrella Girl, Concorde Place, 1954

 

1935 Auburn 851 Supercharged Speedster. H/T Bill Brandt

 

Marc Riboud
Japan, 1958

 

Charles Demuth (1883‑1935), Buildings, Lancaster, 1930. Oil and graphite pencil on composition board, 24 1/8 × 20 1/8in. (61.3 × 51.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

 

Robert J. Avrech
Karen Ponders The Square
Los Angeles, 2017

 

Omer Calendar made by Maurice Mayer, a French artist, around 1870. More information here.

 

Livia Yarden wishes all our friends and relatives a lovely and inspirational Shabbat.

 

 

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Comments

  1. Always amazed me how different Norma Jean was from Marilyn Monroe. I remember a documentary of her about her time in the latter 50s of staying in New York. She would walk on the sidewalk anonymously. And one day she told a friend to watch her transformation to MM – and whatever “it” was almost immediately a crowd surrounded her.

    I know during the filming of Some Like It Hot, MM exasperated Billy Wilder – one scene required 25 takes?

    Always enjoy your Friday Photos Robert and glad you liked the 30s cars.

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